Review: Rollerball is a fantastic NES game!

Rollerball is a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  My best friend (at the time) introduced me to this game sometime in the late 1990's or early 2000's.  Interestingly, I found that this game was first released for the MSX in 1984.   I'm not familiar with the MSX at all.  I was quite impressed by this game when I played it at my old best friend's house and it influenced me to get the rom at some point.  Early in 2020, I actually bought a physical copy of the game off eBay.  I got a great deal on it.  The game has no real objective to it.  The objective is to score as many points as possible.  That's pretty much it.  No quests, no bosses, none of that stuff found in Rollerball.  The premise of this game is quite simple.  This game is not talked about too much and I don't think it ends up on top lists of games for the NES.

This game was released in 1988 by HAL Laboratories, the same publisher that brought you The Adventures of Lolo and Kirby.  It seems like this game has been lost in the sands of time and it's a bit forgotten.  I certainly haven't forgotten this game!  There are two modes in this.  The first mode is Skyscraper.  In Skyscraper mode, 1-4 players can play.  It plays like a pinball machine you'd find at an arcade except it's emulated.  There's four levels on the emulated pinball machine.  On the highest level, you can rack up a lot of points.  The goal is to get up there as much as possible to rack up big points.  I have provided a video above to show you what the game is like.  No, that's not myself playing the game.  It was played by whoever from the World of Longplays YouTube channel.

The second mode is Match Play.  It is a 2 player mode where you and a 2nd player play at the same time.  Whoever scores the most points win.  The first player has an elephant and the second player has a donkey.  This is in the American version of the game.  Wait a second... so it's basically Republican vs. Democrat!  What was HAL thinking?!  Not a good idea whatsoever.  The Japanese version had a giraffe.  They should have kept the giraffe in!  So if you're a Republican, you're most likely going to be the first player.  Obvious if you're a Democrat, you'd wanna be the 2nd player.  I'm more of an independent, so it doesn't matter which side I choose if you face me in Match Play.

My only complaint about Rollerball is that you can't move the emulated pinball machine.  There are times where it would be quite helpful.  Besides that minor complaint, it's a fun game and one of the best games for the NES.  It is truly a hidden gem and it's too bad that it doesn't get that much praise.

Rating: 5/5.

Review: Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES) Was Not So Bad

Why in the world did Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SNES exist?!  Why didn't they release the first Street Fighter Alpha first?  I have no idea.  I've been a big fighting game fan for years and I played many fighting games growing up in the 1990's.  It is bizarre that they decided to make a port of this game for the SNES.  I was not too thrilled about this port at first.  It was also not published by Capcom, it was published by Nintendo.  Capcom was more focused on publishing games for CD-based consoles at the time.

This was one of the very few SNES games to be actually 32-bits.  That's right.  The SNES was not only capable of handling 16-bit games, it also was capable of handling 32-bit games.  I forgot about other 32-bit games for the SNES.  Oh, Donkey Kong Country?

The game is a bit choppy (especially the sound), but it's so close to being arcade perfect.  There is a little bit of loading issues in this game.  There is this noticeable pause after the announcer says "fight" before you fight.  One notable aspect of this game is the fact that it is the only non-Street Fighter II game in the Street Fighter series that was ever released on the SNES.  If I'm not mistaken, this was one of the final SNES games period.  This was released at a point in time where the SNES was just about an obsolete console.  Nintendo was focusing their time with the Nintendo 64.

I thought it wasn't so bad.  The graphics are quite sweet.  The sound is actually not bad either, if it wasn't choppy it'd be great.  Some sounds are missing, but that's fine.  This isn't my go to Street Fighter game for the SNES... that would be SF II: Turbo or even SF II: The World Warrior.  It played pretty well and I loved how it was kind of close to being arcade perfect.  Better than the arcade version or the PSX version, no.  I only played this game a few times.  Final verdict?  I'd give it a 3/5.