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Tag Archives: NES

Retro Game Review: “Fox’s Peter Pan & The Pirates: The Revenge of Captain Hook” (NES)

Posted on April 24, 2023 by The Splintering Staff One comment

Today we’re going to look at Fox’s Peter Pan and the Pirates: The Revenge of Captain Hook, an action-platformer published by THQ (aka Toy Headquarters) for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. Developed by Equilibrium, Revenge of Captain Hook is based on the animated series of the same name that ran on Fox Kids’ Saturday morning cartoon rotation, Peter Pan and the Pirates. The game naturally

Retro Game Review: “Alien Syndrome” (NES, Festival of Dread Special)

Posted on October 24, 2022 by The Splintering Staff 2 comments

Welcome back to the Festival of Dread, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of all things inhuman and otherworldly. Halloween is mostly known for ghouls, goblins, and the like, but aliens are sometimes wrapped up in the festivities due to their often frightening portrayal in pop culture and – you know – their propensity for probing. If any representation of space aliens

Retro Puzzler “Roniu’s Tale” Now Available for NES

Posted on August 29, 2022 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

Over the weekend, homebrew game publisher Mega Cat Studios announced that an all-new retro-styled puzzle game Roniu’s Tale is now available for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Developed by Kunjee Studio, Roniu’s Tale is inspired by adventure/puzzlers of the 1980s such as Solomon’s Key and The Adventures of Lolo. Here’s the official breakdown of Roniu’s Tale from Mega Cat Studios:

Retro Game Review: “3-D Worldrunner” (NES, 80s August Special)

Posted on August 17, 2022 by The Splintering Staff Leave a comment

Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since bacon. Today, we’re going to take a look at The 3-D Battles of Worldrunner (aka 3-D Worldrunner), a game published by Acclaim for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987. Developed by Square before they started making good Final Fantasy games, then bad ones, then good ones

Retro Game Review: “RoboCop” (NES, 80s August Special)

Posted on August 1, 2022 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the breakup of Pangea! Since the original RoboCop film was released in July 1987, that makes this year an anniversary of sorts. To celebrate, we’re going to pick apart RoboCop for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Published by Data East in 1989, RoboCop is for NES

Memories in Green: Playing the NES With a 1990s CRT Screen (Monochrome May Special)

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

Welcome back to Monochrome May, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of all things chromatically-challenged. In the early 90s, my parents acquired our family’s first computer. We picked it up second-hand, so it’s fair to say that it was not state-of-the-art, even by the standards of the time. But what is most important for the purpose of this story, is that it came

Retro Review: “Fester’s Quest” (NES, Festival of Dread Special)

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

The game really isn’t all bad, I simply find Fester’s Quest to be “not very good.”

Retro Review: “Karate Champ” (NES, 80s August Special)

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since the first belly dance! Today we’re going to take a look at Karate Champ, a one-on-one martial arts fighting game released by Data East on the Nintendo NES. So how does one of the earliest fighting games hold out? Based on the 1984 arcade game by

Retro Review: “Knight Rider” (NES, 80s August Special)

Posted on August 11, 2021 by R Leave a comment

Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since orange met chicken. Today we’re going to do a full detail on Knight Rider, the 1988 Nintendo (NES) game developed by Pack-In-Video Co. and published by Acclaim. And at the mention of the name “Acclaim”, I know that there are eyes rolling and stomachs churning. Does

Retro Review: “Airwolf” (NES, Attack Helicopter Week Special)

Posted on July 20, 2021 by R 2 comments

Welcome back to Attack Helicopter Week here at The Splintering, where we celebrate all things attack helicopter, whether good or bad! And today we have “bad” in spades, folks, as we’ve chosen to subject ourselves to critiquing Airwolf published by… Acclaim. (*Shudder!*) So everyone find your seat, buckle up, and keep your hands close to yourself, because it’s going to

Retro Review: “Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves” (NES)

Posted on June 13, 2021 by Blake Worrell 3 comments

On 13 June 1991, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves landed in movie theaters. The film would become a remarkable success, and the music would become a high school dance staple for years to come. I’m not even ashamed to admit that I probably considered it to be my favorite movie, at least until I remembered that I lived in world

Greatest Levels in Gaming: “Kirby’s Adventure” (NES, Monochrome May Special)

