Wally Bear and the NO Gang
Dec. 31st, 2022 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama78 days until the vernal equinox
It has been relatively warm after the bonechilling cold of last week.
This is, as far as I know, the only game I’ve ever seen that includes instructions on modifying your NES to play it. Don’t try this at home, kids. It will void your warranty and you'll have to buy a new NES if something goes wrong. I don’t know why you care about that, unless you somehow obtained access to the internet of the future. Just emulate.
See, the cartridge would cause a voltage spike to knock out the CEC chip in the NES as well as causing the room you're in to smell of burning plastic and eventually damaging the components. Later versions of the NES uses resistors to keep this from happening.
Tengen reverse-engineered the cartridge chip (and most homebrew games reverse engineered that). Other developers bypassed it by having a legitimate cartridge like Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt attached to it and piggybacking on their chip.
They say it’s about preventing a glut of terrible unlicensed games but Nintendo has given their seal of quality to some real garbage. In fact, I’m pretty sure their only standard is “The game doesn't cause the NES to explode, catch fire, or be otherwise bricked in some way” and “they gave Nintendo money.”
Nintendo a) required that third party companies hand over production to them, b) decided how many copies can be released, and what markets they will and will not sell games in (I think this explains why the Sega Master System had a big following in Brazil) and c) third party companies are only allowed 5 games per year, although most companies got around this by setting up dummy companies.
They also tried to avert this by making the NES look less like a game system and more like a VCR. And, I’m sorry, the NES was a piece of shit. The overcomplicated loading mechanism got to the point where I had to use a Game Genie just to get the game to run properly.
In fact, Nintendo still won’t allow its products to be sold in Mexico because either a store accidentally sold a game a day before the official release date or accidentally on purpose sold a game before the official release date.
By the Wii era, Nintendo gave up on this whole thing and embraced shovelware.
This phone number is no longer active. Probably wore down the tape during a barrage of calls when the AVGN featured this game. I like to think that they didn’t shut it down, they just let the tape decay to nothing a la Disintegration Loops.
I like how Music For Abandoned Airports is a thing.
Stay smart. Don't start.
Good advice.
So, what’s in the news today?
Russia is getting their collective ass handed to them in Ukraine. It's almost like they're good at terrorizing civilians but don't know what to do if their victims start firing back.
Indonesia is creating a new criminal code to replace the old one but unfortunately, it’s a regression, banning things like “cohabitation,” “premarital sex,” “criticizing the president,” and “expressing views contrary to Asian Values.” Sam said she thought about visiting Indonesia but now she’s like “uh, nope.”
Malaysia, not to be outdone, now bans women acting like men, becoming pregnant or giving birth out of wedlock, and practicing witchcraft and/or sorcery. I'm not sure if women are specifically excluded from sorcerery or nobody can be a sorcerer or a warlock. I don’t know if I can rightfully blame this on the outrage manufactured by terfs and their conservative allies here in the west, but I will.
It does sort of explain why their music scenes have all but disappeared.
Afghanistan decided that women are no longer allowed to get an education or to work in non-governmental organizations. I don't know why they think they have a say in the latter. Because they don't. If any Afghani authoritaries try to tell you otherwise, shove your phone in their face and play a video of Cheryl Tunt shouting "you're not my supervisor!"
At least they're acknowledging womanhood, say terfs.
Peru had their Donald Trump moment, except he was a nominally socialismo (for the 21st century, which is basically just extreme social conservatism with a safety net) populist, and to Peru’s credit, they arrested Pedro Castillo, and now there are protests and riots going on.
Iran has ongoing protests. I suspect the ProIran subreddit consists mostly of westerners who are deathly afraid of change and all things that threaten to end the status quo who may have visited Iran for political reasons or people of Iranian descent who have never set foot in Iran. But I could be wrong. I was wrong about Way of the Bern. I said they were from troll farms in Russia and India but it turns out that they’re all a bunch of swing staters.
