Before there was the T-1000, Marvel was making gleaming silver metal dudes cool with Silver Surfer and his rad to the max space-surfboard. This game has been on my radar for a while, as it's said to be one of the worst games on the NES. So of course I had to play it. Let's see how bad it really is. Will it be "bad" in the Power Glove sense, or "bad" in the "BAD DUDES" sense?
R.I.P. HULK HOGAN
1953-2025
The title screen, which was made infamous by James Rolfe.
The game begins with the nude silver man (and his radical surfboard, dude!) being summoned by his boss, the dastardly Galactus.
Galactus is one of Marvel's biggest bad guys, and Silver Surfer is basically his goon. As I understand it, the Surfer pretty much always turns good before long and helps the protagonists (usually the Fantastic Four). Also sometimes the Surfer is a woman, who I think might be an entirely different Surfer, not sure.
We get a stage select, and this game follows the Demon Souls methodology pretty much all the way through. Five worlds, each one with three stages, and the third stage is usually short and mostly just the boss. Then at the end the last levels unlock. So yeah, it's Demon Souls.
For bosses, we have a wrestler?, Green Thanos, Majin Guile, a vampire?, and an alligator-man.
I choose this dude first. Is this a Bret Hart reference? Probably not because it was made pre-90's.
The game throws you RIGHT IN, with swarms of enemies beelining towards you and flying in bizarre loopy patterns. What's worse, there's no rapid fire, so you gotta HAMMER THE A BUTTON. That's right, A, not B.
I immediately die. Over and over. Dying means you have to look at this miserable screen of Surfer being a sad sack. However, there isn't much of a death penalty. The game seems to have unlimited continues, and puts you back on the level you were on.
However, as far as I could tell, there was no way back to the stage select without beating a full world. So if you're dying over and over on one world, you can't go try a different one.
Some of the levels have this neat Greek/Roman theme with lots of pillars and statues.
Which is a good time to mention that EVERYTHING KILLS YOU. Even just lightly bumping a wall or other obstacle results in death. The kicker is that one of Silver Surfer's main powers is the ability to...not be killed by objects because he can phase through matter by altering his density. Even I know this, but they didn't when they made this game!
Some levels switch to vertical shooter mode. Blast things, collect powerups. Pretty standard stuff. Once you get wise to the game's tricks, and get the turbo-fire going... this isn't terrible.
Stage 3 of this world pits me up against Not Bret "The Hitman" Hart. You put an S at the beginning of "Hitman" and that'll tell you what I think about this boss!
It's worth noting that he barely has any HP, and takes maybe 4 seconds of sustained fire to defeat. Not sure if that's the turbo controller owning the game, or if the bosses just don't have any health.
Finish a world, and Surfer flashes his nude figure for all the world to see.
"Look at my junk!" he says, like the blue guy from Watchmen.
Next I try...Reptyl. Are all these guys from the comics?
I feel like this is the level I've seen people dying on the most in Youtube videos. It's a 'Nam-like area with lizardmen and fish trying to kill your cosmic-level threat of a character, who inexplicably keels over after the slightest bump from a fish.
The biggest threat in this game isn't the enemies. Especially with turbo going, they're really not much of an issue. No, the real problem here is the backgrounds, and walls/objects. It's difficult to tell what you can pass through and what you can't.
So for example I can go through the thin line but not the thick line. And certainly not the rocky platform, are you crazy??
Alright, so I guess this corner is deadly. Watch out for deadly corners! They're everywhere!
This vertical stage had lots of wooden piers, and I did everything in my power to avoid even the slightest bump with them...only to find out that they're totally safe. This game is all over the place!
Turtle miniboss. Is this Reptyl? No, probably not.
Here's the real Reptyl. Is it the big guy, or the small guy? Who knows. The fight is over in like 4 seconds, like all the boss fights.
"Behold my Package!" says Surfer as he flaunts his nether-regions for the world to see.
