Addy's NES Pages - Section I
The lightning flashe, and the world is controlled.
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Zombie Nation is an obscure game that was
made famous when it just barely beat out Paperboy for Seanbaby's "Most Screwed Up
Game" award. But despite its legendary status, the game is not even remotely
worth playing. In Zombie Nation, you control a deadly giant samurai head, which you
fly around the city wreaking destruction, apparently with the goal of rescuing the city
from evil alien invaders. This made no sense to me until I got a better look at the
in-game plot summary, seen at left. Read closely! Yes, it seems that when
they refer to "the great head of the samurai, Namakubi," they don't mean the
great leader of the samurai. No. They mean, literally, the head
of the samurai Namakubi. The body part. A variety of theories seeking to
explain this game have emerged, but to me the most likely story is that this plot summary
was written and sent to the programmers, who were, as programmers often are, surly and
worn-out. Deliberately or accidentally, they misinterpreted this key line of the
text, transforming a poor samurai game into a poor, but hilarious, giant floating head
game.
Less evidence exists to explain the inanity of Darc Seed's powers. OK, granted,
I'm glad we get to see an alien invader with some specific abilities - for once, we get a
very clear idea of what our opponent's "horrible powers" amount to.
However, I would definitely trade this for the usual generic eye beams and legions of
terror, because Darc Seed plainly doesn't know how to exploit his advantages. Let's
face it, if you have the power to bring the Statue of Liberty to life to "do your
dirty work," why stop there? You might as well start animating every statue in
the world. Those Revolutionary War generals in Lafayette Park would make it
extremely easy to conquer the White House, for example, and I wouldn't be surprised if
this power could be used on nonhumanoid architecture as well. Who hasn't ever wanted
to do battle with a man-eating Gateway Arch? Maybe it wouldn't make the most
exciting game, but it'd be kind of entertaining in a weird way. Moreso than Zombie
Nation, anyway.
I'm also not sure how the "strange magnetic rays" enable Seed to turn the
population into mindless zombies, but it might have been smart to bring the force of this
psychic assault to bear against Namakubi instead of just letting his super samurai head
take back the Earth.
Look, I've seen enough movies to not genuinely expect villains to play it smart.
But something is really wrong with Darc Seed's thinking. He wastes a lot of time
using his mind control powers to make people fling themselves out of buildings. This
cheerful sadism is quite draining to watch as you play through Zombie Nation; fortunately,
the game allows you to skip directly to any stage you want, so you can save a number of
lives (and avoid billions in property damage brought on by your atomic firebreath) by
cutting right to the chase. Sadly, the game is ungodly hard, so the world is still
screwed. |
Of course, right after I finished chalking up all the insanity of this game to its
programmers' mental problems, I stumbled across the text of the manual, which shed some
degree of light on a few things. It seems that not everyone at Meldac of America was
completely unhinged - when the manual writers got ahold of the game and saw the "head
of the samurai" / "head of the samurai" error, they were shocked
into wedging an explanation of this into the instructions. Since most weirdness in
games goes unexplained, this should be considered a bold step.
And the explanation they came up with was pretty nifty - Namakubi, the completely
formed head (leader) of the samurai, sends a "fierce holographic representation"
of his head (body part) to do battle with Darc Seed. This really changes the scope
of the game, incidentally - think about it, if Namakubi can stomp Darc Seed using just a
hologram of his head, imagine what he'd be able to do with a hologram of his entire body?
Or maybe even his actual body, which is what I thought samurai tended to use most
of the time. But this is nitpicking; Meldac took a bold and unique step by offering
this hole-ridden explanation for their nonsensical cartridge, and they deserve applause
for showing even a minor degree of interest in helping the player understand what was
happening to his life.
To demonstrate what happens when game creators have no interest in explaining
the logic of their products, let's turn to our next game - Shadowgate.
This is the most well known of a series of games based on the premise that it is more
fun to fail in an illogical but creative fashion than to succeed. To test this, uh, original
theory, the programmers created a massive series of puzzles whose solutions could only be
derived by checking the back of the programmer's cheat manual. They then went back
and made sure that every conceivable action the player might take - except those that
directly followed the planned solution - would be lethal. For example, if the
programmer intended for you to open a door, they would make sure that, say, looking down a
well would end up being fatal:
LOOK WELL
You dive headfirst into the well and die.
In other parts of the game, you had a very obvious choice between several equally valid
actions - for example, when it is necessary to break one of three mirrors to go on.