Posted on May 31, 2021 by The Splintering Staff One comment

Welcome back to The Splintering’s Monochrome May event! Today we’re introducing what may become a new feature: Greatest Levels in Gaming, starting with one of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s last, but most cherished games. Before we kick this off, if you have any concerns about spoiling a 30-year old game, then you might want to avoid this retrospective. Then again,

Retro Review: “Home Alone” (NES, Jolly Jinglings Special)

Posted on December 14, 2020 by Blake Worrell 2 comments

Welcome back to Jolly Jinglings, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of all things merry and bright! The original Home Alone film was released during the holiday season of 1990, making this year an anniversary of sorts. So what better time to take a look at one of the video games inspired by the classic feature film? For those too young to

Retro Review: Tiger Heli – NES (Attack Helicopter Week Special)

Posted on August 18, 2020 by Blake Worrell 4 comments

Welcome back to Attack Helicopter Week here at The Splintering! Today, we’re going to feature an old-school shooter close to my heart, Tiger Heli! When my family first got an NES, it was a Christmas gift from my aunt and uncle. With it, we received three, non-Mario related games: Rad Racer, Hogan’s Alley, and Tiger Heli. Nice spread, right? That

“Capcom Super-8 Collection” coming to Switch, includes Little Nemo, 1942, Strider, Bionic Commando and more

Posted on April 1, 2020 by The Splintering Staff 7 comments

On Wednesday, Capcom announced that a new collection of its 8-bit NES titles will be coming this summer to the Nintendo Switch in the form of the Capcom Super-8 Collection.

Review: “Choplifter!” – Famicom (Attack Helicopter Week special)

Posted on July 29, 2019 by Blake Worrell 2 comments

Welcome to Attack Helicopter Week here at The Splintering! How about kicking things off with a lesser-known, retro import? Grab your yoke and pop in your earplugs, because today we’re picking apart Choplifter! for the Nintendo Famicom. Choplifter! is a unique title as it started as an Apple II game and was later ported to the arcades. The Famicom version

Is Bandai Namco’s mysterious “Rad” actually a revival of 90’s NES platformer “Totally Rad”?

Posted on January 29, 2019 by The Splintering Staff Leave a comment

Bandai Namco recently trademarked several logos in the United States prominently featuring the word “rad”. Check them out for yourself below. As Gematsu points out, the logos feature fallout shelter and mushroom cloud imagery, suggesting that Rad may refer to “radiation.” Pfffft! Thanks for the expert analysis guys, but if you’ll allow us to speculate wildly for just a sec,

Maybe us old codgers should calm down about “Duck Hunt” and try reading a book

Posted on September 19, 2018 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

Comedian Seth Rogen lit a small Internet fire this week when he took to Twitter and “revealed” a relatively unknown feature of Duck Hunt on the original NES. The world was stunned to learn that the onscreen ducks could actually be controlled by a second player. This revelation came as a shock to many, as I couldn’t even count how

Polymega releases several Saturn gameplay videos after launch trailer raises questions

Posted on September 17, 2018 by Blake Worrell 2 comments

Earlier in September, Polymega released a launch trailer for their upcoming clone console. As part of that reveal, they also announced that the Polymega would support SEGA Saturn software. This produced a lot of smiles but also raised a few eyebrows, as skeptical retro gamers are well aware of how difficult the Saturn’s hardware is to emulate. To add fuel

Polymega announces SEGA Saturn support; clarifies video footage error (updated)

Posted on September 8, 2018 by Blake Worrell One comment

There’s certainly no shortage of clone consoles out there for retro gaming enthusiasts to choose from. What sets the Polymega apart from other multi-console systems such as the Retron 5 or the Retro Freak is that the base model Polymega is designed to play CD-based games, including those from the SEGA CD, PlayStation 1, Neo Geo CD, and the TurboGrafx-CD.

Bloodstained retro-themed spinoff revealed at BitSummit

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

This past week at BitSummit, Inti Creates debuted a trailer for Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, a retro-inspired, supernatural side-scrolling action game set to arrive on May 24. Curse of the Moon comes as a bonus release to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015. One of the promised stretch goals for the Ritual

New Neo Geo Mini details leaked, but questions remain

Posted on May 5, 2018 by Blake Worrell Leave a comment

SNK Japan teased in April that they had something special to announce for the 40th anniversary of the SNK brand. On Friday, the YouTube channel Spawn Wave shared some leaked details of a Neo Geo Mini arcade console, including images of the device, its controllers, and a full list of games built-in. Spawn Wave wisely noted that these details were