Next I try the spooky level. It's an NES game, of course there's a spooky level.
Main threat here is ghosts that emerge from doors endlessly. This is a good time to mention that you get Gradius style "options", pods that fly separately from you and also fire shots. In vertical mode you can have two of them, while in horizontal mode you can only have one. It helps with low targets like these, but I don't get why it didn't let you have a second one up top. That would have helped a lot more.
These red wall-lamps are the latest deadly threat to the Surfer. Considering I barely even noticed they existed, they're insta-deaths.
Next vertical level contains groping grabby-hands that emerge from the walls and grasp at Surfer's package.
Here's Mephisto, and he's a very NES-like wall head boss. Takes about four seconds, again. So far all of the bosses have been stationary targets, part of why the fights are over so fast.
Next world! Here's Firelord, who looks like something out of a hair-metal band.
This one starts vertical, and it's a real challenge because all of the grey outcroppings are deadly. The game expects you to deftly manuever between them, too.
The horizontal sections are very fire-themed, with fire aggressively raining from the ceiling everywhere you go.
Here's Fire Lord, and he's...some guy with a torch. Four seconds later and another boss is downed. At this point I have the game's number and am sailing through it without much of an issue.
Lastly, I take on Green Thanos.
...wait a minute. This actually does look like Thanos, and "Emperor" sounds like a name that should be reserved for a guy on that level. Was this supposed to be Thanos? Did they really just throw him into this game as a regular world boss?
The backgrounds are getting really busy during the vertical sections, to the point that enemy shots nearly blend in with it. Another potential aggravation, as if all the walls/objects weren't intrusive enough.
Not-Thanos' lair is this gigantic spaceship full of enemies that attack from above and below. Which is a good time to mention that the B button moves the option around the Surfer, so you can have it fire backwards, or another direction.
Not-Thanos is the first boss to last more than four seconds. You have to destroy all the wall turrets in front of him, and then he just poofs. Basically Serges from Mega Man X2, only without the last 75% of the fight.
Galactus has almost accomplished his evil mission of assembling WMDs or whatever he's doing. All that's left is for Silver Surfer to go to the final, sixth world... the Magik Domain!
Galactus then opens a Stargate and sends our hero on through. Considering they modeled Galactus, it would have been cool if he was the final boss, but no such luck. Maybe they planned on using this engine again for a sequel with him in it, and it just didn't come about due to this one getting panned.
The final boss is...this guy! Who? Why didn't Galactus just go deal with this himself? Does he not fit through the Stargate?
The last world is super weird, with bizarre misshapen rocks and alien lifeforms.
What in the blue fuck
This part is especially deadly, due to the large collision-boxes of every wall that can instagib you.
The final miniboss of the game is SPACE LOBSTER.
Final boss is this dude with a gun. He's actually a real boss fight, with a real HP pool, and takes a little while to take down. His gun gives away where he's firing at any given time, so it isn't a difficult fight.
I use the downward-firing option to rain hellfire on him. The only time I was in any real danger was when flying at a diagonal from him, since his diagonal bullets could be sudden.
"Behold!" says Surfer while sporting his unit and posing like Randy Orton.
The bad guy had this...nuke type thing, which Galactus wanted. Now he can blow up the Earth or whatever.
You know, this guy is pretty much the only villain left that is on that "Thanos-level" that Marvel can base a whole saga around in the future (once this Dr. Doom saga is over, that is). I bet they just waste him as a single movie villain instead.
Sudden face turn! He won't let Galactus have the nuke, dammit!
With that, Surfer takes off with the device, defying Galactus, and that's it for this game.
Final thoughts on this game? It's... not terrible actually. I went in expecting one of the worst games on the NES, and what I got was a pretty standard shooter with a high difficulty. That said, you NEED a turbo controller to play this. It is a complete game-changer going from single shots to automatic fire, and it makes the game pretty doable once you get used to the speed of it.
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