Vice: Project Doom (NES, 1991)

An NES game that a lot of people have sung the praises of over the years, most notably James "AVGN" Rolfe. It's a cinematic action game that is 80's as F, despite dropping in 1991. It's been on my list for a while, and I was way overdue to hit up something on the NES, so it's time. I'm just trying to figure out if that guy on the cover is based on Reb Brown or a younger version of John Kreese.

The back cover shows us that the game is supposed to be cinematic, complete with a film reel. This is a very playable game, with infinite lives / no real game overs...you always start on the section of level you've reached, so the game is much less tedious to complete than most action games from this era.

This was also the cover game for Volume 24 of Nintendo Power, one of the first ones I ever read as a kid, which I covered in a youtube review here.

In a nefarious corporate tower, the bad guys are scheming. One of them hasn't come in 30 years, so he's very ornery.

Our main character is Hart, a rogue cop with NO REGARD FOR THE RULES! This seems to take place in a near-future city where everyone drives futuristic cars and maniacs are frequently on the loose.

They immediately throw me for a loop by having Stage 1 be a vertical shooter level, where you blast drones and whatnot on the highway. Someone could be fooled into thinking that the game is a shooter right off the bat if they only played the first level.

After blasting my way through other cars and various highway obstacles, our hero runs into the first boss:

A...trio of puzzle game icons stacked on top of each other?

After blowing up the enemy vehicle, Hart coolly walks away from the flaming wreckage and shrieking criminals within. Jesus Christ, Hart!

Between levels, we get neat cutscenes. Here's Christy, Hart's friend and ally back at the station. She's basically the Chloe to his Jack Bauer. I think they're supposed to be vice cops (aka drug enforcement) which makes sense considering 1991 is coming right off the popularity wave of Miami Vice, which ended in 1990.

The Ninja Gaiden-ness of the cutscenes is super apparent right from the word go, especially the way characters face the foreground. The story also has a similar sci-fi mixed with a creepy vibe. This is almost like an unofficial Ninja Gaiden game. A...gaiden, if you will.

Title screen pops up after the first level, really hammering home the movie-ness of the game.

First level is a more traditional action game, and most of the game is like this. Hart can swing a sword (NP refers to it as a "whip" but it definitely looks and sounds like a sword), as well as firing limited gun shots and throwing even more limited grenades. Knowing when to use what weapon is the key to getting through this game without much fuss, as each one has specific situations where it works best.

The game quickly lets you know that it isn't messing around, and is going to give you a workout, by having a bunch of collapsing floors in the first level. They barely give you any time to react, either. Luckily the game isn't as tough as this first stage led me to believe, and I'd put it well below any of the three NGs in difficulty.

First boss is the maniac I'm here to apprehend, and he THROWS STEEL GIRDERS.

Pretty easy fight though, corner him and wail away with the sword. Every boss has a specific pattern and a specific weapon weakness, so beating them without taking a hit is usually very doable.

Another vice cop shows up. This one isn't rad to the max CHRISTY, she's just boring Sophia. She informs Hart that the "stuff" (...it's drugs) he found in the car on the highway all leads back to Chinatown, and the nefarious Kim Ron. He's a "suspicious man" who "can cast black magic". I'm surprised they didn't go all the way with it and call him a Chinaman.

Next level is Chinatown, and have I mentioned yet how good the graphics are? Seriously detailed stuff here, really excellent.

The nefarious Kim Ron can't duck, so I run close and slash away while ducking.

Good time to mention that you can run while ducking (at full speed) in this game and it's HUGELY useful.

Christy comes back with more info. Looks like the Stuff may have been emanating from south of the border, in a town called Ricardo. Hart is on the case! He'll beat up as many Chinamen as he has to!

Probably the second-most annoying enemies in this game are cats. Or maybe they're dogs, not sure. They're low to the ground and they do leaping attacks that are hard to dodge.

Most annoying? Birds. Which function exactly like birds in the Ninja Gaiden games, by swooping around in uneven paths.

Another level type, this one basically a first-person shooter where you scroll around and fire shots. It's a bit like playing T2: The Arcade Game with a controller, and since the cursor speed doesn't move very fast, it's probably the toughest of the game modes. Most important thing is to take out foreground pop-ups ASAP, as they can do a lot of damage.

Next stop: Central America. Hart reminisces on his time fighting in the El Salvador Civil War. Ahh, good times, he says while sipping coffee.

Here we have a retro platform game classic, the vertical waterfall where you jump from platform to platform.

And of course, since this is Central America, a deadly jungle follows. This is where the game gets significantly more difficult, but still nothing compared to the NG trilogy.

I mentioned birds being the most annoying foes. Well, that doubles when you're fighting them on tiny platforms over a pit. The knockback is real (though this game gives you far more midair-control than the Gaidens do).

Next boss is this massive tank. The weak point is that tiny blue speck, which I wail on with sword strikes.

::dramatic zoom-in:: EL GRANDE FIESTA BENEVENIDA!

Level 6 is full of ladders...that move, so timing and measuring your leaps are much more of a factor now.

Boss here is quite deadly, until you realize you can stand on the very edge of the screen here and swing away with near-impunity for the whole fight while it leaps from side to side.

Hart finds one of his cop buddies here, the 80's-named Reese. Except...

...Reese has been turned into some sort of cyborg (think he was the boss I just fought) and dies after telling Hart that a "man with his face" is behind this. A Hart clone?

Long story short, a corporation appears to be behind all of the recent weirdness, so Hart is heading to their laboratories to get to the bottom of them turning people into cyborgs and stuff.

Also, this game is DARK.

