Fuck.
He's gonna take you back to the past
To play the shitty games that suck ass
He'd rather have...
A buffalo...
Take a diarrhea dump in his ear
He'd rather eat...
The rotten asshole...
Of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer
He's the angriest gamer you've ever heard
He's the Angry Nintendo Nerd
He's the Angry Atari-Sega Nerd
He's the Angry Video Game Nerd!
I fuckin' HATE this game. And to begin with, I didn't really expect much.
Milon's Secret Castle.
If you don't know who Milon is... well, he's the guy from... Milon's Secret Castle.
It's a humble game. It's not Mario, or Mega Man, or Michael Jackson. It's just "Milon".
Or "Millen", or "Meelon"... whatever, who cares.
So it may not be one of the most famous NES titles that *everybody* owned in their collection.
No - this was the kind of game you rent from the video store one weekend,
you play it for about five minutes, you get stuck, and then... your whole weekend is wasted.
It's disappointing, because this looks like an OK game.
It's just a side-scroller where you're tryin' to rescue a princess. Basic stuff.
The first thing that bugs me is the weapon. Why bubbles?
Why not a sword, or magic lightning bolts, or fireballs, or a gun, or undefined pixelized pieces of shit - fuckin' anything but bubbles!
What - is this game for little girls?! Besides, they suck.
They have a short range, and they always point up at an angle, making it hard to hit their mark,
unless you hold the D-Pad in a weird way. It's hard to explain.
The control isn't the worst I've experienced, but it feels stiff.
As soon as you release the D-Pad, Milon stops dead in his tracks.
He doesn't gain momentum the way Mario does, for example.
So, less than 30 seconds into the game, you come to a point where you can't go any further.
You can jump, jump, jump 'til the cows come home - you will NOT get up there.
That's when you either shut the game off, or discover that you can use bubbles to break open stones. There you go.
You also have to break stones to find money, keys, doors... everything.
Literally. NOTHING is in plain sight.
But the real annoying part - you can't tell which stones can be broken, and which ones can't.
In a good game like Zelda, there's always a crack in the wall, givin' you indication that there's something there.
But in a bad game like this, you have no choice but to just blindly shoot bubbles at everything you see.
And you know what that's like. Yeah, you do.
That's like in Simon's Quest, where you have to throw holy water at everything. What's the point?
There's NO thought process. You're just blastin' away blocks.
The same way the game's blasting away all your fuckin' brain cells.
But even then, it doesn't take much longer to find out that you're stuck.
I'm gonna give you a little tour. Here's the first part of the game.
You could explore the whole outside of the castle, but you can't go up to the second level yet.
For now, all you have is three doors, and a window.
The first door leads to a room that has nothing interesting.
The only thing interesting here, is an area with a bunch of money.
But how the hell do you get over there? It's like the game is deliberately taunting you!
"Hey, you want that money, don't ya? You want that money - yeah, you want that money, you want that money?
Yeah, well, fuck you - you can't have it!"
So, you blast a bunch of blocks, find a key, and then make a door appear by shooting into thin air.
So, you use the key to go in the door, and after all that trouble, where does it lead you?
Back out the same door you came in.
So, the whole point of that first door... is...
...a complete waste of fuckin' time.
The second door is a shop. There's only one item for sale: Shrink Potion.
"Shrink when you touch the glove". What glove?
Oh, this glove? A fuckin' boxing glove that makes you shrink? Sure, whatever.
Then he also gives you hints, like "A crystal has mysterious powers".
And "Find a saw".
Okay, so how does that help me? Now I know I'm looking for a saw?
Obviously, if I find something that resembles a saw, I'm gonna get it anyway.
Then we go in the window. Here, there's just an empty room.
There's nothing except for a door. And you can't go in the door... of course.
Is it locked? Do I need a key?
The game doesn't even have the courtesy to let you know. A little message would be nice!
The third and final door leads to another room.
I'd like to point out here, that once you enter a room, you can't go back out.
So basically, you're trapped, and have no choice but to persevere.
You *gotta* find the door.
It's mindless enough that you have to shoot bubbles into thin air for the door to appear, but look how specific it has to be!
I shoot the bubble, right where the door is. Nothing happens. I gotta shoot just one space above it.
As long as the bubble goes *where* the door is, why does it matter?!
But even then, the door's locked, so you gotta find the key.
Even if you know where the key is, making it appear is another story.
I know it's there; why doesn't it show itself?
