Fester's Quest (1989)

Ah, yes, Fester's Quest... I had always wanted to make progress in this one but found it a really tedious kind of gameplay: You don't have lives, you die you're dead. You can heal yourself at Hot Dog stands (which exist on the overworld in certain areas) This means you are kinda shackled to a hot dog stand until you can find the next... farming enemies in this Blaster Master-ish type top down shooting game from Sunsoft....

One of my goals is to play all of Sunsoft's games for the NES, some of them are my favorite action-packed shooting games.

Fester can visit houses of relatives to get items such as invulnerability potions and Lock-On Missiles. In some ways all the loot in the game resembles Metal Gear... but with actually more shooting and less key cards! The game actually doesn't have items that function as gates (other than the simple key that lets you get into buildings)

You make your way to buildings 1-5, and then enter a joke-ass first-person maze minigame. Then proceed to the dungeon with a lightbulb

It's a little similar to Star Tropics, conceptually. The First person bits reminded me of the SNES version of Jurassic Park Didn't take too long with some general help on where to go next with a GameFAQ.

Boss Fights aren't to complicated. They are similar to Blaster Master but way less cool or satisfying.

Most Boss Fights have a simple gimmick to make short work of the boss. Otherwise you'll either be spending a long time fighting or you'll die quick. Overall the game doesn't really have any strong elements. It has a minimal amount of music (but it's good at least the first dozen times... after then not so much.) The game is designed around wandering around an area until you find the next building, then you go fight the boss, then you explore the sewer system leading to the next area leading to the next building etc. It's arguably easy to get lost or wind your way back to the building you came from. Fortunately, since you left from the rear you'll know you're at the beginning again, so its a matter of just getting back in the right sewer entrance and then coming OUT of the sewer the right direction. Fighting monsters along the way isn't too bad. You just have to be careful, its the bosses that are the problem.

Okay, let's face it, this game had only two flaws. The problem is that one of the flaws TOTALLY MESSES UP EVERYTHING.

Flaw #1 is that those little red sphere guys can dig under the wall from a HIGHER level into your level and jack you up. Look, it was totally brilliant to have all the levels laid out in the same town with, winding around each other. BRILLIANT. But when you have a bad guy who can dig under the sewer walls in level 4, which sits right next to level 2, that's a problem.

But that's not the big one. The big one, and we all know what it is, is that your weapon is totally worthless in close quarters. If any part of your beam hits a wall, the beam completely stops. And unless you spend 30 minutes of the game at the very beginning upgrading to the highest beam (which you will lose on accident very quickly), the wave of your beam is going to get your killed as soon as you go into an alley or into the sewer.

But you CAN level up the beam, and you can beat the diggers on level 2. It's hard, sure, but it's doable. It makes the game annoying, absolutely, but once you are passed that, the game itself is marvelously quirky. The interconnected map is really fantastic, and the boss level mazes are tough and interesting (and 3D). Had they fixed those two issues, I think this would have been a classic. But they didn't. And it's not. It's fun, but no more than that.