A self-proclaimed racist just shot at Kurdish cultural centers in Paris killing three people. Democratic Underground doesn’t give a shit because they can’t blame the Turks. The guy who did this previously attacked a migrant camp with a sword. After that attack, four of the five victims were held as suspects and a fifth only avoided being held for 48 hours because they were a minor. For whatever reason, the police recommended gang violence charges. One of the victims was an undocumented immigrant from Morocco who was defending himself and others with a branch and they used this as an excuse to deport him. And, of course, this guy being white, didn’t find himself on any watchlists and was allowed to obtain weapons. A protest escalated into a riot.
The problem with France is that no matter what party you vote for, they always end up turning into the National Front lite.
In Israel, Netanyahu is back and he’s brought with him the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
Andrew Tate was arrested. It’s hilarious because Elon Musk brought him back to Twitter and he attempted to rebut Greta Thunberg and Romania’s government determined that he was, in fact, in Romania due to the pizza he was eating. Maybe the thing about the pizza isn’t actually true but let us have this one.
Jair Bolsonaro has conceded, in a way, and by that, I mean that he fled Brazil and is temporarily living in Florida. Let immigrants freeze at the border or send them out to bonechilling cold is fine but this asshole can come here without any problems.
Florida’s (along with Tennessee) basically turning into a festering mass of far right politics. And for whatever reason, Wisconsin and Minnesota are swing states. On the bright side, Georgia might turn completely blue in a decade.
On the other hand, Brazil will probably remain part of the BRICS bloc so nothing will change in any meaningful way.
Kanye West disappeared but I'm sure he'll show up somewhere in Guyana.
I picked this game just so I could make that joke.
I’m not going to take the game’s advice because I’m a masochist at heart but I’m going to take my advice. One player. Do not ever pick 2 players. Don’t subject your friends to this game. Don’t subject your family to this game. Don’t subject your coworkers to this game. Don’t subject the air conditioner technician to this game. Don’t even subject your mooching roommate to this game.
Once you get into the game, it doesn't even look that bad. Gone is the vomitous color scheme of the title screen and Wally's house.
Your first enemies are bulldogs and modos. Maybe it’s like, you know, how before an earthquake or something, all the animals go crazy. Nah, they probably don’t want their nice neighborhood turning into a freaking country bear jamberoo.
The murder bats/crows/modos all track your movements and have tiny hitboxes.
However, duck and they can’t hurt you.
You just have to dodge modos and dogs until you get the ability to throw pizzas or frisbees or whatever. Picking up the skateboard turns you from a rigor mortis waschbär to your typical slippery platformer protagonist. If you get hit, you lose your skateboard or your pie-throwing ability. I’m not sure what a second (black sometimes) skateboard does but you can throw up to two (2) pies at once.
It can be hard to tell what platforms can and can't be jumped on.
In the train level, you just walk forward and toss frisbees.
Apparently Shockwave and Crossbow are actual games. Crossbow went unreleased because ACGI ceased to exist.
I like how the rats are all Wally's size.
I hear that in George Wood's voice. The guy from Gaming in the Clinton Years.
This game must take place before Daylight Savings Time was moved to March.
Apparently (and this is one of the co-developers speaking) this game was featured on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Take that with an entire planet made of salt.
Priscilla looks like a rat. Maybe she’s an opossum or moonrat or shrew. TVTropes assumes she’s a poodle but that’s not canon. Someone on Wikipedia assumes she’s either an opossum (the American marsupial) or a possum (an Australian and New Guinean marsupial with superficial similarities). The manual tells me nothing.
There's another train sequence which is more walking forward and tossing pies at giant rats.
Sounds to me like Ricky's been stealing to fund his drug habit.
And all of a sudden, we're in Robocop.
Your main enemies in the city are bomb-throwing rats.
Even Newark looks better than this.
