NinjaCulture

NES - KNIGHT RIDER REVIEW
A NinjaCulture review WITH DOWNLOAD!!!

by Andrew - April 15, 2003

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

Andrew
AIM: Terrahawk X
E-Mail: andrew@ninjacultr.com

LICK MY JESUS

Would you like to write an article for NinjaCulture? If so, send your submission(s) to andrew@ninjacultr.com and Nathan and I will take a look at it. Your article might just get posted!

*The ROM tends to not work with Nesticle
I played it fine using FCE Ultra

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