It’s time for the Halloween AVGN episode for 2014 (yes, this was a relatively short year for episodes) and this time the Nerd is taking a look at Beetlejuice for the NES.
Yep, it’s another LJN game, based on a very good 80’s film, so you know the game is going to be bad. Incidentally, in this episode James addresses the criticism that LJN didn’t “make” the games – they published them, with other developers actually programming the games. Still, they were the ones financing the work, you could say, and thus were responsible for them likely being done on the cheap to maximize potential revenue: in this case Rare, of Donkey Kong Country, Battletoads, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Goldeneye 007 (among others) fame were the development team being the game in question for today’s episode.
So right off the bat we have a list of complaints, namely about the “rebounding” effect when taking damage, walls not being solid which seem like they should be, and the fact that the areas off camera are always kill zones. In the same fashion as Kid Kool James comes up with various names for these phenomena.
The Nerd pushes his way through the game as best he can, finding constant annoyances about every aspect of it. Useless power ups, non-intuitive navigation, and more.
This leads into what is certainly a personal favorite Nerd rant – a comparison of the subject matter of the game not being based on the film but instead the star Betelgeuse, from which the character’s name originates.
This is funny to me because that happens to be my favorite star – yes, I’m one of those nerds who has a favorite star – and so hearing the Nerd state all these facts about it and comparing them to traits of the game is just wild and really makes me, as a fan of astronomy, laugh! Honestly, the rant makes the episode and is certainly the highlight of the episode.
After the rant, we get back to more complaining – this time an in depth take on the “points” system and how frustrating it is to simply earn currency in the game.
This follows up with a rant about how absolutely broken the first stage boss is. From the Nerd’s perspective, you have to basically cheat to actually get past him. Not a fun time at all.
We end with a rant about the games music. Sadly, the Nerd doesn’t get far enough in the game to hear the house theme — that track is actually amazing and really should be appreciated. It isn’t that the rest of the music is bad, it just seems unfitting, but the House theme, that works, and it works well.
Following that is a bit more snark against LJN and finally a traditional cartridge destruction.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
A solid enough episode. I do wish James had gotten further in the game, but the first portions of it did give him enough to work with – he just didn’t get the full experience.
Still, the episode works well and is an enjoyable watch. It had an almost classic Nerd feel while still being a longer and much more “modern” episode. All in all not bad.
On a very quick final note, this game was shown briefly all the way back in the NES Accessories episode!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKFgXGO51rU
NOTE: For some reason this episode will not embed properly — click the above link to check it out.
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