Video games used to be a magical thing.
I’m not talking about Final Fantasy or any of those games that purport to use magic,
I’m talking about the technology itself.
You hook this box up to the television, plug in this big gray thing, and bam.
You’re playing tennis, right there in your living room.
And not just Pong, no, by gum, this thing has COLOR.
And you don’t even have to put clingfilm over the screen!
Here’s the problem, though.
Those days are kinda past.
We’re all too savvy for basic verisimilitude, well-executed as it may be.
If you haven’t noticed, this shot of Tennis - another of the NES launch titles...
well, it hasn’t changed.
Because this is all the gameplay there is.
Now, mind you, it’s well-executed, down to the timing of your swing determining the
ball’s trajectory, and all the actual rules of tennis are there.
Heck, you’ve even got Mario or some Mario-lookalike up there on the chair, if you need a face
at which to direct your John McEnroe-style rage.
But at the end of the day, it’s just a game of tennis, no more, no less.
You can select a difficulty, you can play singles or doubles, one or two players.
And then it’s just bouncing a ball over the net.
We can no longer see the novelty in such an exercise, unless it’s got Mario and Sega
franchises bundled in.
Unfortunately, however hard you squint, that opposing player is never going to look like
Ulala.
So let’s do ourselves a favor and combine some of these more simplistic NES titles into
one video.
The only force stronger than video games during their ascension in the 70’s and 80’s was
the Pinball table, famous in story and song.
Mostly the Tommy soundtrack.
Anyway, why plunk quarters into a machine when you could just buy Pinball for that shiny
new NES!
There’s all of... one table, and you can take turns with two players!
At least here, we have some interesting things to hit, and it makes noise!
There are seals, and penguins!
It’s like going to the zoo, right here in...
… alright, I can’t fake it anymore.
Yes, it’s Pinball, and it’s a mere step on our way toward later sensations like Kirby’s
Pinball Land, Metroid Pinball, The Pinball of the Dead, and that space pinball game that
was bundled with Windows 95 and everyone - I mean everyone - has played while trying to
look busy.
I realize that it takes skill and effort to truly understand a pinball table and how to
milk points out of it as optimally as possible...
but let’s not kid ourselves.
This is a mere representation of Pinball.
The ball itself is an illusion, a guess at best, and the physics...
well, this is an NES cart, after all.
Sometimes things happen in a way that would leave even Bill Nye guessing, as if the Hubble
suddenly fell out of space.
Still, there are plenty of things to do on this table, either lighting up this royal
flush on the lower screen here, or clearing these seven targets on the left that open
up a path on the right.
There’s a slot machine on the top screen, along with a progressive target, a ramp on
the left that triggers a bonus from the seals, and...
This weird Mario-kinda-breakout-save-Pauline-thing.
My, that’s a lot of hyphens.
For only being a couple years old, Mario sure got around back in the day.
Line judge, Pinball accoutrement, boxing referee... face it, no matter what the age of the game,
that is the hardest-working moustache in game business.