- Joined
- Apr 22, 2015
I was going to make a thread but fuck it. I had a bug up my ass to finally finish Wolverine on the NES.
I rented this POS from a Blockbuster when I was about 7. It seems like a good little game but you're introduced to the first quirk. As noted in the AVGN episode, when you hit Select to take out the claws you end up damaging yourself whenever you attack enemies... For whatever bizarro world reason. Did Marvel demand that using the claws hurts you? Did a guy on the dev team just not understand how Wolverine's powers worked? Then there's other issues like there's no post-hit invincibility so one enemy could drain all your life or most of it if you make one mistake. I couldn't make it past the 2nd or 3rd level as a kid.
But fear not. Game Genie codes. Romhacks. AIDS.
There's a romhack and a Game Genie code that disable the nonsense where using the claws hurts you. So you think "Okay, the most fundamental and obvious game design problem has been fixed. Maybe the game will be really good now?" No.
Constant enemies appearing just off screen already throwing bullshit at you where you have nanoseconds to jump out of the way.
A TON of fucking pain in the ass long jumps where you have to make the jump at the very edge of the platform or it's instant death.
There's a Berserker mode. Something never discussed in the AVGN episode and this is the AIDS right here. So every time you kill an enemy it fills the bar for Berserker Mode. This is not optional. This is not something you can toggle. It just automatically happens when the bar is filled. In Berserk Mode you flash red and attack randomly. The problem with Berserker Mode is pretty obvious but it gets worse, it makes jumping way harder because the random attacks will eat your input for a jump, and while you do have invincibility it does not mean you have invincibility against any instant death pit or spike or fire. So it's almost completely worthless and whenever it happens your best bet is to just stand somewhere safe and wait 30 seconds for the fucking thing to play out and go away.
By the time you get to level 5, assuming you're masochistic enough to get that far, this is when the game just decides to say fuck you, and it becomes like I Wanna Be the Guy. There's instant death fire pits everywhere and disappearing platforms that you have to memorize and if you fuck up that also leads to instant death. It is abundantly clear by now that this game was not intended to be completed. At least by kids. The masochism continues with more precise long jumps that need to be done correctly or you just die.
Limited continues as well.
The last level is unfinished. Just look at it:
There's no background unlike the rest of the levels and that purple thing that looks like a platform? That hurts you. I mean, at least it's not an instant kill?
Then you fight Magneto. And if you know anything about Magneto then you go into it expecting some kind of gimmick related to magnetism or something. Yes, it's the 8 bit era but they could still do something clever.
That thing above the force field randomly dumps boulders on you (no homo). So you think there's some kind of gimmick where you have to hit a control panel, or wait for something, or maybe you hit the boulders or destroy the machine? No. You just slash at the little force field for 2 seconds, then you hit Magneto 3 times and that's it. Enter cut scene:
WTF is that black and white thing? Domino? The other sprites look good but you never see these characters in the rest of the game. At first I thought that was it but you do fight Sabretooth in one of the shittiest final boss fights ever. The gimmick it has is okay, you just keep hitting him until he falls off a cliff. But it's handled poorly.
After all these years I finally beat this POS and it was not worth it.
I rented this POS from a Blockbuster when I was about 7. It seems like a good little game but you're introduced to the first quirk. As noted in the AVGN episode, when you hit Select to take out the claws you end up damaging yourself whenever you attack enemies... For whatever bizarro world reason. Did Marvel demand that using the claws hurts you? Did a guy on the dev team just not understand how Wolverine's powers worked? Then there's other issues like there's no post-hit invincibility so one enemy could drain all your life or most of it if you make one mistake. I couldn't make it past the 2nd or 3rd level as a kid.
But fear not. Game Genie codes. Romhacks. AIDS.
There's a romhack and a Game Genie code that disable the nonsense where using the claws hurts you. So you think "Okay, the most fundamental and obvious game design problem has been fixed. Maybe the game will be really good now?" No.
Constant enemies appearing just off screen already throwing bullshit at you where you have nanoseconds to jump out of the way.
A TON of fucking pain in the ass long jumps where you have to make the jump at the very edge of the platform or it's instant death.
There's a Berserker mode. Something never discussed in the AVGN episode and this is the AIDS right here. So every time you kill an enemy it fills the bar for Berserker Mode. This is not optional. This is not something you can toggle. It just automatically happens when the bar is filled. In Berserk Mode you flash red and attack randomly. The problem with Berserker Mode is pretty obvious but it gets worse, it makes jumping way harder because the random attacks will eat your input for a jump, and while you do have invincibility it does not mean you have invincibility against any instant death pit or spike or fire. So it's almost completely worthless and whenever it happens your best bet is to just stand somewhere safe and wait 30 seconds for the fucking thing to play out and go away.
By the time you get to level 5, assuming you're masochistic enough to get that far, this is when the game just decides to say fuck you, and it becomes like I Wanna Be the Guy. There's instant death fire pits everywhere and disappearing platforms that you have to memorize and if you fuck up that also leads to instant death. It is abundantly clear by now that this game was not intended to be completed. At least by kids. The masochism continues with more precise long jumps that need to be done correctly or you just die.
Limited continues as well.
The last level is unfinished. Just look at it:
There's no background unlike the rest of the levels and that purple thing that looks like a platform? That hurts you. I mean, at least it's not an instant kill?
Then you fight Magneto. And if you know anything about Magneto then you go into it expecting some kind of gimmick related to magnetism or something. Yes, it's the 8 bit era but they could still do something clever.
That thing above the force field randomly dumps boulders on you (no homo). So you think there's some kind of gimmick where you have to hit a control panel, or wait for something, or maybe you hit the boulders or destroy the machine? No. You just slash at the little force field for 2 seconds, then you hit Magneto 3 times and that's it. Enter cut scene:
WTF is that black and white thing? Domino? The other sprites look good but you never see these characters in the rest of the game. At first I thought that was it but you do fight Sabretooth in one of the shittiest final boss fights ever. The gimmick it has is okay, you just keep hitting him until he falls off a cliff. But it's handled poorly.
After all these years I finally beat this POS and it was not worth it.
