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chuckroI only had one NES game on my backlog, which I got as part of my trade-in when I sold my old NES (when I bought a Retro Duo). That game was Willow, an adventure/rpg based loosely on the movie of the same name.
(I say "loosely" because, while I haven't seen the movie, I've read that both the mythology and the actual events different significantly from the game. The popular theory seems to be that Capcom was working on this adventure game, got the license for the tie-in, and changed a bunch of names and sprites. It would also explain why this game, being a movie tie-in, is so good. Most movie tie-in games are rushed pieces of crap.)
Of that era, the game is most reminicient of Crystalis, as you visit towns, gain levels, get a collection of equipment, magic and items to use, and explore a large world, occasionally revisiting important locales. It's done in a 3/4 view, and unlike most similar games, Willow can both swing and thrust with his sword, giving you two moves to use against enemies.
The enemies are a mixed bag, most of them requiring you to be patient and let your shield block a hit before you attack. I actually found I did much better letting my shield take hits than I did trying to dodge. The game has a neat addition where each weapon has a "weight", and you can swing it faster as you gain levels, so it can be worthwhile to use a weaker weapon because you can land hits and knockback enemies faster. Yes, your hits knock back most mosters, including most bosses. It means there's real skill and timing involved in fighting.
It doesn't hold up against more modern games, of course: Most of the areas look alike, and the dungeons are mostly simple mazes of near-identical rooms. There are only a dozen different enemies (many of which get palette-swapped without changing anything else about them). There are a number of "space-filling paths", large areas Willow needs to hike through, sometimes repeatedly, which have no enemies or threats and only serve to make the world seem larger and the game seem longer. And unless you get lost and randomly kill enemies a lot, you'll need to grind experience levels in order to finish the game: You can't get the spell that you need to beat the final boss unless you reach level 13, but you can get to that point of the game while you're still around level 10.
And the game doesn't have a battery save, it has a password system. I haven't had to worry about passwords since I was playing early-generation Game Boy games, and man, they're a pain. But you've got to give the programmers a lot of credit--the password stores a huge amount of information. In only 18 digits with 64 possibilities for each, they store your location, XP total (and therefore level and stats), your entire inventory, and exactly where you are in the plot. Especially considering how many of the weapons, shields and magic aren't plot-important and are therefore missable, this is a really impressive task.
Very few NES games have really stood the test of time--even games like the original Super Mario Brothers were improved by a graphical facelift in the 16-bit era. But the 8-bit era did give us a lot of really good games, and it only took me 25 years to finally play this one.
(I say "loosely" because, while I haven't seen the movie, I've read that both the mythology and the actual events different significantly from the game. The popular theory seems to be that Capcom was working on this adventure game, got the license for the tie-in, and changed a bunch of names and sprites. It would also explain why this game, being a movie tie-in, is so good. Most movie tie-in games are rushed pieces of crap.)
Of that era, the game is most reminicient of Crystalis, as you visit towns, gain levels, get a collection of equipment, magic and items to use, and explore a large world, occasionally revisiting important locales. It's done in a 3/4 view, and unlike most similar games, Willow can both swing and thrust with his sword, giving you two moves to use against enemies.
The enemies are a mixed bag, most of them requiring you to be patient and let your shield block a hit before you attack. I actually found I did much better letting my shield take hits than I did trying to dodge. The game has a neat addition where each weapon has a "weight", and you can swing it faster as you gain levels, so it can be worthwhile to use a weaker weapon because you can land hits and knockback enemies faster. Yes, your hits knock back most mosters, including most bosses. It means there's real skill and timing involved in fighting.
It doesn't hold up against more modern games, of course: Most of the areas look alike, and the dungeons are mostly simple mazes of near-identical rooms. There are only a dozen different enemies (many of which get palette-swapped without changing anything else about them). There are a number of "space-filling paths", large areas Willow needs to hike through, sometimes repeatedly, which have no enemies or threats and only serve to make the world seem larger and the game seem longer. And unless you get lost and randomly kill enemies a lot, you'll need to grind experience levels in order to finish the game: You can't get the spell that you need to beat the final boss unless you reach level 13, but you can get to that point of the game while you're still around level 10.
And the game doesn't have a battery save, it has a password system. I haven't had to worry about passwords since I was playing early-generation Game Boy games, and man, they're a pain. But you've got to give the programmers a lot of credit--the password stores a huge amount of information. In only 18 digits with 64 possibilities for each, they store your location, XP total (and therefore level and stats), your entire inventory, and exactly where you are in the plot. Especially considering how many of the weapons, shields and magic aren't plot-important and are therefore missable, this is a really impressive task.
Very few NES games have really stood the test of time--even games like the original Super Mario Brothers were improved by a graphical facelift in the 16-bit era. But the 8-bit era did give us a lot of really good games, and it only took me 25 years to finally play this one.
