Nes Review: Bigfoot

Bigfoot Console-Nintendo Entertainment System Year-1990 Developer-Beam Software Publisher - Acclaim Genre-Racing "Climb aboard Bigfoot, the toughest monster truck rig ever pieced together, 460 cubic inches of blown block engine. Giant tractor tires. Cantilever suspension. And behind the wheel? You!" Thus is the concept behind this monster truck cash-in as stated in the manual for the game. I've had this game for about 20 years and remember playing it often as a child, but to put it simply... if you aren't on a nostalgia trip or else an avid monster truck fan who likes NES games don't go anywhere near this game. There is only one scenario which would make playing this game a good idea. This is if you have: a) a friend to play with and b) you own no other multiplayer games To put it simply this game is just too simple and just too hard. GAMEPLAY There are two gameplay modes in this game. A no brain "cross-country" top-down mode which requires zero effort and a completely impossible side-scrolling race mode. You are on a tour from LA to New York in this game and you battle against another monster truck on your tour. To continue on the tour you have to have at least $1000 to enter each event. Here's the idea behind the cross-country mode. The cross-country mode has you race against your opponent and ultimately win at the end of the event. You have a health bar and your set of funds to focus on in this mode. The main objective of the mode is to prevent from being destroyed by your opponent(which costs a $1000) and to cross the line first. You can also gather power-ups/attack items (think Mario Kart) to attack your opponent or defend yourself and you can also gather nitros. The problem with this mode is... you don't have to do anything to win. Just grab at least one nitro, set the controller down and wait to the finish. At the finish you will see the road start again right before the finish line and to win you just have to use a nitro. You don't have to worry about trying since you and your opponent always have to be on screen at the same time. So even if you are going slow the game will speed you up as soon as you touch the bottom of the screen. Even if you lose a lot of money from dying you should still make enough to be able to enter the next event. This mode is pretty pointless and boring. To make this mode even more pointless the controls to it are very unresponsive, and actually trying to go fast or beat the opponent the whole time is pretty much impossible. Just wait till the finish and then hit the nitro. The other mode is completely impossible if you try playing the game on the NES with a NES controller. The mode is a race against your opponent in the format of a car-crunch, a hill-climb, or a tractor-pull. This mode could potentially be neat in the situation where you are playing against another person. The problem with the mode in single-player lies in the control scheme. In order to accelerate you need to alternate pressing left and right on the control pad, you can also shift gears with the A button when your revs get too high and you can boost with the B button (which increases revs). The problem is that with a NES controller you can't ever possibly alternate the directions fast enough to beat the computer. EVER. Its a single piece of plastic and it simply cannot switch directions fast enough with human hands. The A and B buttons are also near impossible to push while maintaining a speed near enough to win against the opponent. You would need a third hand to work those buttons. If you are playing the game on an emulator this mode is winnable, but you will probably find yourself damaging your engine while going fast enough to beat the opponent. To put it simply the gameplay in this game just sucks and it's clear that the game was not intended to be played with the standard NES controller. You may be able to prevent yourself from getting game over by winning at the cross-country, but the cross-country just isn't interesting and the other mode is just too hard. It is a little entertaining to challenge a friend at the game, but usually there are more fun games to play. If you manage to beat the first computer opponent by winning enough events so that he doesn't have enough money to enter the next one, you will get another more challenging opponent who is even harder to beat (in both modes). The main problem though is that even though you can't really win at this game, you just don't care, it is highly uninteresting. GRAPHICS The graphics in this game aren't too bad. For the most part everything looks as it should and the game looks pretty well detailed for a NES sport-related game. The colors in the game overall stand out well and work to let you know what objects are what. The top-down mode is a little monotonous and repetitive graphically, but the side-scrolling mode as some relatively unique appearances based on the event. One thing missing that you might notice if you had even seen real monster trucks is the uniqueness of each truck. In this game all trucks look exactly the same with a different color. It doesn't really feel like your are driving Bigfoot but instead, just a blue monster truck, as opposed to a red, green, or yellow one. The style of the graphics and animations do look as you might expect a NES monster-truck game to look but they don't really stand out as excellent or bad. One thing that seems slightly out of place is the fact that the trucks explode in top-down mode and come flying back from pieces, I can't imagine if real monster trucks did that. Overall this game gets the job done graphically but doesn't introduce anything radically good or bad. AUDIO The audio in this game is nothing fancy. The music in the game only appears when you are between events and the one generic conglomeration of crappy songs is nothing spectacular. It seems the music in the game was an afterthought and just something some random guy pieced together in a ten minute span. The sound effects in the game are nothing great either and don't really match the extreme nature of real monster trucks high-revving noise. I guess it might be expected though from an NES game. There is from what I can tell one voice-over clip of a lady saying "Prepare to Race" before each event. This voice-over is kind of nice and it does kind of make you want to race (if that's possible) but its only a slight bonus to the game's weak gameplay and other elements. FINAL WORD As mentioned several times before this game just doesn't come off as fun. I can't see myself or anyone else playing this game for longer than 5 minutes. The only potentially neat segment is just too hard. The game isn't too terrible it just lacks any quality that would make it actually entertaining. Even if you were some sort of NES-game-playing Bigfoot enthusiast you still would probably fail to find anything entertaining here. It just doesn't feel like driving Bigfoot with that only actually Bigfoot connection being the game's title. But maybe in some world if you drank enough alcohol this game might be entertaining. The game has no remarkable things to deserve badges and the lack of feeling like Bigfoot is involved in anyway other than advertising deserves an Unbonus of 20%.