We’re long overdue for taking a look at a Nerd episode. Way too long overdue — Cinemassacre is back to pretty regular AVGN episodes, along with other content and it’s about time I do the same.
Picking up where we left off we have Episode 135: Darkwing Duck for the TurboGrafx-16 (pronounced “Turbo Graphics Sixteen” for those of you not fluent in 90’s speak.) It’s a game based on the Disney animated series of the same name and, unlike James, who was a bit too old to get “into” it, I was just at the right age to enjoy the show. It was certainly one of my favorites (seriously, the theme alone is kick ass, if nothing else) so it’s one of those cases where I’m sure any kid who got this game and was a fan of the show would have had high hopes — hopes that would be dashed.
The episode begins with the Nerd trying to find a game to review — he tries NES title after NES title to no avail — he doesn’t have anything major to say about any of them. Fed up, he decides to review a game on the Turbo-Graphx 16. Holy shit.
Of course this begins with a bit of a primer on the system, it’s nuances, capabilities, and its inevitable market failure. It had a small but decent library of games, with only the occasional truly bad game, and in this case the Nerd thinks he’s found the pinnacle in Darkwing Duck.
It becomes clear very quickly just how flawed the game is, primarily in its controls and hit detection – two pretty critical elements of any action platformer. Really, the hit detection is awful, with the player taking damage when they clearly shouldn’t. The Nerd describes it well when he says this is a game that makes you think you’re playing poorly, but no, it really is just the terrible controls.
The Nerd moves on to cover more nuances of the poor level design – open windows you can’t go into, lines it looks like you can climb on but can’t, a puzzle that’s far more confusion than it needs to be, and so many more examples of the games poor controls until it happens — the final what the fuck moment in the Nerds attempt at playing the game:
A safe falls on Darkwing’s head if you don’t move after a certain amount of time. Take too long to plan a precision jump and you’re punished. With that, he’s done.
Before ending, James does touch on the fact that the game has a good basis in the Darkwing Duck series, and that a good Darkwing game was made for the NES, but with this one has to focus on the horrible controls.
We end with the “Shit Scale,” a ratings scale of bad games, using titles he’s previously played to give context, places Darkwing Duck on the TG16 in a middle spot — not to good, not too bad, but for what he’s seen it’s the worst Turbo-Graphx 16 game available.
Final Rating: 3.5/5
Another pretty solid episode. A bit short in the core review, but it does have solid comedy, and as I’ve said before I always enjoy episodes that have a bit of a history lesson to them. I’m sure the episode could have showed more of the game, but really the first few minutes sum up the critical failure in this titles design — controls for a game have to be good, or else the game is unlikely to be fun to play. It’s that simple, and the AVGN series demonstrates it time and time again.