Balloon Fight
Originally released on: NES
Played on: Nintendo 3DS
Release date: 1986 (NES Version)
Excitebike
Originally released on: NES
Played on: Nintendo 3DS (3D Classics version)
Release date: 1984 (3D Classics version released 2011)
"So what are these similarities that you are mentioning, oh wonderful Brawny?" is the question that I know you're all asking, (possibly without the "wonderful Brawny" on the end, but nobody's perfect!) Well, you can see that I played both of these on the 3DS, and they were both NES games when originally released, so they have that in common, and they're both, in essence, much more suited to be handheld games than console games.
"Why do you say that, Brawny?" I hear you ask...
(Cups ear and waits patiently, until the voices in my head persuade me that someone has responded so that I can continue on... (Hang on.... haven't I done that joke on my blog before?? - Wastes a significant time reading through old blogs...comes to the conclusion that it's not in any of my blogs from the last two years, and carries on.))
The reason is that neither of them are particularly suited for long term play. And, for the first time in this playthrough, I encountered games that I didn't play for the full hour each, not necessarily because I disliked the games (although one was significantly worse than the other), but because they become very repetitive after a few goes and I ended up doing something else before coming back to them.
Let's look at them one at a time shall we? First, Balloon Fight. Now you may remember that way back in Game 1's blog, I mentioned that one of the games on the cartridge was a pretty poor version of Joust, the infamous arcade game. Well, as much as Nintendo spend lots of time and money on developing original ideas, Balloon Fight is a complete
Basically, you fly around, popping the balloons that the enemies use to fly around, and if both of your balloons get popped then you die. And that's pretty much it. It may sound simple, and it is - but it's quite a lot of fun. Sadly, unlike Ice Climbers, the game doesn't allow you to choose levels to start on, so you play the same screens over and over again. And again. And again. And again...
*Brawny gets trapped in a recursive loop and dies. At the moment of death he manages to send a message to his previous self to skip this sentence and continue in the new paragraph below.*
So anyway, the other saving grace of Balloon Fight is that it also includes Balloon Trip - where you still control the balloon fighter but through a maze of electricity while collecting balloons. Which makes a nice change...
(Incidentally, I am very grateful for spell-checker at this point, as I keep trying to spell balloon as either baloon or ballon. I'm an idiot.)
Onto Excitebike now, and the fact that I'm a motorcyclist should mean I love this game, right? No. If I hadn't got this game for free when the eShop launched, then I wouldn't own it, and I wouldn't be missing out. It's just so... well.... so...
You know how after you've started doing something that's supposed to be entertaining and after a few minutes, you're actively considering stopping it to go and do the washing up because it might be more interesting? Well that's my Excitebike experience in a nutshell.
The controls are reasonably responsive, but collision detection is erratic. I'm sure there's a trick to playing it so that you get better, but I couldn't find it, and ultimately I couldn't be bothered any more. The 3D effect that has been added to the 3D classics version is about as pointless as you would imagine, and also, it's the only game I can think of that I've played (which isn't a music/rhythm action game) where having the sound on is essential. Why? Because there's no visual signal when the race starts, just an audio one...
So actually, although I lumped these two games together, there is some significant variance between them. While Balloon fight was fun, and I was quite happy to go back to time and time again for a few minutes at a time, Excitebike was just dull.
Balloon Fight
Rating: 6/10
Time Played: Eventually, about 45 minutes (spread over 6 or 7 plays)
Would I play it again? If I have a few minutes to kill and my 3DS in hand - possibly.
Excitebike
Rating: 3/10
Time Played: About 20 minutes. In three attempts.
Would I play it again? No. I'm considering deleting it, and I never delete anything! (Hence my proliferation of hard drives, backups, and data in general)
Next time, we return to a main console, and to a game I've only ever played on a PC, so it'll be interesting to see how it controls.. it's Lemmings II: The Tribes on SNES!
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