It’s not easy bein’ green

Nebulus is cute. It has a cute little character, Pogo, who lives in a cute little world populated by cute little hostile nasties, and cute little sound effects accompany Pogo’s jaunts to the top of cylindrical towers that, for whatever reason, our bipedal frog-like chum has decided to rid his world of.

Don’t let this fool you, because if ever there’s a game that’ll make you want to smash a joystick to pieces (or your Wii, if you’re playing on Virtual Console), this is the one. And that’s because this game is hard.

The premise is simple: climb to the top of each tower via a maze of stairs, lifts and collapsing platforms. Once atop a tower, Pogo demolishes it (presumably, they aren’t well built; either that or Pogo hides extremely powerful explosives up his bottom), and you get to relax for a few seconds by playing a bonus game that finds the wee green guy catching fish using a high-tech submarine.

One might wonder: if Pogo has access to such technology, why not just hire a spaceship and blow the towers to pieces? But if he did that, we wouldn’t have this game. Instead, you’re lumbered with creeping slowly up the towers, ever mindful of the tight time-limit and the fact that absolute precision is required to pass many of Pogo’s adversaries.

This would all be fine if the game was utter rubbish—it could then be cast aside and you could get on with playing something a mite less frustrating. But the fact is that even 21 years after Nebulus first arrived on the C64, it’s still annoyingly captivating. You’re sucked in by the disorientating manner in which the towers are navigated (unlike most platform games, there are no edges—instead, Pogo moves ‘around’ the towers, which rotate in real-time on the screen, an effect that was astonishing at the time and still looks pretty today) and the utterly devious puzzles. And when you finally demolish one of the structures, you feel a true sense of achievement. Just don’t expect to get very far until half your joysticks are in tiny pieces.

Nebulus is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (about £3.50), and the sedatives you’ll need to calm yourself down after a few games are probably available from your GP.

We’re functioning automatic. And are fully psychotic

Paradroid. If ever there’s a word to make a C64 fan feel all funny in their happy place, that’s the one. Andrew Braybrook’s game typically heads many best-of lists, and it’s just reared its head on Virtual Console. But can a pseudo-3D blaster from the mid-1980s still hold gamers in thrall in an age of 3D shooters with more polygons per character than hairs on Braybrook’s head? (And this bearing in mind Braybrook’s fairly bushy moustache at the time Paradroid was released.)

In a word: yes. I don’t use the word ‘classic’ lightly, but Paradroid is, undisputedly, a classic game, and one of the very few titles from the C64 years that truly holds up today.

Part shoot ’em up, part exploration game, and with a sprinkling of reaction-based puzzling, Paradroid tasks you with boarding a fleet of ships and blowing its cargo of amok droids to pieces. The snag: your ‘influence device’ is rubbish—sluggish, and with about as much firepower as a hedgehog. The plus side: for a limited time, said device can attach itself to any other droid, limpet-style, taking over its capabilities, enabling you to dish out robot justice with vigour.

In the hands of a lesser programmer, Paradroid would have been long-forgotten. But Braybrook’s innovative thinking and attention to detail ensured his creation a place in gaming history. The graphics were limited by the C64’s power, and so Braybrook avoided trying for anything vaguely ‘realistic’, instead creating a highly abstract aesthetic that’s reminiscent of a blueprint. Droids are distinguished by number alone, making instant identification effortless. And yet the game’s stylish simplicity still resonates.

Rather than provide a full-on top-down view, Braybrook also hit upon the idea of a pseduo-3D viewpoint. Your droid ‘knows’ the deck layouts, but can’t see around corners or through doors. Therefore, despite this overhead game having been written in 1985, its de-facto viewpoint mirrors the kind of 3D shoot ’em ups that didn’t really exist until Wolfenstein 3D yomped on in.

Also, battling to take over another droid is a game in itself—a fast-paced battle of wits, with you firing connections to take over the circuit board of your adversary’s brain. It’s a diversion from the main battle, and almost as much fun as the main game itself.

In an era where so many games are smashed into pigeon-holes, the Braybrook vision that’s so obvious in Paradroid is a breath of fresh air. The game’s combination of arcade reflexes, strategic overtones and quickfire puzzles all add up to one hell of a production. And while some will doubtless cite Paradroid’s fans as delusional nostalgics, they’re the ones missing out by not giving this great game a chance.

Paradroid is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (about £3.50), although its sprite-collision detection is a little ropey compared to the original game. Despite this niggle, you are officially lacking in the marbles department if you don’t buy a copy. Well, unless you don’t own a Wii, obv.

Or: The Penultimate Penultimate Ninja

Games these days often fall foul of the ‘gloss’ criticism—they’re very pretty, but peel away this superficial layer and they play about as well as a CD that’s been attacked by a knife-wielding maniac. But this isn’t new—in fact, even the odd 8-bit title suffered from this problem, and The Last Ninja is a case in point.

I remember the first time I played the isometric ninja ‘epic’, spurred on by reviewers falling over themselves to fawn over System 3 and heap awards and praise on the game itself. First impressions were good: the music was lovely, and the graphics were quite nice. However, as soon as I started playing, that creeping feeling set in, and I soon realised there was a slight problem: the game was rubbish. The environment was limited and the fights were borderline canned and extremely dull. Too many sections in the game demanded pixel-perfect jumps of the type Jet Set Willy had been slammed for a couple of years previously.

Two decades later and The Last Ninja has landed on Virtual Console with a splat, offering newcomers the chance to guide Armakuni (that’s the ninja) through a half-dozen or so tedious isometric levels, on his way to defeat the evil shogun, a process made even more hateful by the fact that the game’s even more fiddly to control on the Wii. The graphics aren’t that pretty these days either, but at least the music’s still good.

So: two stars for the excellent soundtrack, and minus fifty billion for the crappy controls and rubbish gameplay. Unfortunately, Revert to Saved’s rating system only goes down to 1/5, so that’ll have to do.

The Last Ninja is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish). Alternatively, hurl three pound coins and a 50-pence piece at a violent drunk and have him beat you up—you’ll have a much more satisfying experience.

The United Nations of sports simulations

Sometimes, you shouldn’t go back. Just as it’s painfully clear to older eyes that 1980s TV shows such as Knight Rider and Transformers were, in fact, rubbish, it’s a jolt when a much-revered old-time game stinks like a sewer in the cold, harsh light of the modern day. Sadly, that’s (almost) the case with World Games, an Epyx ‘classic’ originally released in 1986 for the Commodore 64 that’s recently stumbled on to Virtual Console.

Clearly running out of traditional sporting events after a slew of Olympic-inspired efforts, Epyx began culling sports from the bizarre end of the spectrum for World Games. Instead of running, jumping and swimming, there’s sumo wrestling, caber tossing and barrel jumping. Although variety is the spice of life, half of the eight events taste like soot, due to poor implementation (the barely playable slalom skiing), sluggish controls (log rolling, sumo wrestling), or just by virtue of being dull and unoriginal, even at the time (weightlifting).

It’s not all bad news—the game is peppered with cute animations and the barrel jumping, cliff diving and bull riding events offer some basic fun (and, fact fans, the bull-riding event is actually very easy if you can, say, hold a joystick and read instructions), although as standalone events for the single player, they’re still limited and throwaway. And so unless you have a copious number of friends and cans of beer to hand, World Games is unlikely to hold your interest for long.

World Games is available now on Virtual Console for 500 Wii points (£3.50ish), or for a fraction of that via eBay, if you fancy a copy of the original.