Only one of them is safe, of course; the second shatters in a dangerous way so that the
broken glass slices you to ribbons, and the third - get this - falls to pieces and reveals
a dimensional vortex, which sucks you into deep space, causing instant death*. Originally,
the programmers had genuinely intended to go back and add a book somewhere that would
include a difficult-to-interpret clue about the mirrors, something like this:
Mirrors deadly, left glass cuts sharply
Break the right to go to Alpha Centauri
However, as things progressed, the game staff realized they had filled up so much of
the cartridge's space with imaginative murders that there was no more room for clues
explaining the way through them. Also at about this point, the programmers had begun
to sincerely enjoy inflicting pain on the future players of the game, and the traps became
increasingly sadistic and impossible. In one spasm of brilliant game design, they
made sure the player was equipped with something like a dozen different weapons (dagger,
arrow, halberd, Colt, etc), each one of which was only able to kill a single, specific
monster. As a result of all this, playing Shadowgate is an exercise in
trial-and-error game solving - or an excuse to rack up GameFAQs's
hit count a little more.
Deja Vu and Uninvited follow the same pattern, but in less compellingly terrifying
scenery. I don't recall Deja Vu very well, but Uninvited was set in a haunted
mansion, where ghosts would randomly appear to steal your soul. My most vivid memory
of this game involves a product called "No-Ghost," which was an aerosol spray
can designed to harm the ozone layer and destroy ghosts - sort of a supernatural Raid.
Once I was armed with the stuff, I assumed I was invincible - until I actually
encountered a ghost, attempted to use the No-Ghost, and was told I had foolishly failed to
take the cap off of the bottle. Naturally, I died, and I learned an important
lesson, one of many that socially conscious video games have taught me over the years:
always take the cap off of No-Ghost. It could save your life - and end someone
else's afterlife.
But enough about Deja Vu and Uninvited; they're really stupid games. Shadowgate
wasn't exactlly fabulous gaming, but something about it wedges itself deep into my gaming
memories. Maybe it's because Shadowgate got really really stupendously
positive coverage in Nintendo Power, while the other games merely got really really
positive coverage.
Before we move on to our next game (Rygar), I'd like to present a
cavalcade of Shadowgate screenshots which, taken together, may begin to suggest what a
unique gaming experience it is. Much of the credit for this gallery belongs (as
usual) to Bloodwhine Slaughtergate, who actually went to the trouble of playing through
the game far enough to get these snaps. Actually, B.S. is known locally for his
feats of Shadowgate mastery, such as being able to actually complete the game. We
applaud him.
A Brief Gallery of Shadowgate
 This
is the only reliable text you will read in this game.
I refuse to touch this one. Go sue somebody.
Hope you chose the correct mirror....
Crap! Wrong one!
Wrong again... guess I didn't use enough logic on this puzzle.
OK, this definitely isn't good. In a game where you can get
killed by looking at something, being in the dark amounts to begging for a
horrible evisceration.... |
 The
contents of the Book of Blue Dragon. B.S. once worked out an elaborate explanation
of how this prophecy related to his actual life, but I'm not supposed to tell you that.
I never think these things through....
Of course! "Move the sun!" Quick, Robin, to the
observatory!
Look before you leap! Oh...wait...I did.
I don't know why they bothered adding this ominous footnote. It wouldn't
have surprised me in this game if the troll had just suddenly reappeared to kill me after
I really had killed it.
You'll see this screen a lot. |
Moving on at last from Shadowgate, we turn our sights in the opposite direction on the
road of gaming theory. What's the opposite of a really hard game that's also
extremely illogical? That's right. A really easy game that's also
extremely illogical. I love Rygar, but man.
This is a pretty standard platform adventure game which is brightened by two facts: (a)
your warrior's weapon is obviously a gigantic yo-yo which the manual cheerfully refers to
as a "Diskarmer" in a failed coverup; and (b) you periodically run into
mysterious "wise men" types whose advice seems to indicate that the game
originally had much bigger plans, but had to be scaled back at the last second.
 |
Take the image at left. This poor deluded fool was
never told that the game has absolutely no internal clock, and he always tells you the
same time. It wouldn't be of much use on your quest even if the game did
have some sort of day/night shift, but at least then it would sort of make sense.
Other wise men tell you to deliver messages to evil bosses ("ASK HIM TO 'RELEASE MY
DAUGHTER'") , even though the game has no system of dialogue; and to go see a
gorgeous landscape. This last doesn't contradict the game engine like the others do,
but it's pretty strange. Yeah, it's a nice sunset and all, but isn't my quest a
little too urgent to spend time sightseeing? |
This line of thought leads me to believe that some of the wise men may be
false tempters trying to lead you astray. This idea wasn't very well-implemented in
Rygar, but it was brought to the level of fine art in our next game...
Go on to Simon's Quest
* - The phrase "causing instant death" isn't copyrighted by
anybody, but I picked it up from Bloodwhine Slaughtergate, who says it in just the right
offhanded manner. Credit where it's due.