Here we go: Episode 101 of the Angry Video Game Nerd, and the end of Season 5! This time the Nerd is taking a look at a bunch of games based on films by the acclaimed director Steven Spielberg. Of course, since we’re talking about games based on the NES (for the most part) based on films, you bet your ass this episode is full of the nightmares pushed out by our favorite worst publisher, LJN! There are quite a few games to be covered, so each one only gets a short bit of time.
The Nerd starts off with Jaws, based on 1975 cinema classic. The game really doesn’t follow the film much at all beyond the basic premise of hunting the shark, and how the final section plays out — you roam a map fighting random sea creatures over, and over, and over, to power up enough to be able to actually fight and take down “Jaws” himself. James actually explains the game quite well, including the frustrations associated with collecting shells and powering up.
The section ends with a nice Back To The Future: Part 2 reference before the Nerd moves on to more games from a box full of them. He reaches in and pulls out another one: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.
Yes. The game that everyone had been hounding him for years to cover. In a terror reaction he throws the game to the ground, not daring to even open it. He quickly moves on to pull out Hook for the NES, based on the 1991 film.
In this case we have a platformer with questionable design elements, to say the least. To sum up the Nerd’s comments, the graphics are poor, the level design and controls are poor.
Searching for another game the Nerd continues to give quite the mean stare to E.T. before pulling out Jurassic Park on the NES. He does have some positive aspects to say about this one, but quickly gets into the frustrating parts — a lack of ammo and some visual issues being the big complaints. This leads into a whole section on varying Jurassic Park games.
We take a detour here to Jurassic Park on the Sega Genesis — a side scrolling platformer, as opposed to the top-down shooter view of the previous game but one that’s “very frustrating” according to the nerd. He immediately follows with Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition which despite its name is actually a sequel which is equally frustrating.
Next up is the SNES version of Jurassic Park — an improved version of the NES game, to be precise. This game was also on the Game Boy, as a side note — I had a copy as a kid and enjoyed it, but never did play it on NES or SNES. Back on topic, the SNES version has some primitive 3D segments; James actually tells a story about as a kid making a little cardboard box “land rover” for these segments — a nice touch to add into the review.
Of course, the game has its flaws, but the biggest one (a trait that I believe is shared with variants of this particular game) is that it has no save feature — no password or anything of the sort. That’s never a fun time.
Keeping on the SNES the Nerd talks about Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues. This one is a side scrolling platformer, more like the Genesis versions, but still unique. Of course this game is plagued by controls which aren’t intuitive, thanks to a level design quirk where a bush hides an arrow on the first screen which would tell the player that they can press “up” to move to another area! Quite the annoying thing, especially for someone who may not have the manual.
On the Sega CD we have a point and click type game (gotta play into that multi-media aspect of early CD-ROM games) much like Myst, with some education aspects thrown in. Well, I can see what they were going for but I’m pretty sure I’d never want to play this. Ever.
Then we have a version for the 3DO, a strange mix of random minigames mashed together in a way that.. well, you have to see it to really take it all in. I’m kind of amazed this exists, but given the way the early 90’s were, well, yeah. It’s the perfect example of a “What were they thinking” kind of game, as the Nerd says in the episode.
This is where the Nerd has his usual end rant, in this case talking about how developers tend to take whatever licenses they can get to whatever property was popular at the time and would just make a game to cash in, with no concern on the quality of it. This plagued nearly every movie based game of the 8 and 16 bit eras of gaming, and even today has proven to be a still-common trend.
Lastly, the Nerd touches on a very strange European Atari 2600 game called “E.T. Go Come.” It’s a game called “Aliens Return” and is kind of a Pac-Man styled arcade game – it’s bland, average, what have you. It’s covered here as a segue to James actually talking about E.T. for the Atari 2600, saying he will “never play it.”
This leads to a continuation of the staredown with the copy of E.T. for the 2600. He finally pulls it out and realizes what he has to do — he has to finally play it, talk about it, review it.
The episode ends with an ad for the Angry Video Game Nerd Movie, saying it is “coming sometime.” The idea was the film would be completed not long after this episode was released and it would, in effect, be the follow up. That wouldn’t be the case, as the film would spend the next couple of years stuck in development hell before finally being released to mixed reception in 2014.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
This was a nice follow up to the R.O.B. Episode — instead of some short little almost filler piece, we got another 20+ minute quality episode. It’s solid enough and were it not in a sense a build up to the AVGN movie it would still hold up, but one can’t escape the fact that it does serve a role for the film as much as it is a stand-alone episode.
Nerd rage is low, but solid “good and bad” discussion on each game makes up for that — it’s a nice look at a few titles that I was already familiar with, and some I’d never heard of before this.
Of course, it also assured us that James would finally say something about E.T. and sure enough he would in the movie. That, however, would have to wait, and so would the Nerd — following this episode production would reach an all time low as James focused on both the film and the other projects he had already spent 2010 and 2011 focusing on.