I did this a while back with NES games, and didn't feel like digging up the topic, but I felt like doing it again, in honor of my new gamepad.

Here's the set-up. I pick one SNES game for each letter of the alphabet. It has to be a game I've never played before. I play it for (at most) ten minutes, then I write up how I feel about it, and give it an arbitrary 1-10 ranking. Most of these were suggested by the chat room, probably because they hate me. But I tried to look for obscure games and bizarre titles, and I try to stay away from sports games, RPGs, and fighters (not because I don't like them, but because they're hard to sum up in 10 minutes without knowing the controls. Okay, I don't like sports games).

Here's the list:

Aero the Acro-Bat – I think it’s completely bizarre there’s a subgenre of video games called “rodent-based platforming”. Thank you, Sonic. Aero is a pretty boring collection-based platformer, and while the music didn’t quite work on the rom, the tune I heard at the start of it made me shudder, and I don’t think I could have taken much more of it anyways. 5/10

Bobby’s World. – Pretty basic platformer, but colorful and addicting. Probably a standard for what licensed games should be at a minimum: Make some sense to people familiar with the source, be appropriate for the target audience, make you curious as to what the next scene is, and not be completely stupid or boring. The use of the stuffed spider as a shield is a very nice touch. And is that Bobby flying around as a witch on the title screen? That boy ain’t right. 7.5/10

Claymates – Wow. A very colorful platform game with an interesting concept that sort of reminds me of Little Nemo …you’re a ball of clay that takes on new powers by copying clay animals. Very fun, very interesting, definitely one of those hidden sleeper gems I hope to find when I do these things. 9.5/10

Death and Return of Superman – It’s a Superman game, so the only piece of info you need is “Sidescrolling beat-em-up”. Because you already know it’s bad. Walk right, punch boring enemies, repeat until completely bored. Was way less than 10 minutes for me. 1/10

EVO: Search For Eden– Very interesting concept. Seems like the sort of game you could waste an afternoon just playing for the heck of it. Obviously didn’t get too much into it within 10 minutes, but it certainly hinted that there was a whole lot of game to go. I like it. 8/10

First Samurai – Had the graphics of a Genesis game (one of the ones that go for “realism”) and the controls of a Flash game. A good flash game, though. I didn’t get too far into it, but it was a pretty interesting side-scrolling beat-em-up that seemed to have a lot of tweaks and options in it. One thing, though…I’m not sure exactly how you can die. I wasn’t really able to. 7/10

GunForce – A boring “side-strolling” game. You know the type, the ones that want to be like Contra except they’re slow as heck and don’t have any decent powerups or any reason whatsoever to not actually be playing Contra. In fact, out of everything, it’s just the slow pace of the play that sticks out. 3/10

Harley’s Humongous Adventure – Not bad. You’re a little punk in a green suit with a rocket pack, and while the sound is annoying and your little dude looks absolutely silly…but hey, rocket pack. Plus, it’s the only game I’ve ever seen that gives you a quick “power-up” stage at the start…you have 45 seconds to grab as much stuff as you can. Cool concept. 7.5/10

Inspector Gadget – Kind of cool, you control Gadget with all of his nifty abilities and get to use them to cause some destruction instead of madcap bumbling. It’s not bad, particularly for a licensed game. But it’s just wrong somehow…I might have done a Lemmings style puzzle game where you control Brain and guide Gadget through the level. And it starts off with the worst plot in video game history: “Kidnap the nearest female, no matter how many times she’s proven herself to be far more competent than any males around”. Ugh. 6.5/10

Jim Power The Lost Dimension in 3D – Crap. Lame sidescrolling “stroll-and-gun” game where your hero looks retarded, your controls are lousy, one hit kills you, and there’s not any 3D anything anywhere. Catchy music keeps it from the bottom of the barrel. 2/10

Kirby Super Star – It’s just a collection of minigames, and to be honest I wasn’t too impressed with the ones I was able to try out in my time limit. The Spring Breeze remake of Kirby’s Dreamland isn’t as cool as you’d think it would be…copy-powers and the ability to convert enemies to your side detract rather than add to the game, and the game seems a lot shorter. Plus the controls are a bit wacky. But, hey, it’s Kirby. 6.5/10

Lester the Unlikely – Try Lester the Unlikeable. I don’t know who thought redoing Prince of Persia with a nerd as the hero was a good idea, but Lester has got to be the most irritating protagonist I’ve ever seen. He runs from enemies, stops at ledges, bitches and moans whenever I want him to do something even remotely dangerous…maybe the designers thought it was endearing, it’s just annoying. 3.5/10

