Ultra

March 1990

Sports

1-2 Players

Jack Nicklaus (who looks almost as creepy here as Jack Nicholsen did in Batman!) invites you to challenge eighteen of his favorite real-life golf holes in this adaptation of the popular computer game.  Compared to other NES golf games, this one is average, with an interface that takes time to learn and chunky graphics that take even more time to draw.

Konami

September 1988

Shooter

1 Player

Things get intense when you're sent into enemy territory to rescue your fellow soldiers in this fun conversion of the arcade game Top Gunner.  Rather than marching in on foot or driving a clumsy tank, you take a jeep into the warzone, gunning down enemy officers and breaking open their P.O.W. camps with grenades.  A driving musical score makes this great game even better.

Hudson

December 1990

Action

1 Player

Don't be fooled by the title... you'll find a lot more action than kung fu in this game.  Sure, the crown prince of martial arts comedy gets to kick and punch, but the emphasis here is on jumping to platforms and over pits filled with spikes.  Large, humorously drawn characters and solid gameplay make up for the designers' failure to capture the atmosphere of Jackie's films.

T*HQ

November 1992

Action

1 Player

You just had to expect frisky secret agent James Bond to have a son after all those romantic encounters with those female operatives.  Actually, Junior here is James Bond's nephew, following in his uncle's footsteps by foiling villains and disarming bombs.  Like many early European games, the graphics in James Bond Jr. are stylish, but the gameplay is unforgiving.

LJN

November 1987

Action

1 Player

Will Jaws EVER die?  Not in the movies, and certainly not in his game.  You'll hunt the great white shark in your humble sailboat, occasionally taking time out to harpoon less threatening sealife and using their shells as currency to buy shark-hunting equipment.  Jaws' uncanny ability to survive anything short of a nuclear blast makes the game kind of pointless.

GameTek/Rare

September 1988

Game Show

1-3 Players

This... is... Jeopardy!  The game show that demands encyclopedic knowledge from its contestants can now be played at home, no matter how smart you, well, aren't.  Jeopardy! works pretty well on the NES, with simple but attractive graphics accurately reproducing the set of the show and a large selection of well written questions (or should I say answers?).

LJN/Rare

June 1990

Game Show

1-3 Players

This special edition of Jeopardy! isn't much different from the first game... all the contestants look younger, and of course there's a new batch of questions and answers, but past that, it's the same experience.  It's a shame that Rare didn't take this opportunity to improve the graphics or tone down the annoying music that plays whenever you hit your buzzer.

GameTek/Rare

October 1989

Game Show

1-3 Players

Jeopardy! Junior is the same as the other two games on the NES, but with a younger cast and dumbed down questions for the shorties.  You'll answer a lot of trivia about childrens' entertainment from the 80's, like the secret identity of She-Ra and the author of the Peanuts comic strip.  Some questions are so easy that they actually reference parts of the answers!