Nintendo Project: Bad Street Brawler and Balloon Fight

[snowspinner]

I have commented in the past that video games are a poor medium for narrative because, truth be told, most narrative is not based on taking breaks for fight scenes with obsessional frequency. In truth, this is ever so slightly a misrepresentation - a fight, after all, is defined primarily by struggle and tension. This is what we all learned

Comments

[best_ken_ever]

I have beaten Balloon Trip. After many hours, it was satisfying. If I recall correctly, I was able to reach some late-teens-numbered level of Balloon Fight without cheating. I am not sure if they repeat endlessly a la Popeye or have some final ending a la Dig Dug II. I am not sure why I chose those games, but I guess that works.

In a way, I am a bit sad I was never in a real fight, though I remember fighting with my best friend at the time on a marching band trip to Disney World in tenth grade in our hotel room...and me attempting to use the hotel room phone as something to try to hit him with. But, we were both band geeks. The miss-to-hit ratio of all of our attacks was quite high. Now that sounds like a frustrating NES game.

[buschap]

I also can't think of any games besides Balloon Trip that enforce scrolling to the left. It's certainly a viable strategy in Pitfall, and plenty of games allow going in both directions, but I'm drawing a blank on other forced-left movement.

[best_ken_ever]

The Legend of Kage comes to mind, but I agree on the relatively low number of these.

There are a least a couple of levels of SNES's Yoshi's Island which go (or at least begin) R to L.

I think there was also some sort of NES Kung Fu game that was R to L.

The original Castlevania for NES definitely had some R to L segments, but I think all of the levels began L to R. I could be wrong, though.

[snowspinner]

Indeed, Kung Fu (as it was called) did start R to L, but it actually alternates level by level as you zig-zag your way up a dojo.

[buschap]

Good call on Castlevania. Some levels do indeed start from the left.

And the first Game Boy one has a forced left-to-right scroll.