Spy Hunter

(picture courtesy of http://blog.wired.com/photos)

Videogame Review

This 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game has sapped something out of my head. I have a headache now and I am convinced that where there is throbbing, there once was an inspired article about the nostalgia of endless days playing NES games on an old Quasar television, of purchasing games for fifty bucks with my own chore money saved up over the course of thirteen months, and giving your whole life to that game.

Maybe there was something in my head that wanted to discuss how, in a simpler time, with fewer entertainment options and fewer luxuries, an insanely difficult game with the glaze of a premise - you're a spy in car/boat, avoiding other spies! - would be more than enough for one's imagination to run rampant. Surely as a child, I must have beamed myself into the cockpit of the bird's eye view of the Spy Hunter car, added roaring realistic waves in the 8-bit river levels where there were none, and designed for myself the black leather interior of my Spy Car, littered the dashboard, the seats, the ceiling and the doors with gadgets and buttons and monitors galore. Surely I must have seen the nefarious look in my enemies's eyes behind their Spy-Tech (tm) sunglasses and evil smirks as they moved in to run me off the road with their spiked wheels.

But today, I only have a headache. With Game Genie on and the previously unheard of (by that I mean pre 1991) infinite life cheat triggered, I realized that this game has no end. The only thing that might have kept kids going, besides their self-created love for spy-lore, was the achievment of a high score. The score maxes out at 1,000,000. With Game Genie on, I reached 83,2005 points before quitting. With game genie on, progress was still slower than hardened molasses, as I'd pull out of my truck and immediately get bumped off road by a random car. How did I ever commit hours to this game? I could have learned a new language in that time...

This game sucks. It is only great in the grand and endless memory of 80s children. Any flights of fancy worth memorializing are the creation and trademark of all those many kids, who have created explosive, adrenaline-filled, daring dreams plastered on a template of unforgiving, sloppily designed, undeserving video game levels that dared to exploit us. So, in summary, I guess I'm thankful for memories of these fantasies, even if I am reluctant to give credit to the game that helped spurn them.

Now to take an Excedrin...