10 Deadly Towers
This warrior is the epitome of fantasy awesomeness and adolescent projection: super buff muscles, shiny armor and weapons, confident knee-up stance revealing the mysteries beneath the lion-cloth. Aside from the well drawn figure, the watercolor hues surrounding the titular Deadly Towers do a great job of creating a dark, ominous vision of what’s ahead for our hero.
The in-game character…looks like a child trick-or-treating as a rhinoceros. The backgrounds feature bland, clashing colors with little texture or definition. Even worse, the level design is like an overly ambitious Legend of Zelda, a confusing maze of interconnected screens with no map. Since dying takes the player back to the very beginning, most of the game is spent blindly backtracking.
9 Stanley: The Search For Dr. Livingston
The winner for the “wait what is this and why was it ever made” award will always go to Stanley, but surely some copies were sold based on that cover alone. For the NES, this is a truly unique design incorporating photography, illustration, and some primitive photoshop-like effects creating a neat collage.
Stanley does have a lot of charm but overall it lacks polish. The enemies take way too many hits to kill, the map is confusing to navigate, and the backgrounds are a muddled mess. Most of the game is spent figuring out what can or cannot be climbed while forest creatures relentlessly pummel Stanley to death.
8 Conan
7 Dr. Chaos
Immediately that winged skeleton paints an image of foreboding horror. Upon closer inspection the tiny monsters in the background are just as intimidating and even more grotesque. Few NES covers are this scary, or this bloody!
Dr. Chaos bears more in common with Goonies II than Castlevania, featuring platforming that shifts to first person point-and-click upon entering a door. However, Dr. Chaos took this formula and murdered it, placing over 20 doors on the first screen alone. Most of these lead nowhere, yield little, and always end with an unnecessarily hard min-boss fight.
6 Athena
5 Kid Kool
This kid is definitely as cool as his name suggests. There he stands, legs suspended impossibly between two rocks, encircled in monstrous familiars, pants torn, rocking sunglasses and a leather jacket, fist raised in defiance to the evil wizard clearly killing his vibe. Bonus credit for the stonerly subtitle “and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs”.
On screen, Kid Kool looks more like the last boy picked in gym class. With his slow walking speed you’d assume that’s who he was modeled after; however, after a few seconds he starts running at Sonic the Hedgehog speeds rarely seen on the NES. Unfortunately, Kool is perpetually running too slow to traverse platforms or too fast to avoid enemies making this already awkward game almost unplayable.
4 Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
3 Ghoul School
The perspective places the player at the base of the steps, creating anticipation for the huge adventure lying inside. The CMYK palate is used with great effect here, giving this cover the look of an R-rated movie you never knew existed. Also, what is that horror in the window above the entrance!?! It looks like a T-Rex went through the teleportation pods from The Fly.
Ghoul School has a lot of potential, a quirky adventure game filled with unique sprite designs. However, the game’s controls make this a slog to play. The poor hit detection is made all the more frustrating by the fact that when enemies are hit they immediately recover. With a bit more money and programming behind it, this could’ve been a classic.
2 Bad Street Brawler
Whoa, this surfer dude punched someone so hard they flew through the cover itself! Also, check out the background. Is that a gorilla calmly posted up on the sidewalk? What are the two guys on the right doing? It’s either a robbery in progress, a complex Kid N’ Play style dance routine, or a subculture of dating that involves couples wearing handcuffs in public.
The in-game brawler looks like a blond gym teacher who hangs out at the beach and buys beer for high-school kids. This is only one of a few games designed for the infamous Power Glove which should say a lot. With the unresponsive accessory, Bad Street Brawler is tedious, frustrating, and extremely difficult. With the regular controller, it’s monotonous, boring, and extremely easy. The choice…is yours.
1 Adventures of Tom Sawyer
This artwork wouldn’t be that out of place as a book cover; it really does a great job of conveying the excitement and danger of being a child free of responsibilities. Look at the expressions on the children’s faces. Tom looks like he’s excited about upcoming rapids, Becky looks like she’s found something cool in the alligator’s throat, and Huckleberry Finn looks like he’s about to Sashay Away.
Expecting a wild adventure? Well, Adventures of Tom Sawyer is here to disappoint! Featuring bland colors, basic sprites, and uninspired backgrounds, this game would be more at home on earlier consoles like the Colecovision. Filled with awkward jumping, an arcing projectile that’s difficult to aim, and one hit deaths, more fun would surely be had painting that fence.
