Menace Beach/Sunday Funday

[A Black Falcon]

I really don't know if it was worth it, but for some reason I actually just played through and finished this stupid thing...

Menace Beach, which is a part of the Maxi 15 NES collection I got a last week.

You may remember the game from AGVN's Bible Games 2 video here...

http://screwattack.com/AVGN/2008/BibleGames2


Menace Beach ... Yes, aka Sunday Funday, the horribly hard platformer on a skateboard mentioned in the AVGN's Bible Games video for example. It's... frustrating. The controls are so, so slippery, and you die randomly so many ways... bounced back by spring blocks, hit by enemies or random shots while on a balloon, bumped into a pit, because THAT jump block secretly bounces you down into the pit instead of into the air, etc, etc. It's such an annoying game...

Still, it does some interesting things. You can pick up items, which is vital at some points (for carrying a bomb over to where you have to try to blow up a sumo guy with it, for example). Now blowing up sumo guys with bombs (the only way to kill them) is very hard and frustrating, as you need to toss it and then just hope that he's in its range when it goes off (likely he won't be and you need to go back and try again), but it's somewhat different at least...

Also, you have infinite continues from the beginning of the level, there are only 12 levels, and the first half of the game isn't that hard, apart from some frustration in level two. Level 9 is by far the hardest one; that one took a LOT of frustration to get past, that's for sure. From beginning to end, it's just so, so hard...

Once I finally managed to get past it, though, level 10 wasn't too bad, and 11 only had one tricky part (with a jump too long to jump and with no balloon; I eventually just figured to to the 'floating jump' you do when you repeatedly hit jump in the air (or turn on turbo and hold the jump button... :)), getting as far as possible before dying. This worked and there was a continue point on the next platform... kind of annoying, though, that you seem to have to die to get past that (unless there's something I missed, which quite possible). Oh well... at least the last level wasn't very long. The final boss was kind of tricky, those rocks kill you instantly, but it's short. The final boss is a bit of a pain, but once you figure out how to hit him (use the rocks...), I eventually beat him. It definitely took a lot of tries, though. This is one game that I'd never get anywhere near the end of without infinite continues, that's for sure!

Oh, in classic NES fashion, the ending wasn't particularly rewarding. Oh well, I wasn't exactly expecting much. At least there is an ending scene and not just "END" on the screen and that's it or something. :)

[Geno]

I remember seeing the AVGN review of that game and its Biblical counterpart. "Who are all these atheists trying to keep me from going to church?!"

A typical shitty NES game ending would just be text reading "Conglaturation !!! You have completed a great game. And Prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes!" ~direct transcript from Ghostbusters for NES

[A Black Falcon]

Well, this game is American, so I'd hope for slightly better grammar at least... :)

There is a video of Menace Beach's awesome ending on Youtube, though, if you look it up. As I said it's something, but not much reward for the hours of frustration... oh well.

... On that note, one other problem with the game I didn't mention is the girl. You know, between some of the levels she says something to you, trying to make you come rescue her or something. However, she's really not very nice... she insults the hero constantly. She calls him useless, slow, nerd/dweeb/etc, she says that if you don't rescue her soon she won't go out with you, etc, etc... I don't remember them all, but it wasn't exactly the kind of thing that made me want to spend the effort to go rescue her, you know? Somewhat the opposite, really...

... Why did I beat it anyway? I was more than three quarters of the way by the time I hit the seriously hard level (level 9), so I didn't want to give up there... and because it's known as being hard, so it'd be awesome to actually finish it. I haven't beaten all that many NES games...

I remember seeing the AVGN review of that game and its Biblical counterpart. "Who are all these atheists trying to keep me from going to church?!" :lmao:

Maxi 15 only has the original version, Menace Beach, so I don't have the church version, just the original... other than the story scenes and altered graphics it's the same game, though. And anyway, isn't that as good a plot as just about anything on the NES? The 8-bit era wasn't exactly a high point for game storytelling, to say the least. :p

[Geno]

What about the one where you save the princess from a giant fire-breathing turtle? Yeah, scratch that. But the one where you save the princess from a... pig... thing... okay, yeah, you got me. :)