Mickey Mania – Well, it’s nicely animated, and it looks like the premise is to take you back through old Mickey cartoons, which is neat. But I quickly reached the bane of all simple-looking platform games: The bottomless pit that’s too wide to jump across, but has no other apparent way to cross it. Can’t get excited when I can’t get to 98% of the game without a FAQ. 5/10

Nosferatu – Vampire of Persia? Too simplistic, the timer seems to be running too quickly for you to actually do anything, and right at the start of the second area there’s a crawl space, but nothing I do seems to make me crawl. Game didn’t look to exciting anyways. 2/10

Out to Lunch – A puzzle game where you go round up rogue food items and throw them into a cage. Yeah. Didn’t do much for me, but made me hungry. 5.5/10

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures – I don’t know what this shit is, but it sure as hell ain’t Pac-Man. I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be doing so I spent most of the time just pissing Pac-Man off. 3/10.

Q*Bert 3 – It’s fucking Q*Bert. Either you know the damn game, or you’re better off for not knowing. 1.5/10

Rex Ronan Experimental Surgeon – What’s the worst part about this game? It’s not the screeching static they try to pass off as music, or the ugly digitized graphics, or the completely and utterly STUPID storyline, or the inane gameplay, or the horrid controls, or even the insulting anti-smoking message. It’s that it’s such a good, good idea for a video game (the classic “body wars” concept), and they completely blew it. 1/10

Speed Racer – I will say they did throw in the special quirks of the car, like the jumping and stuff. Unfortunately, the car is uncontrollable, the graphics are ass, and the sound…well, you know it’s the same tune repeating because it pauses for a second before it repeats. Awful, and I’d say unplayable. I don’t think I completed one lap . 1/10

Toy Story – Solidly below average. Mission-based platforming is interesting but a bit too advanced for the target audience. Digitized graphics are bleh. Woody jumps like he’s got lead boots, and figuring out what you can jump on is a pain. No sound on the title screen sucks, couldn’t they have sprung for the song from the movie? And who the heck wants to play as Woody anyways? Where’s Buzz? 4/10

Uniracers – Meh. Seems like a cute sort of proto-Tony Hawk with all the tricks and such, and might have been more fun if that were the focus of the game rather than the very simplistic “racing”. Fun enough for 10 minutes, but probably not for 15. 5.5/10.

Virtual Soccer – No idea. It was a bad rom. And since there were no other eligible V games, I guess I have to skip it. ?/10

Warlock – I don’t know what to think of this one. It’s…okay, I mean, even with the digitized graphics and such, and it’s got a neat but useless gimmick in a magic orb that follows you and you get some limited control over it. But it just gives me the impression that there’s not a lot to the game. The illusion of depth rather than actual depth. 6/10

X-Men Mutant Apocalypse – 2-D Beat-em-ups are so boring anyways. This one is no different, and having to use Street Fighter like commands to activate your mutant powers is kind of…well, I don’t like it. Also don’t really like having individual stages designed for individual X-Men. Can’t I take Gambit and run wild through every stage? 4.5/10

Young Merlin – An isometric adventure/puzzle game that seemed kind of simplistic, but was able to hold my interest. Graphics were blah and reminds me of educational games (super-bright greens and yellows), but it was kind of fun. Hard to describe, but worth playing. 7.5/10

Zool – Shockingly enough, a half-decent collect-athon platformer. I have no idea why an alien ninja is spinning his way through some cake-themed world, that’s the kind of things manual-readers know. But the game’s pretty fun, and while the graphics and sound aren’t spectacular, they hold their own. 8/10

There you go. Feel free to disagree away, but remember, I limited myself to 10 minutes.

joshwoodzell wrote:

You didn't like Lester the Unlikely? I beat it and loved it. I really feel 10 minutes is a rotten amount of time to give a game that doesn't get good immediately in the first stage. Some games take a bit to get into, and 10 minutes just isn't enough.

I know. And some games lose their steam after the first 10 minutes. I'm aware of the limitations of the format.

I think it was mostly that I just fucking hated the protagonist, with all his bitching and moaning.

The whole damn point is it's a first and initial impression of the game. It's not supposed to be a fair and full review. Really.

Besides, this is meant to be a project that can be completed in an afternoon, and at 10 minutes a game, it already takes about 5 hours.

For the record, while I probably could have slogged through Lester, 10 minutes of Pac-Man 2 was about all I could stand.

Doddsino wrote:

Since I have a collection of over 200 NES games (with every letter of the Alphabet), I might actually try the same sort of review, if that's alright with Usasatsui

Feel free. I do remember my original topic getting a few people who did the same thing.

Blackout wrote:

Almost sorta done, but I might have to re do the letter X because you already did X-Men. Hey I'm gonna be posting this some other places, you OK with a credit for the original idea and a hyperlink to this topic?

Uh, no problem. I'm kind of curious who you've been cheating on us with, though.