Level 7 feels very much like an area that escaped from Ninja Gaiden 2. It's a train going through the wilderness while clouds roll by overhead.

This gives way to a sewer level (every game must have one) where currents lightly push you around.

Next boss is another challenging one that gets nullified once you find the weak point. In this case, it's ducking down and slashing away right about here, while being mindful of the current pushing you toward the pit.

Enemies get a lot more plentiful in level 8, and it's like the game is just piling them on now to overwhelm the player. You get a generous amount of HP, though, especially compared to the NG trilogy, so powering through without stopping to fight can work if all else fails.

There are also lots of conveyor belts and electric traps here, as Hart reaches the inner workings of the corporate laboratory.

Another very tough boss. I couldn't figure this one out, and ended up just firing the gun while jumping on the right side and trying to avoid the projectiles. There wasn't any good way to do this one that I could find.

Ryu: "Just a girl. Get outta here!"

Sophia is having none of it!

What is Hart's deal, anyway?

It seems Christy has gone missing, and Hart thinks it's tied into their investigation of this corporation.

The next area is full of embryo-things in glass tubes, along with vicious leaping apes and other various creepy lab-escapees.

Continue on, and the glass cases start to be full of human figures. Also the terrain becomes less mechanical and more alien/biological.

Next boss is this freakish monstrosity, and winning is a matter of chucking grenades from the opposing platforms. Easiest boss since the first couple of levels, and probably should have been way earlier, considering how rough the last few have been.

But wait! That was no boss, it was a battle suit that Christy was inside of, and it was running on autopilot with her unable to stop it. So basically, Hart just killed Christy.

This game is DARK.

Hart now notices that the guys in the glass cases...are HIM. As in, they're clones. Of Hart. Here in the corporate labs. What does it all MEAN?

::"No Easy Way Out" plays as Hart drives through the city at night::

Hart now heads for the corporate HQ, now that he's discovered all of their diabolical secrets.

Level 10 is the second (and last) shooter stage in the game. I kinda wish there were a couple more of these throughout the game.

The boss is some sort of mechanical centipede that slithers all around the road, hellbent on keeping Hart from getting to the HQ.

Not much left to say now. Nice Dirty Harry style magnum there.

Level 11 starts with the second (and final) first person shooter section. This...is probably the hardest part of the entire game and it isn't even close. The enemies come at you fast and furious here, and a lot of them seem to no-sell your bullets while they pummel you. HP can drop like a rock here compared to most of the game (if too many enemies get onscreen). Firing grenades is a good way to clear things out, but once you run out, it's tough. This section is fairly short, at least, and you just have to survive it.

This gets Hart into corporate HQ, which... looks like a level from Castlevania.

I expected there to be one really hard section by the end of this game, your Ninja Gaiden level 6-2, and sure enough there kinda is. Just nowhere near 6-2. This last part has Hart leaping across tiny, collapsing platforms while being menaced by all kinds of aggressive foes that leap out of the pits to attack. The key here is to chuck grenades that hit the next platform on the way, so that the explosion takes out the enemies as they leap out of the pits.

Finally, Hart meets the big boss of the corporation. And...it's HIM. Another clone! He reveals that they're both clones, two of many, whose only purpose in life is to keep running the corporation in perpetuity.

So...the story of the 2009 movie Moon is from Vice: Project Doom for the NES?

....yep, soon as this clone expires, Hart is next in line to take over and run the corporation. His programming brought him here, and another of him will awaken at some point and start heading here to replace him.

Dun dun DUNNNNN.

...it's literally Moon. Wonder if anyone ever noticed, or went after the makers of the movie for some kind of acknowledgement? Highly doubtful, this game wasn't a massive deal and the dev company American Sammy folded in 1995. All of this was just a twinkle in someone's memory by the time Moon came along.

Hart, of course, refuses to take his place as the next runner of the corporation, insisting he has his own will.

They then clash! You're mirror images, except the clone hits 3x as hard as Hart can.

There is a very specific key to winning this fight. Soon as he lands from a jump, if you're standing, he'll open fire with bullets. Duck the split second he opens fire, and blast him with your own shots while his shots sail overhead. Duck too soon, however, and he'll duck to blast you. So it requires precise timing, plus spatial management since your bullets don't have a terribly long range.

Of course, he has a final form, turning into this freakish monster. The key here is to avoid his leaps, then when he fires a bunch of energy waves out, jump over the lowest one and lob a grenade. That's it. Not the hardest fight, but not easy either.

The ending seems like it's a "bad ending", with the clone basically saying that everything will continue running. Hart then leaves to go back to his job as a cop. However, this is the only ending. Kinda a rough way to end things, since Hart didn't really fix anything and lost a few friends in the process. Maybe they were planning a sequel? At least Hart didn't wither away due to his clone-ness. ...not sure why not, given that the clones were clearly on borrowed time.

Well, it is what it is, and the game is actually pretty damn good. I think we found us a hidden gem here.

And now...Nintendo Power shots. Their coverage of this game has some oomph, and this was when they were still spending a lot of pages on each game.

The stages are very simple straightforward maps

Here's the SUSPICIOUS CHINAMAN. I bet he also has a shifty gaze!

Here is El Grande Fiesta Bienvenido

I like how they flesh out the bosses and make them all interesting.

This is a long game for an NES-era platformer. It didn't need to be this long to get by, and could have gotten away with a few less levels.

Here's the ill-fated confrontation with Christy.

"THERE'S NO EASY WAY OUUUT!"

"THERE'S NO SHORT-CUT HOOOME!"

Good game here. It's absolutely a product of its time, and has a lot in common with the action movies of that era.