Good Nintentions

Hi! Welcome to the first episode of Good Nintentions, the full-color companion piece to Game Boy World. This series will serve as a chronological survey of the NES (the first year or two of its life, anyway), published less frequently than Game Boy World... basically, as the mood strikes me. The world's not really short on comprehensive surveys of the NES, so I don't expect this to be a particularly popular or well-received series—it's just something that seemed like it would be enjoyable, really.

Good Nintentions isn't just a survey of the NES; it's meant to be a history lesson that helps contextualize the place of these old game releases in the evolution of the medium. So while Tennis is not the kind of game that causes people to tear up with nostalgia 30 years later, it nevertheless holds a place of distinction in gaming history, as outlined here.

Here we have the first NES release that wasn't based on a sport... yet it's hardly a bastion of creativity. By 1984, when Pinball debuted on Famicom, pinball had established itself as one of the most popular subjects for video games. Pinball stood apart, though, due to its remarkable quality... thanks in large part to a pinch-hit assist from future Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.

A look back at Nintendo's Wild Gunman, the first-ever NES light gun game, and a shooter whose simple design belies its remarkable heritage. Best known in the U.S. for its faked-up cameo in Back to the Future Part II, Wild Gunman was to Japanese fans at the time the latest entry in a line of product evolution that stretched back more than a decade.

The game that convinced Nintendo that, yeah, bringing the NES to America would be a good idea arrives at last: Duck Hunt, the iconic shooting game. It's simplistic and goofy by today's standards, but Duck Hunt didn't succeed despite those traits... it succeeded BECAUSE of them. An intuitive, whimsical, dynamic shooting game that remains a beloved classic even now—and for good reason!

We continue our journey through Nintendo's October 1985 NES lineup with the first release that had notable impact on the rest of the industry: Golf. The most widely played and distributed golf sim to debut in 1984 (in Japan), Nintendo's take on the sport codified a number of elements that would become standard for the genre, most notably the swing power meter. It's 30 years old, but it's still a pretty fun take on the sport!

There's not a lot to say about 1985's third and final NES light gun shooter, so after a brief look into Hogan's Alley this episode digs a bit into how the sausage is made — both in terms of how the NES Zapper worked, and what it takes to get the best possible footage of its games.