Retro Yearly List #10 [1984: Duck Hunt]

Well, you know, you shoot ducks, and an annoying dog will laugh at you if you fail, the game is endless and point-based. You can choose either standard mode with 1 duck at a time or 2 of them, or clay shooting mode which is a bit easier. That's it. Besides all simplicity, it's a classic, that's a game that normally would become an obscure random game due to the unusual NES Zapper technology being the focal point, so is impressive that it survived the time test and is so well remembered to the point of making it into Smash. Well done.

Retro Yearly List #12 [1986: Wonder Boy]

Man, that was... awful.
The first entry of Wonder Boy is pretty bad, seriously, I struggled to beat this even with save states, the game looks nice at first and the first levels are really fun, the graphics are great, the movement is a bit frustrating, but there are fun sections when you use your running and jumping properly, WHEN the game design allows you to.

After a few levels it gets old pretty fast, the next ones are just recreations using the same assets placed differently and creating new challenges, but using the same stuff, the same mechanics, it's like they have worked hard on the first levels and then used a randomizer to generate the sufficient amount to have freaking 32 levels... yeah that's right, game has 8 worlds each one containing 4 "sub-levels" with repetition until the end, that's the definition of unnecessary. Also the bosses are all the same only with increased difficulty, so that's reciclated as well.

The axe mechanic is a mistake, you will start with it but if you die, you have to beat some sections just avoiding enemies positioned chaotically, without having a chance to knock them out, until you find another axe, the skate power up is just ok, is another hit to take and you will most likely press back to walk slowly with it anyway, there is no room to rush here, although they may have intended to create that feeling, it simply doesn't work since there are enemies everywhere doing hell-pattern movements.

Game design is also atrocious to the point that you have cloud platforms placed in crucial sections, that when you hit them, they fall off and you die, forcing you to do everything again, I did not expect to play I Wanna be the Guy or Cat Mario, but that's it.

The ONLY music that plays on the entire game is nice until you hear it again for the 5th time, it just gets to the point where you don't even bother anymore and just want to finish it.

Let's see how they will improve it for the next entries.

Retro Yearly List #13 [1987: Punch-Out!!]

This franchise never caught my attention enough to try playing its games, and I never did until now, one nice example of why I'm challenging myself with these retro challenges, hence, now I've just discovered a very nice game.

Some people tend to compare this with Dark Souls, not just because of difficulty, but due to the pattern-learning style of gameplay to beat the opponents, others say that it's a puzzle game disguised as a boxing game. I agree with both definitions, it's more than a sports game, this is a "practice makes perfect" type of game, (or "almost perfect").
Every opponent requires different strategies and will have to learn the hard way: trying and failing, tuning your reflexes in the process, you will have to react fast and faster once you reach the final challenges.

It truly gave me a good time to challenge myself, I managed to beat everyone fairly but Tyson, which I saved mid-match to progress, but I'm willing to try him the right way in some time, considering playing this on emulators is far worse than the original hardware due to the input lag.
Overall, the difficulty is fair and the learning curve is fine, the only opponent that got really on my nerves was Super Macho Man, but I managed to learn his secrets as well.

I just think there is a layer of repetition with the opponents, some of them will return for rematches and others have their sprites reused, even on completely different boxers. But overall the game is pretty good and I now understand its popularity, and I'm glad I finally learned to play this properly.

Pretty solid game, this is the first release of Brazilian JoyMasher, and they started with an awesome game, its difficult is balanced in a way you are able to get better on every failure, there are no checkpoints so you have to re-start from the beginning of each level, but there is no game over on standard mode, and levels aren't that long, so I found it fair enough.
Had some little problems with control responses sometimes that annoyed me a little bit, and that damn knockback, geez! Music team did also a pretty good job here and the graphics took me back to the NES era entirely. Overall, pretty good game and a great first entry by the team.

Retro Yearly List #6 [1980: Missile Command]

Ok, I was not expecting too much of that one, but after some time it really caught my attention. The concept looks very simplistic at first, but after trying it I could see a bunch of different mechanics which work very well. Like for example, the side silos shoot slower than the middle one, the smart bombs that require more precise shots, etc. If you wanna chase a great score you have to understand the game on a deep level and use strategies to survive. Btw, have you noticed that, in that game, you are just trying to delay the inevitable decimation of your cities? You're all doomed anyway, sad story.

Mega Man 5. I used to confuse this game stuff with 4 because I could barely recall unique things from those two, unlike the other NES entries which have a stronger identity. Now I can remember 4 well, but most of it is because of Minus Infinity I think, and 5 still have some lacking for me, I believe it's the lack of innovation or new mechanics, besides a much better charged buster shot than the previous one. Played it again and still was the least memorable run for me so far, the same goes for its OST, which is just alright. But is not bad, it's just too average, a truly Megaman game for sure.

Retro Yearly List #8 [1982: Pitfall!]

I was not aware of Pitfall franchise being born in Atari, the first time I saw it was on SNES, later I discovered that this is a pretty iconic title for Atari players back in the day and one of the "must try" of the console.

For me, playing it for the first time, it's an ok game, the controls are nice, it's just a little bit repetitive. It has similar mechanics to the original DK but with a different approach, you have to collect all treasures spread along several screens before the time runs out, you can go to the right or to the left, or by the underground to travel faster through the screens.

The objective is not clarified by the game so imagine discovering that by yourself without any tip, at least this was the case here in Brazil, it seems that this game's ending was an urban legend, people used to just try to survive for 20 minutes while randomly walking through the several screens.

The actual challenge is tough, to beat it you have to almost have a perfect run, you can see TAS videos beating it in about 17/18 minutes, and an average player is supposed to beat it in 20, that's insane.
Didn't accept the challenge tho, as I used save states.