NESea Vol. I

Get it? Combine NES and nausea together.

When the time comes around inevitably that sites and magazines talk about the worst games of all time, they are all starting to blend together and look the same. They tend to be a mixture of Pac-Man 2600, E.T. 2600, CD-i Zeldas, Shaq Fu, Big Rig Racing, and of course, Superman 64. All valid examples of horrible awful games.

My area of expertise has always been one of two game systems. The Game Boy or the NES. I've played an sickeningly large amount of NES, and I feel the people responsible for MOST of that consoles library don't get enough shit tossed at them. In fact, I would argue that there are games sitting at the local swapmeet that you've never heard of that are a worse nightmare than E.T. 2600 could even hope to be. These are their stories.

Hey. See that logo up there? LJN? Get used to it. You're going to see it on the packaging of a lot of stuff. And that rainbow? It might as well be coming out of a Mr. Yuk sticker. Because that's what it means. It's poison. That logo means there's an 80% chance that the game belongs under your sink next to the bleach and Windex as opposed to being jammed into your NES hole.

Todays game that shows that they are nothing short of being spawns from hell sent to ruin a kids summer vacation.

I'm starting big. I'm starting what I consider the most vile game I've ever played. Honestly. This is my most hated game of all time. Uncanny X-Men is a disgusting example of "Just make something" that exists for no reason other than the X-Men didn't have a game on the market yet and dammit, kids love games. That may not be entirely true. I don't know if this game came before or after the C64/PC game with the delightful name of Madness In The Murderworld. Regardless, they came out the same year and kids were going to BEG for the X-Men videogame.

(Power Play series. The first of many hints)

Things start out innocent enough. That cover art is pretty rad right? I mean, it looks straight out of a comic from the 80s. And Storm has never looked cooler. How much better would the X-Men films have been if Halle Berry had a giant ass mohawk? Of course the Canucklehead gets front row center. He's got those bitchin' claws. Of course that's who I'm going to pick to play as! Why WOULDN'T I pick Wolverine?

(Yes Wolive! Flee for all your life! The bat creatures took your claws!)

Well. The answer there is simple really. Don't pick fucking Wolverine. Why? Well. He doesn't have any claws. Instead, he hops around. Cyclops? He shoots lasers. Wolverine just punches stuff. He doesn't STAB stuff. He doesn't heal himself, he just punches dudes. Over and over and over and over. And not well either. He's the best at what he does. And what he doesn't isn't very nice indeed. But I guess it doesn't really matter. They all look the same just with pallet swaps. And the game plays like garbage. It's a top down, sort of Ikari Warriors style. And you always play with a partner. Playing solo? Doesn't matter. You get an AI partner. And calling it AI is giving it too much credit. There is no intelligence to be found. More often than not, the character will just get lost in a corner swinging wildly and then he/she dies. At least Iceman does in fact throw snowballs at the bad men. Then you're free from his chains. Oh. And those stats? As far as I can tell, they are made up bullshit.

(If his sense of smell is so acute, when is he wallowing around in shit?)

And when I say you're free from his idiot chains, I mean you're free to see how far you can go punching things until you realize that this game is a complete and total mess. The images flicker uncontrollably. At times, it's like you're just phasing in and out of existence like Marty McFly in the Back to the Future game (ALSO LJN mind you) traveled back in time and started fucking with Professor X. It is almost enough to make you nauseous (Like the title!) and just completely stop playing.

(That black and white blob is apparently Storm)

Hey. Want to beat the game? Want to play the final level? Well, there's a trick to that. You need the secret code. How do you get that code you're probably asking. Well, obviously you beat all the levels and they give it to you. Nope. Well, maybe it's a secret hidden in the manual that you think is in a container you threw into the shed. So you dig that out. Hmm. Nope. Shit. The box for this thing probably hasn't existed for 15 years, it's probably hidden on the back like in Metal Gear Solid. Nope. It's on the cartridge. Not that you would know that. They don't tell you that. But it is. It's there. You gotta put that in after you SOMEHOW beat all the levels. Why did you do that? What the hell is your problem? How did you even figure out that code? You're more lizard than man.

Below, I have a little piece of video footage of me playing. You will see the game is pretty much spot on to the X-Men. Remember the time when Wolverine and Nightcrawler fought skeletons in the sewers? That was awesome. Also remember when Nightcrawler died 2 pages in and Wolverine had to go it alone while flickering in and out of existence? Good times.