I can't believe Wally Bear's parents will let him go through a place like this.
Typically liquor doesn’t come in “strange looking” bottles, and by strange looking, I can only assume the game means "klein bottles." Larry the Lizard has clearly been drinking distilled evil.
Anyways, I don’t get why there’s a public service announcement about drunk driving in a game meant for children.
But I don’t know, I’m 38 and playing this game.
You just have to go to the exit. You don't have to fight Larry Lizard and his clones.
The obligatory sewer level.
In some areas, pressing down and jump at the same time can be fatal.
Larry Lizard is in a temple devoted to nameless alien Presences far older than mankind.
Unfortunately, Wally Bear wasn't meant for tiny platforms.
We came out in a different place. You can tell by the palette swap.
This guy looks like Wally Weasel even though that’s not possible because weasels and rats are always evil. And his name starts with S. S for stoat. S for squirrel. S for snake… or dragon.
I get what you’re going for, Wally, but in these circumstances, you should probably accept that guy’s ride. Either that or it really doesn’t matter anyway.
Somehow, you leave through the subway.
The power is still on but the sky is now a sickly yellow color.
Ugh, what a dump. I can't believe Uncle Grizzly lives in a place like this.
Their motto must be "Screw the end of the world. We're partying."
It’s short and pathetically easy. And it’s not the worst game I’ve ever played. If someone held a gun to your head and forced you to play through a NES game, you could do a lot worse than to pick this one, but otherwise, just say NO™®©.
And the game offers pretty good advice, namely don't drink out of strange-looking bottles and don't consort with ancient beings living far beneath the surface of the Earth or in the void between stars and especially not in the spaces outside of reality.
It looks like Wally has no legs.
Now that Sherlock Holmes is out of copyright, perhaps someone can convince Eleanor Arnason to write this story.
burning question: How had Professor Moriarty been able to move the asteroid Eros from its usual orbit? Where had he hidden it? What was he going to do with it? Could Sherlock Holmes discover the answer to these questions in time to save London and the civilized world?
It has been relatively warm after the bonechilling cold of last week.
This is, as far as I know, the only game I’ve ever seen that includes instructions on modifying your NES to play it. Don’t try this at home, kids. It will void your warranty and you'll have to buy a new NES if something goes wrong. I don’t know why you care about that, unless you somehow obtained access to the internet of the future. Just emulate.
See, the cartridge would cause a voltage spike to knock out the CEC chip in the NES as well as causing the room you're in to smell of burning plastic and eventually damaging the components. Later versions of the NES uses resistors to keep this from happening.
Tengen reverse-engineered the cartridge chip (and most homebrew games reverse engineered that). Other developers bypassed it by having a legitimate cartridge like Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt attached to it and piggybacking on their chip.
They say it’s about preventing a glut of terrible unlicensed games but Nintendo has given their seal of quality to some real garbage. In fact, I’m pretty sure their only standard is “The game doesn't cause the NES to explode, catch fire, or be otherwise bricked in some way” and “they gave Nintendo money.”
Nintendo a) required that third party companies hand over production to them, b) decided how many copies can be released, and what markets they will and will not sell games in (I think this explains why the Sega Master System had a big following in Brazil) and c) third party companies are only allowed 5 games per year, although most companies got around this by setting up dummy companies.
They also tried to avert this by making the NES look less like a game system and more like a VCR. And, I’m sorry, the NES was a piece of shit. The overcomplicated loading mechanism got to the point where I had to use a Game Genie just to get the game to run properly.
In fact, Nintendo still won’t allow its products to be sold in Mexico because either a store accidentally sold a game a day before the official release date or accidentally on purpose sold a game before the official release date.
By the Wii era, Nintendo gave up on this whole thing and embraced shovelware.
This phone number is no longer active. Probably wore down the tape during a barrage of calls when the AVGN featured this game. I like to think that they didn’t shut it down, they just let the tape decay to nothing a la Disintegration Loops.
