| In
honor of NinjaCulture's one year birthday I'm going to write
a review of the game "Knight Rider" for play on
your Nintendo Entertainment System. And for fun, every picture
will feature yours truly wearing yours truly's incredibly
horrible but freaking sweet sunglasses since I can't find
my good ones. The reason for the "shades", as the
young people are calling them these days? My new computer
is so fast it glows as bright as the Sun of Krypton. Unfortunately,
it also runs as hot as the Sun of Krypton. Hell, I'm starting
to think the computer salesman sold me the actual Sun
of Krypton. It would explain a lot of things. Oh yes
indeed.
I
know I am by no means the first person on the Inter-web to
review this game, and I bet I wont be the last. But how could
I possibly resist it? I would just like to ask the other sites
if they have the actual cart. But I'm probably not going to
due to the fact that 1) they probably do and 2) I'm an idiot
(read: above picture).
I've
had the game since the days of old, when monkeys roamed the
country-side and Wilford Brimley didn't proudly proclaim his
many diseases. It was a grand time to be alive. Unfortunately,
I was about six and was not able to fully appreciate the abundance
of monkey meat.
One
thing I did appreciate, though, was video games (and still
do, mind you). So when my Grandpa and I walked by the video
game section in a local video rental store something caugh
my eye, something of evil proportions. An undefeatable force
of unstopping power, a NES game. And then I promptly made
him buy it for me. Hey, I was six and six year olds have no
money. A six year old's form of currency is whining and crying,
and the exchange rate is horrible.
Upon writing the first part of the
article, I lost my terrible shades due
to the fact
that I hate my eyes, or maybe I realized it was retarded.
I am also taking the picture with my foot. Impressive,
no? I must be Superman.
NES
games are notorious for being incredibly impossible to beat.
Not just impossible, incredibly impossible. That's
like thrice the impossibility, maybe more. But it's
all we had, really freaking hard video games. "Can't
make it good? Just make it hard." was the game
programmers axiom. Even if you thought you were good at a
game, don't try to go back and play it again today. Your memories
of kicking ass will be squelched by your apparent, newly founded
skill of suck. You'll be traumatized, you knew you could do
better, and you probably have. I have no theory as to why
skills of this ilk seem to deteriorate like a paper-towel
condom, they just do. Riding a bike is one thing, paying a
NES game is a whole 'nother story.
Knight
Rider, however, didn't take fourteen years of non-playment
for anyone to suck at it. I know I sucked at it right out
of the box, and so did many others unfortunate enough to stumble
across this cart of insanity.
The
box art makes it look like KITT is barely escaping an atomic
blast. Which is cool. Atomic blasts are always cool when they
don't happen to me. And I know I'm not alone on this. Remember
that restored "never-before-seen" U.S. atomic test
footage they were hocking on late night infomercials a few
years back? People bought that, probably because blowing shit
up is cool. But I digress. Another point of interest is that
under the "Knight Rider" text it says, "You
drive the Car from the Hit TV Series". Well gee, I would
have never of guessed.
I'm
going to say, though, that the game does not look bad. The
graphics are nice. As nice to say that the colors they used
aren't mind bendingly obscene like some other NES games.
Speaking
of nice, the first thing you see is the nice nice Acclaim
logo (those c's always looked like k's to me) and then the
hefty copyright and trademark text. Standard fair. Then we
get to the menu, with the big flashy Knight Rider
logo near the top of the screen. KITT then drives up with
what appears to be one David Hasselhoff. Hasselhoff, in turn,
reveals himself in all of his pixilated glory. Upon further
inspection, it appears that what actually exits out of KITT
is a skeleton, or at least a person with a skeleton face,
which would be a skull. It's all very frieghtening and I am
very happy I didn't realize this until now. I hated
skulls when I was small. HATE. Underneath KITT and
deadite-Hasselhoff is your menu. You've
got two different play modes, "Mission" and "Drive".
In
Drive mode, you've just got to drive to the finish line in
the time allotted and without running out of fuel, which is
incredibly difficult. On top of all that, you can't hit too
many other cars on the road or you'll lose your shields which,
apparently, is what holds KITT together. No bolts or other
conventional fastening devices of any kind. Just shields.
Once your shields are gone, it's game over man, game over.
Besides not dying your job is to drive a big circle around
the continental United States in around half an hour. KITT
tops out at around 250 speed units per time cycle, and who
really knows how fast that is? So I guess it's possible if
1 Knight Rider Speed Unit per time cycle equals approximately
1.6 trillion miles per hour.
In
Mission mode not only do you have to do the above, you've
got to not die while people are shooting at you. Fortunately
you can shoot back with your "Missles", "Lasers"
or "Gun". Before you get going though, Devon brings
you up to speed on the current situation, something about
terrorists and a bomb, I wasn't paying attention. I just wanted
to get out there and kick some ass. I also skipped the Machine
Check as well, which is where you can buy important things
to survive such as gas, shields, an engine, missles, and lasers.
After
you chat with Bonnie, the weapons expert extraordinaire, you
head out onto the interstate. From this game I've learned
that interstates are full of terrorists sons of bitches that
like to shoot round orbs of death at you. As a matter of fact,
the only reason I can think of as to why they're shooting
at you is because you're in this sweet car that looks just
too good to not cause them trouble down the road (oh yes,
that pun was definately intended). Now, if KITT were, say,
a Pontiac 5000, and I were, say, a terrorist son of a bitch,
I don't think I would shoot at it. It's just too crappy a
car to do any real damage and it looks about 412 percent less
conspicous. That's when you hit me-the terrorist son of a
bitch-with your "Laser" and "Gun" guns.
Take me, that muthatrucker - as Mikethesite
would say - by surprise.
Don't
worry, as hard as this game is, all is not lost. Occasionally
some car will come along a throw magical clouds at you which
in turn replenish your shields, gas, weapons or give you more
time. In drive mode, you've just got to pull up behind these
cars and they'll fling out the power-ups, while in Mission
mode you've gotta actually shoot them. They're pretty easy
to spot as they're yellow while all the other cars are either
red or blue (red being terrorist sons of bitches). There are
so many different ways to lose, not dying is about the hardest
damn thing to do in the world of Knight Rider the NES game,
ever.
In
the end, your goal is to get to the end of a segment of interstate
at which point KITT speeds up to a speed greater than the
rate the Earth travels around the Sun, hits the breaks, and
skids to stop with the word "GOAL" printed on the
screen. This signifies the end of that segment. Each mission
has 3 segments of pure fun. And by that I mean pure, agonizing
stress. You know it's almost futile. Unlike Tetris,
where you know you're going to end up losing at some point,
there is this uncertainty to your fate. There is a chance,
however slim, that you just might win a segment. I can't count
how many times I've ran out of gas and just coasted past the
finish line at which point KITT proceeded to accelerate, now
presumably powered on magic and rainbows, faster than the
Earth travels around the Sun.
I've
never beaten the game, and therefore probably shouldn't be
writing a review of it. But is there anyone that has beaten
this game legitimatly? I would like to know. Although, if
someone says they have, I would most likely call the a lier
outright and have them bludgeoned by big fucking rocks. I
have the power to do so. DO NOT DISBELIEVE IT!
DOWNLOAD
THE ROM!!*
BACK
TO NC |