If I wander away and goof around a little more, I'll come back, and there it is. I STILL don't understand how to make the key appear.
Basically, what the game is telling me: "In order to get the door *and* key, you just gotta waste enough time."
Then where's the door lead? Right back out the same fuckin' door I came in.
Well, if the whole objective of that room is just finding your way back out,
why couldn't the exit just be where I started, to save all the trouble?
Everything is a dead end.
How did they design a game, where all you have are two doors that lead to rooms that lead back to the same doors?
It's a maze that has no end.
So that's when you need... the power. Nintendo Power!
It's like, "You wanna know how to beat the game? Well, you gotta buy our magazine, you dumb little shits!"
This is the Classified Information section. Usually, this is all about cheats.
"Golgo 13: Stage Select". "Spy Hunter: Start with All Weapons".
"Wizards & Warriors: Bypass the Wizard". "Mario 2: Short Cuts to Birdo".
"Milon's Secret Castle: Getting Started"?!
That's not a cheat! That's just how to play the fuckin' game!
The basic rules of the game NEEDED Nintendo Power.
THAT... is some FUCK!
So here's the deal. That empty room? You gotta fight a demon.
The demon doesn't appear until you get the Spring Shoes, which will also help with those hard-to-reach places.
But where do you get the Spring Shoes? First, you shoot out these blocks.
Then, you push the one block that doesn't break. That alone is almost impossible to find out.
At first, you don't realize that you're able to push the block, because it takes like three seconds to happen.
And it doesn't look like Milon's pushing, he's just running against it.
But that's not all. Then you have to shoot the empty space where the block used to be.
A secret door appears, and in there, you can buy the Spring Shoes.
How can it be a secret if it's something you absolutely need to do in order to advance with the game?
You gotta explore every last inch of the whole castle.
If you break it down to every space that could possibly be a hidden door, that's about 240 spaces per screen.
And if you count all the blocks that could be in need of moving, let's say 120.
And it's roughly 4 screens per room.
That's a total of 2,880 bubbles you gotta throw just to get through the first level of the castle. Wow.
So, once you have all the items you need, you go back to that empty room, and now there's the first boss.
This is when you start to realize how fast your energy can be drained.
In most games, when you get hit, you blink, becoming immune to damage for a brief time.
But in this game, you can be killed almost instantly.
When you beat the boss, an orb comes down.
What is this, Castlevania? Do I gotta throw an Oak Stake at it?
So then you advance to the second level of the castle. Here, the mystery and confusion only accelerates.
There's a well that's totally dark, and a room that's full of deadly fire.
You never know where you're supposed to go first. So, what do we do? Get the power.
In this issue, there's a section in Counselors' Corner, where gamers' questions are answered.
Why Counselors' Corner? Because you're gonna *need* counselling after you're done with this shit!
All right, so let's see what it has to say.
What the hell?!
I was just standing outside the castle, minding my own business, when... lightning bolts start comin' down.
Isn't this supposed to be the safe spot?
Imagine if any other game had that, if you're like on the overworld or map screen, and then all of a sudden, shit starts attacking.
At least it has a pause feature.
So you need a Lantern to go through the dark room. You need a Fireproof Vest to get through the fire room.
You gotta go through secret walls, some of which require shrinking in size.
Now I'm *really* losing my patience. This princess can go fuck herself.
So here's the second boss. Looks like a giant turd that's been run over by a steamroller.
Alright, come on, you piece of shit!
Aw, fuck. I'm dead.
What? The title screen?
Oh, come on, you gotta be able to continue.
What?
You go back to the beginning?
No... continues?
No... extra lives?
What is this?! You die one time, you go back to the beginning of the game?
THAT is the greatest offense to the world of gaming!
And you don't even start with full energy. Like, at least have one or the other!
There's gotta be a code. Let's check this out.
So, there IS a continue code: hold Left and push Start.
Well, that's really simple! But if you didn't know that, you'd be screwed!
Milon's Secret Castle. More like Milon's SHITTY ASSHOLE!
Looks like it COULD have been a good game, but instead, they were just fuckin' jerkin' off!
I can't believe Hudson put their brand name all over this.
You can find the Hudson Bee, and there's letters that spell Hudson.
So I guess by sneaking their name in here so much, they must have been *really* proud of this game.
And so am I, because it killed more brain cells than I could possibly imagine.
The whole game is based on secrets.
But there's a difference between secret... and just fuckin' IMPOSSIBLE!
FUCK THIS GAME!!
(whoosh, explosion)