Digging for treasure in the Panda Cave
Sorting through several dusty bins and cartridges this morning, I stumbled upon a few 8-bit diamonds in the rough that have been left under appreciated, and forgotten. Be it that they were shadowed by games of a noticeable name or franchise or what have you. Even through the resurgence of retro that is prevalent as of late,these next three titles remain off the lips of fowl mouthed youtuber’s and “too school for cool” hipster bloggers for whatever reason, and because of this remain still obscure. By me, this is very fine and dandy,it only means that these titles will remain on the cheap side even by E-bay standards. In turn this good news for you, because you read the articles of the man-child known as Panda-Rex… you can jump on the wagon before it receives the “band” label. You guys are smart,I’m sure it is not news to you that the truest,purest form of hipster are us nerds.Hell ,we do things before “before they were cool” but alas we remain lame and socially inept at the back of the bar avoiding all eye contact….What was i talking about??? Oh DAZ right,here are some obscure (and still cheap) NES games,to rap your very impressionable BJ lips around.
Kabuki Quantum Fighter
If you are following my writing on this site (you probably aint) ,I did a extensive review of this game.Apart from the bad ass cover art,it has a MUHFUGGIN demonic Rottweiler, It has really good controls and game play. You are some sort of enraged geisha or something destroying a virus in a computer…or something. The game play is Ninja Gaiden meets Megaman. The platforming aspects are difficult but fair,much like the early levels in Gaiden. The Megaman comes in with the boss fights,you vanquish your enemies and you gain there powers but,get this, instead of shooting the projectiles out of a gauntlet or gun you fling your fabulous hair and shoot enemies that way. The over all weirdness is probably to blame for its obscurity .
Gun.Smoke
One of the earlier Capcom titles on the NES. Yes children,there was a time that Capcom didn’t make Remixed games and DLC. This is pretty much a straight forward top down shooter,set in the time of cowboys and cowladies ,1960′s or something. You get power ups like shot guns ,Magnums and riding horses. You can actually buy power ups and horses with the points you receive, you can also purchase wanted posters which sends you to the boss fight automatic like. A fairly short game, it still remains fun and you will find yourself trying to beat your record time and time again.
Crystalis
This for all intents and purposes is a Zelda clone.by no means is this a negative thing. Most top down hack and slash games of the era are considered so. This is by far my favorite  of the clones and it is due to the story which involves time travel ,impending doom and unlikely hero that has been chosen by an ancient prophecy….oh wait. Its Zelda with a time machine. It has RPG elements ,so its considered an action RPG…just play the game, dammit. If you like Zelda games but would like a change of pace.
