Obscure Title Tuesday presents- Anticipation for the NES! Or, as I like to call it: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
This may be as obscure as it gets! This little ditty, unsurprisingly for the NES, is probably so obscure because it’s just a game of Pictionary. That’s it. There’s a board you go around, and each color space on the board is a different category, like letters, clothing, food, etc. Wooo!
The entire game play is: you see dots on the screen, and then, as time runs out, the game starts connecting the dots with a pen, drawing in lines here and there. When you think you know the answer, buzz in and, one painstaking letter at a time, spell out what you think is being drawn as the picture. (Gah you need to know how to spell. I can’t tell you how many times I yelled at the screen: It’s a Friggan Xylaphone! The thing marching bands have!! Xylafone!!! Xylaphoooone!!!! *timer runs out* *sadly, to self* zylaphone.) Also sometimes the answer is so long it’s hard to spell out the answer before time runs out, given the awkward slippery letter choosing system.
......Those Dippin' Dots Ice Cream?
Once you get all 4 colors, you move up to the next level. There are 3 levels total. Get past the third level and you WIN!!!! There’s a few different difficulty settings for the computer players. *Yawn*
I’m not gonna lie, I’m mailing in this review by doing Anticipation. I always knew I was gonna do it because it’s so obscure, but, there’s absolutely nothing to say about it. No jokes to be made. They made an entire NES game about connect the dots. It’s Meh. The game is Meh.
"Hat."
Ooooh, actually, HERE’S how you know a game’s crappy: The box art has no cartoon character, or recognizable character, or anything extraordinary, or even gripping. The box art for this game is literally real, no-name actors being normal people playing what I can only assume, but I have no guarantee is, this video game.
The 80's
The only other example of a game that is so bad it has a no-name actor doing something normal is that game Razor Scooter 64 for the Nintendo 64. You guys remember thaat? The box art was like, a 12 year old on a razor scooter. That was it! I want my box art to have either a cartoon, or a sword, or a gun, or a Plumber, or a woman in a space suit, or an Italian -- NOT an actor you hired to take a picture of themselves doing something that they can do in their everyday clothes. Even worse, the family in this box art is playing the game itself WHICH YOU CANNOT SEE!!!!
They don't even show the television!
Gah, that’s bad. Can you imagine? Its so bad, they won’t even let you see the television on which they are playing the game; it is so bad, you are to know nothing about the gameplay or nature of this game until after you’ve bought it. It’s a family, looking engaged, gathered round what I’m guessing is a television playing what is impliedly this game. And that could be the box art for ANYTHING. In not showing the product itself, just a happy family doing something you assume is this game, that could be the marketing for any product ever. Certainly any video game or movie or television series… just have someone on the movie box art looking at a television screen happily. But also, for any other product, you could market it this way. Because the box art doesn’t... you wouldn’t know... it’s not... you could have a microwave, and the art on the box is a smiling family LOOKING like they just ate something.
So wait......which one farted?
I’m not done. The box art has EIGHT FRIGGIN’ PEOPLE ON IT! How many controllers fit in a regular Nintendo Entertainment System? It’s less then 3. The game itself had a max of 4 people! I would be misled, seeing this box art, because I would know nothing about the game itself and therefore would infer the only logical conclusion: 8 people can play this game at the same time. Which is not unreasonable because the tagline is ‘Nintendo’s first video board game’ and many board games, like Monopoly, can have up to 8 players. LIARS!
LIAR!
It’s a meh game and that’s all there is to it. The music is meant to be quick, short and catchy, games go by quickly, and the only thing good that I can think of to say about it is that it would be an acceptable way to pass 20 minutes if there was nothing on television because of another writers-strike and the internet hadn't been invented yet. Otherwise, no need. To quote Norm MacDonald: “I Bet ‘Board’ is spelled ‘B-o-r-e-d." Thanks, Norm. If you were a Video Game, you would get a 5.
2.5/5 It’s Not That it Sucks, it’s That This Person Wants to Give You a High Five:
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