I like how Music For Abandoned Airports is a thing.
Stay smart. Don't start.
Good advice.
So, what’s in the news today?
Russia is getting their collective ass handed to them in Ukraine. It's almost like they're good at terrorizing civilians but don't know what to do if their victims start firing back.
Indonesia is creating a new criminal code to replace the old one but unfortunately, it’s a regression, banning things like “cohabitation,” “premarital sex,” “criticizing the president,” and “expressing views contrary to Asian Values.” Sam said she thought about visiting Indonesia but now she’s like “uh, nope.”
Malaysia, not to be outdone, now bans women acting like men, becoming pregnant or giving birth out of wedlock, and practicing witchcraft and/or sorcery. I'm not sure if women are specifically excluded from sorcerery or nobody can be a sorcerer or a warlock. I don’t know if I can rightfully blame this on the outrage manufactured by terfs and their conservative allies here in the west, but I will.
It does sort of explain why their music scenes have all but disappeared.
Afghanistan decided that women are no longer allowed to get an education or to work in non-governmental organizations. I don't know why they think they have a say in the latter. Because they don't. If any Afghani authoritaries try to tell you otherwise, shove your phone in their face and play a video of Cheryl Tunt shouting "you're not my supervisor!"
At least they're acknowledging womanhood, say terfs.
Peru had their Donald Trump moment, except he was a nominally socialismo (for the 21st century, which is basically just extreme social conservatism with a safety net) populist, and to Peru’s credit, they arrested Pedro Castillo, and now there are protests and riots going on.
Iran has ongoing protests. I suspect the ProIran subreddit consists mostly of westerners who are deathly afraid of change and all things that threaten to end the status quo who may have visited Iran for political reasons or people of Iranian descent who have never set foot in Iran. But I could be wrong. I was wrong about Way of the Bern. I said they were from troll farms in Russia and India but it turns out that they’re all a bunch of swing staters.
A self-proclaimed racist just shot at Kurdish cultural centers in Paris killing three people. Democratic Underground doesn’t give a shit because they can’t blame the Turks. The guy who did this previously attacked a migrant camp with a sword. After that attack, four of the five victims were held as suspects and a fifth only avoided being held for 48 hours because they were a minor. For whatever reason, the police recommended gang violence charges. One of the victims was an undocumented immigrant from Morocco who was defending himself and others with a branch and they used this as an excuse to deport him. And, of course, this guy being white, didn’t find himself on any watchlists and was allowed to obtain weapons. A protest escalated into a riot.
The problem with France is that no matter what party you vote for, they always end up turning into the National Front lite.
In Israel, Netanyahu is back and he’s brought with him the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
Andrew Tate was arrested. It’s hilarious because Elon Musk brought him back to Twitter and he attempted to rebut Greta Thunberg and Romania’s government determined that he was, in fact, in Romania due to the pizza he was eating. Maybe the thing about the pizza isn’t actually true but let us have this one.
Jair Bolsonaro has conceded, in a way, and by that, I mean that he fled Brazil and is temporarily living in Florida. Let immigrants freeze at the border or send them out to bonechilling cold is fine but this asshole can come here without any problems.
Florida’s (along with Tennessee) basically turning into a festering mass of far right politics. And for whatever reason, Wisconsin and Minnesota are swing states. On the bright side, Georgia might turn completely blue in a decade.
On the other hand, Brazil will probably remain part of the BRICS bloc so nothing will change in any meaningful way.
Kanye West disappeared but I'm sure he'll show up somewhere in Guyana.
I picked this game just so I could make that joke.
I’m not going to take the game’s advice because I’m a masochist at heart but I’m going to take my advice. One player. Do not ever pick 2 players. Don’t subject your friends to this game. Don’t subject your family to this game. Don’t subject your coworkers to this game. Don’t subject the air conditioner technician to this game. Don’t even subject your mooching roommate to this game.
