Golden Age (1990's)
ULTIMATE STUNTMAN
NES
Camerica 1992
 |
 |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Near the end of the NES' life cycle an unlicensed company called Camerica started making games with some kind of special chips that boosted the graphics capabilities of the NES to near 16 bit levels. Camerica was a forward thinking company that had a NES color portable in the works (unreleased.) You can spot these unlicensed Camerica cartridges by a little switch in the back which circumvented Nintendo's copy protection.
This game revolves around the usual Dirty Harry type going out to save his girlfriend, which in this case just happens to be somebody named Jenny Ackroyd. Why Jenny Ackroyd is so important is never really explained. Maybe Dan Ackroyd paid you all kinds of crazy money to get her back. The difference here is that instead of just walking from left to right in a straight line and killing people until you find her like every other game like this instead you get to drive around in a car once in a while.
For an unlicensed company Camerica managed to push the NES to new levels. The screenshots above don't really do this game justice. The cut scenes animate in the Ninja Gaiden style, with sprites flying in from the edges of the screen. The characters are large an detailed, animate smoothly and look great. They're comparable to 1st generation Genesis graphics except for the fact that they're limited to the NES color restrictions. Sound is a little better too, with lots of digitized effects.
The game itself is pretty so-so. You basically walk right to left and shoot people, jump up on platforms, etc, but the pacing of the levels doesn't get as dramatic as say Contra. It's just too slow moving. End level bosses are cool as they take up the entire screen. The 2nd level boss is like this huge octopus that attacks with independently animated tentacles and looks really cool. The driving levels are actually a lot better and compare to say Spy Hunter in terms of playability.
This game almost manages to capture a little of the personality that big name titles have but falls a little bit short. The game just doesn't do anything that sets it apart from other games in the genre besides looking cool. Half way into it you just get bored and stop caring, Jenny Ackroyd dies and the terrorists win because you turn the game off. It's one notch above your average side scroller. Good to own if you want to be amazed by what your NES can do.