3 BAD Games from Sunsoft

Sunsoft is known for its quality games, usually, but I found some that are less than stellar. Let's take a look at three bad games from Sunsoft. Enjoy!

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#badgames #nes #retrogaming

[GeminiSaint]

The European version of Fester's Quest actually fixed the game (shots go through walls, and all enemies have less HP).

[iamweasel]

Festers Quest is one of those games I want to like, but the frustrating mechanics of it all make me give up after a few minutes

[robertgolden]

Xenophobe is a great game. Most of the items you pick up are for points only. You advance levels by clearing out the enemies. And the bottom screen is for player 2. The arcade game had 3 players.

[michaelsasse]

The Nintendo Power article on Platoon suggested making a map. I think drawing out a map while being attacked relentlessly would have been comical. But that's the way we rolled back then for a lot of 8-bit games! Thank you built-in maps!

[sfighter]

True story, back when I was still in Elementary School, my local "K-Mart" (which is gone now) used to sell used NES games, and "Fester's Quest" was one of them. When I got it and played it, it was a slog. While it had nice graphics for the time, the game was tedious as all hell, I don't think I've ever made it to the first boss. Not one of "Sunsoft's" worst, but definitely not one of their good ones.

[cryomancerX]

there's a patch or two out there that can make fester's quest a whole lot more enjoyable. i played through it with those sometime in the past year or so and had a decent time. certainly an improvement over the stock game.

[roguerifter]

I enjoyed Fester's Quest. Dad liked the Adams family a lot so one of his friends who mom and dad were getting me an NES for Christmas in 89 bought him a copy of this game. I remember having a lot of fun with it when I was a kid.

[silvore]

I love that Fester's quest is one of my dad's favorite games on the NES because he is the only person that I've ever heard of that actually likes the game, and that includes me not caring for it that much to.

[sonicmario]

I actually consider "Blaster Master" to be a bad game on the NES due to how long it takes to beat the game on a single setting as well as how frustratingly hard many of the boss fights can be, especially since I have yet to beat the first boss on my own, and it also doesn't help that the player's weapon energy gets lower whenever you take damage, making it rather difficult to regain power again.

[PatrickMoore-ywlu]

I wouldn't mind Erin tackle bad Capcom games on various systems. Yes, maybe Capcom had some stinkers in their broad library of great games, but it would make a great video.

[sangbeta]

Some good (bad?) picks here. Fester's Quest is like what if we made a game with the parts of Blaster Master that players didn't like!

[guilty-of-being-right]

Listening 2 Erin's voice, explaining these cool old school games, is soothing to my soul. Very relaxing. 😊

[retrogamingknight]

The items like coffee in Xenophobe just increase your health automatically. For the bomb you throw it by pressing Down and A when already crouching. Some of the items only give you points though. These weren't the worst of Sunsoft's games, when they started outsourcing to western developers in the 90s, that's when they really went downhill.

[stncldrwg]

Data East would be a good one. They made a lot of subpar NES games IMO.

[ken_danerdiest]

In the 8-bit version of Xenophobe, you can't break 1M. When I first played in the summer of '89, I maxed out the score at 999, 990 and couldn't break 1M.

[theironfox]

Xenophobe was a two player game on the NES. It was split screen. The arcade split the screen in 3 for 3 players.

[Striderx]

my dad got me Platoon from a pawn shop when i was a kid. didnt have a manual and oh yeah it was pretty confusing and hard. only had 4 levels i believe but they were extremely long and hard. though i did like the 3rd level where it was a shooting range of sorts. i remember i was so happy i finally beat it, i took a picture with a film camera on the "the end" screen.

[Doppelganger]

Thought it was neat that the (last?) health upgrade you can find in Fester's Quest is inside the Addams Family mansion if you find the hidden path to it. You get a NES shot of the family, as well. Nice little detail.

[DoorsInTheLabyrinth]

I had Fester and Platoon as a kid! Fester I wasn't super crazy about, but I did finish it, mostly out of stubbornness. It was not worth the effort, and it took years before I found anyone else who had finished it. As you mentioned, an autofire controller was a must.

Platoon I actually really liked, but oddly never finished. I could never quite figure out the fourth stage. Once you finish the jungle maze, you get a gallery shooter stage with enemies coming towards you, and a limited number of flares to light it up. Once you got used to it, you could usually shoot them without the flares. The third stage was a first person tunnel maze, and that was super cool for the time. I could consistently get to the last stage, but at that point, well, who knows.

[jamierose]

So on Xenophobe items: The vast majority of them are bonus objects that you get points from when you clear the stage. The useful items are the laser gun which is better than the gun you start with, the key which can be used to pause the self destruct timer and the glowing ball which felt like it dropped completely at random but picking it up ends the stage successfully. In the arcade game you win a stage by clearing all the xenos or activating the self-destruct mechanism, the former gets you a bigger bonus. It's one of the worst arcade ports I've ever seen.