#48 Adventure Island (1988)
Platform: NES
Developer/Publisher: Hudson Soft
In a Nutshell: A drunk, sunburned college kid in the Bahamas wanders off the beach and into the forest to throw handmade axes at snails.
Brian M. says: This remake-in-all-but-name of Sega's Wonder Boy is relatively simple in form, but makes up for it with its WTF-fun factor. It's perfect for an afternoon of brainless button-mashing, and ups the hardcore appeal by introducing a skateboard as a gameplay element. The only trouble: The skateboard hatches out of an egg... and, now that I think about it, your character's handmade throwing axes also spawn from eggs. What kind of foul beasts live on this island? Is this just an adventure to prove Darwin wrong? The more I think about it, the more it bothers me.
#47: Spy vs. Spy (1988)
Platform: NES
Developer/Publisher: Kemco
In a Nutshell: The two beloved Mad Magazine spies compete to see which can murder the other the most while collecting items needed to escape a building.
Anthony says: As is the case with so many other NES games, I didn't own Spy vs. Spy. I did, however, rent it several times when my friends spent the night. With its two-player split-screen mode, it gave my pre-pubescent friends and I plenty of opportunities for trash-talking. After all, part of the fun was trying to figure out your opponent's plans and predicting where they'd place their booby traps (this strategy was also known as watching their screen), so it always felt great when you pulled one over on your pal.Thinking of the split-screen makes me realize that I don't remember ever playing Spy vs. Spy alone, and I'm pretty sure that's for a reason. Screwing someone over in this game (or getting screwed over yourself) is a lot of fun, but being beat down by the game's A.I. just reminds me of why I've sworn a blood oath to destroy all robots, should they try to rise up against humanity. (If they do, at least I'll have some experience in prepping traps and laughing my ass off when they explode.)
