Bandai

September 1990

Action

1 Player

Listen up, youse mugs!  As hard as this may be to believe, Dick Tracy begins with an overhead view of the action that will remind you of the early Grand Theft Auto games.  You can even leave your police car to explore on foot, but it's much wiser to head to the nearest crime scene.  That's when the game turns into a side-scrolling platformer, packed with angry thugs.

Activision/Pack-In Video

January 1992

Action

1 Player

Die Hard goes to painstaking lengths to be faithful to the film, tightly integrating its storyline into the gameplay and showing stylish illustrations of the stars at key moments.  Even the dialogue is straight from the movie.  Unfortunately, so is the mindless action... you'll spend a lot of time frantically dodging bullets from the mobs of ruthless terrorists.

Bandai/Namco

December 1989

Action

1-2 Players

The sequel to the groundbreaking (heh) arcade game by Namco brings the action to a series of unstable islands.  Each island has fault lines which can be broken open with a jackhammer.  Any sections of land freed from the island sink into the nearby ocean, along with any Pookas, Fygars, and relatives of Mr. Driller who happen to be standing there.  Watch your step!

FAST FACT:  Dig Dug didn't get as much exposure on the NES as he deserved.  His first game was released for the Famicom (Japan's answer to the NES), but despite its high quality, it was never released in America.  His son, Susumu “Mr. Driller” Hori, was cheated out of his own shot at fame years later, when his best game, the GameCube title Mr. Driller Drill Land, was unreleased in the United States.

Milton Bradley/Rare

December 1990

Action

1 Player

Now here's an underground hit if ever I've seen one.  In Digger T. Rock, you're searching for treasure in a series of subterranian caverns.  The deep, dark tunnels are full of cranky creatures, but the terrain is just as perilous, with falling boulders scattered everywhere.  Crafty puzzles and a top-notch design make this one game you'll really dig.

Mindscape/Gray Matter

December 1990

Action

1 Player

Do you feel lucky, punk?  If so, you obviously haven't played this yet.  Mindscape should have known better than to make a video game out of a twenty year old action movie.  Dirty Harry on the NES is as stale as the source material... most of the time, you'll just wander aimlessly through back alleys and inside buildings, getting mercilessly beaten by the local thugs.

Nintendo

June 1986

Action

1-2 Players

The NES conversion of Donkey Kong comes closer to the real thing than any translation that had come before it, but there are still aggravating omissions that keep the game from reaching true arcade perfection.  You don't get bonuses for jumping over multiple barrels, there are fewer intermissions, and oh yeah, one of the levels was removed.  Not cool, Nintendo.

FAST FACT:  Everyone knows that Donkey Kong was Nintendo's first big hit, but not everyone realizes that it came about by chance.  Nintendo, once a producer of toys and playing cards, had originally planned to establish itself in arcades with a shooter named Radarscope.  When Radarscope bombed, Nintendo asked one of its designers to come up with a more original game.  His parody of King Kong saved the company!

Nintendo

June 1988

Shooter

1-2 Players

Left without an archenemy after Mario's departure to the sewers, Donkey Kong invades a nearby greenhouse, making life miserable for its owner, Sam.  Sam's only hope of protecting his prize flowers from the big ape and his swarms of bees is to spritz them with bug spray.  Donkey Kong 3's emphasis on shooting makes it a big departure from the previous games in the series.

Nintendo

October 1988

Action

1-2 Players

It's two, two, two less than perfect arcade translations in one package!  Nintendo could have made this a must-have if they had just added everything that was missing from the first NES conversions of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.  Unfortunately, the games are no closer to the arcade versions than when they were first released on seperate cartridges.