Once you get into the game, it doesn't even look that bad. Gone is the vomitous color scheme of the title screen and Wally's house.
Your first enemies are bulldogs and modos. Maybe it’s like, you know, how before an earthquake or something, all the animals go crazy. Nah, they probably don’t want their nice neighborhood turning into a freaking country bear jamberoo.
The murder bats/crows/modos all track your movements and have tiny hitboxes.
However, duck and they can’t hurt you.
You just have to dodge modos and dogs until you get the ability to throw pizzas or frisbees or whatever. Picking up the skateboard turns you from a rigor mortis waschbär to your typical slippery platformer protagonist. If you get hit, you lose your skateboard or your pie-throwing ability. I’m not sure what a second (black sometimes) skateboard does but you can throw up to two (2) pies at once.
It can be hard to tell what platforms can and can't be jumped on.
In the train level, you just walk forward and toss frisbees.
Apparently Shockwave and Crossbow are actual games. Crossbow went unreleased because ACGI ceased to exist.
I like how the rats are all Wally's size.
I hear that in George Wood's voice. The guy from Gaming in the Clinton Years.
This game must take place before Daylight Savings Time was moved to March.
Apparently (and this is one of the co-developers speaking) this game was featured on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Take that with an entire planet made of salt.
Priscilla looks like a rat. Maybe she’s an opossum or moonrat or shrew. TVTropes assumes she’s a poodle but that’s not canon. Someone on Wikipedia assumes she’s either an opossum (the American marsupial) or a possum (an Australian and New Guinean marsupial with superficial similarities). The manual tells me nothing.
There's another train sequence which is more walking forward and tossing pies at giant rats.
Sounds to me like Ricky's been stealing to fund his drug habit.
And all of a sudden, we're in Robocop.
Your main enemies in the city are bomb-throwing rats.
Even Newark looks better than this.
I can't believe Wally Bear's parents will let him go through a place like this.
Typically liquor doesn’t come in “strange looking” bottles, and by strange looking, I can only assume the game means "klein bottles." Larry the Lizard has clearly been drinking distilled evil.
Anyways, I don’t get why there’s a public service announcement about drunk driving in a game meant for children.
But I don’t know, I’m 38 and playing this game.
You just have to go to the exit. You don't have to fight Larry Lizard and his clones.
The obligatory sewer level.
In some areas, pressing down and jump at the same time can be fatal.
Larry Lizard is in a temple devoted to nameless alien Presences far older than mankind.
Unfortunately, Wally Bear wasn't meant for tiny platforms.
We came out in a different place. You can tell by the palette swap.
This guy looks like Wally Weasel even though that’s not possible because weasels and rats are always evil. And his name starts with S. S for stoat. S for squirrel. S for snake… or dragon.
I get what you’re going for, Wally, but in these circumstances, you should probably accept that guy’s ride. Either that or it really doesn’t matter anyway.
Somehow, you leave through the subway.
The power is still on but the sky is now a sickly yellow color.
Ugh, what a dump. I can't believe Uncle Grizzly lives in a place like this.
Their motto must be "Screw the end of the world. We're partying."
It’s short and pathetically easy. And it’s not the worst game I’ve ever played. If someone held a gun to your head and forced you to play through a NES game, you could do a lot worse than to pick this one, but otherwise, just say NO™®©.
And the game offers pretty good advice, namely don't drink out of strange-looking bottles and don't consort with ancient beings living far beneath the surface of the Earth or in the void between stars and especially not in the spaces outside of reality.
It looks like Wally has no legs.
Now that Sherlock Holmes is out of copyright, perhaps someone can convince Eleanor Arnason to write this story.
burning question: How had Professor Moriarty been able to move the asteroid Eros from its usual orbit? Where had he hidden it? What was he going to do with it? Could Sherlock Holmes discover the answer to these questions in time to save London and the civilized world?
