NES - Conveyance? (Part 1)

While wandering the halls of Youtube again, I re-watched Egoraptor's Sequelitis in regards to Mega Man and Mega Man X, which also touched upon the poor conveyance that Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde had in "what the hell is going on". And on that same train of thought, I realized that the advent of roms and emulators have exacerbated that same problem of conveyance.

Granted, the Internet has since fixed "poor conveyance" like a boss. Even Pumpkinhead.

But lets say for the sake of the hypothetical, you're a kid pre-Internet craze, and you buy or trade a game off one of your friends or from a garage sale. Its just the cartridge, straight up. You pop it in your NES console, not knowing squat about anything. The obvious disadvantage has existed since the days of Atari:

What the fuck IS all this?

Yeah. Almost always, the issue is the visuals. Not always controls, since its four directions and four buttons; I'm sure even a hyperactive kid can figure out "jump", "shoot" and "run" for Super Mario. But visuals usually pertained to power ups, hazards, and enemies...however, if you lacked a game booklet, you wouldn't know who or what something is.. Some games got around that; Ghosts and Goblins had clear indications. Knight statues gave you points, weapons were weapons. There weren't obvious traps except the wizard that popped up. But even then, most games made clear indications that "he's a bad guy" or "you shouldn't pick that up". See Super Mario Bros. : The Lost Levels for their "poison mushroom".

X-men for the NES, on the other hand...had a power down that wasn't clear in the slightest, froze you, and didn't tell you squat why. Nothing on screen told you, and that's....fine. It was the NES, I say its the console not catering to you due to its limitations at the time.

But you want to know what the freakiest thing is?

LJN...I have to say. Their games may suck, but take ONE look at their booklet. Just...its AMAZING.

All booklets I post here are from Digital Press Library.

Go ahead, load that image up. Its credit where credit is due. I'm giving credit to LJN. I'm playing devil's advocate and you CAN'T STOP ME. 

Okay credit over.

The game is terrible, but the "conveyance" of the NES years? It was typically in the booklets. Good or bad games, both had the same thing going. Legend of Zelda is virtually a game guide that avoids spoiling the "secrets", like destructible walls and movable rocks. But items, weapons, enemies, plot? All in there, same as LJN's Uncanny X-Men. Granted, Legend of Zelda has better mechanics, graphics, sound and overall execution...but if we're going by the booklet, LJN put forth everything you needed to know, right down to the awkward style of their power-ups.

To properly convey Uncanny X-men: "Its a shitty game with a pretty book."

It's unbelievably hilarious to me. Bad games have good conveyance outside of them. Deadly Towers? It alludes to the parallel zones, and their entrances being invisible. Dirty Harry? Bosses are described, and hints that people will help you (though jumping and eating to chili dogs to "talk" to them might've been helpful to know). Milon's Secret Castle tells you to shoot to find hidden objects. Predator is an ugly-looking game, but it tells you about its power-ups, "big mode", and how the game works. Winter Games? It tells you how to do tricks and stunts by holding down certain directions for certain tricks.

Even...I can't believe I'm saying this. Even Action 52. Action 52 had the..."decency"... to cover each of the 52 games, even though its simply the controls and the plot in a sentence or two...translated six times over.

You now know the plot of these shitty games in SIX LANGUAGES. 312 different ways!

Though, to counteract this, its really kind of funny they ask $2 a pop for game guides per game. Hey I just dropped $200 on this, you really ought to give me the manual. Could you imagine an Action 52 Deluxe Edition? For only $300, you get a complete game manual to all these games! And a cheap-o Cheetahmen action figure I suppose, just to entice the kiddies.

Now why did I bother writing this article? It can be viewed as an addendum to my Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde defense; the booklet held the answers, though not all of the ones you may ask for Dr. Jekyll's side of the game. But the lightning, most of the enemies overall...it was in the booklet. And really, that's the other way to view it. It's been the first and last line of conveyance for players since the start, and has continued to be within new games. 

In the best of games? In the booklet. In the shittiest of games? In the booklet.

Though good conveyance doesn't FIX a bad game per se...

All the conveyance in the world ain't saving this game.