Compare these to the NES games from LJN ua-cam.com/video/yols92IkR3E/v-deo.html I stream some of these on Twitch - follow me! www.twitch.tv/johnblueriggs
When I was recovering from major surgery as a kid, they had a Nintendo you could check out and one of the games was "Where's Waldo?".... honestly the hip surgery was more pleasant than the game. Luckily the kid I shared a room with had his parents bring his games from home, so we played Contra and Gauntlet 2 a lot during the week I was there.
I remember renting home alone and it was so bad i got angry and demanded my mom drive me back to return it. I complained to the video store guy and told him how boring and repetitive it was and he just shrugged and said im not supposed to do this but....he let me switch it to master blaster what a weekend that was
That's very nice of the video rental guy to have done that for you ... and "Master Blaster" is one heck of a game and a very nice step up from "Home Alone."
Things not to put on a job resume : “Programmed NES games for THQ in the late 80s and early 90s” With that said , I got stuck with a couple of these rentals as a kid and hey, it got me through the weekend.
I agree, I got a copy of this for my birthday one year and despite the difficulty of the game I enjoyed playing it. A friend of mine borrowed it and was able to play through the whole game, while I watched him play. I am sure that had I written down the passwords and kept working at it, I would have beaten James Bond Jr. eventually. I did find it a cheap move on the developers part that to see the real ending of the game you had to play through the game a second time.
Most of these ratings were fairly accurate but it is super sad to see James Bond Jr at an F rating, difficulty wise its definitely the least friendly of THQ published games to get into and learn how to play without at least the manual or knowing facts before hand about it. But honestly, once you learn to get the gameplay down it becomes a decent challenge, and graphically and especially music wise the amazing Neil Baldwin soundtrack bumps it up to a C, as at least Eurocom were the most talented of the pool of developers THQ ever got to do a game for them, Eurocom really deserves more credit for what they have made, and of course, Neil Baldwin's efforts on the musical compositions always are worth the shout out.
Trivia, Wayne Gretsky's Hockey had two non NES sequels. Part 2 and 3 were PC, and the one for the NES was released in 1991 and was a port of the 1988 Wayne Gretsky's Hockey for the PC, Amiga, and DOS.
My Current Day Where's Waldo Experience: I pop it in, dance to the main title music for awhile, play it on easy mode, beat it (i have already beaten every difficulty, not doing that again) then wait for the main menu to pop back on. Do some more dancing to the main title music then power off the NES. :)
I think it was after R&S: veediots that I learned that their forte was licensed garbage, so not surprised with the way the list played out! At least they seemed to get better in recent years with THQ Nordic but back then... yeah it was like the kiss of death for those games back then.
I am one of those weird people that actually really liked Home Alone on the NES. Instead of a crappy platformer on the SNES it was a stay alive challenge. Admittedly a bit shallow but I enjoyed it.
The Where's Waldo books were never about finding Waldo, I mean they were, but I spent way more time pouring over the pages looking at all the crazy things.
As a kid, watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on Nickelodeon was the highlight of my weeknights. I was excited to finally rent the NES game when my local video store got it, on my birthday no less! That game contributed largely to that particular birthday pretty much sucking. It was soooooooo bad.
I grew up watching The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I meant, I grew with its reruns. It was one of those cartoons that would come on at like 5 a.m., 5:30 a.m. super early. The video game, however is great.
THQ, NES, those acronyms... :) I wrote a sequel story about the tomatoes becoming helpful. "Tomatoes of Happiness", I liked the Waldo book, they were like Highlights 'Search and Find' pages.
I just gotta wonder how often you’re going about your day and randomly think to yourself “wow I really wanna play some Wheres Waldo on the NES when i get home!” Lol
These videos make my day. I’m sure there are other companies you can do such as Square or Nintendo published games. I would love to see how you rate games such as StarTropics, Rad Racer, etc
Check out his previous videos and he may have done these. I believe Star Tropics is a nintendo game made from an American or European nintendo development team, so a ranking of that game would likely just go in ranking nintendo published games since the developer of Star Tropics likely just did two or three games.
If you are running out of NES games by publisher, rank by genre or similar such as golf, baseball, puzzle, racing, etc. It's a limitless well of nes content.
Loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, Peabody and Sherman, Johnny Quest, Fables of the Green Forest and The Mighty Hercules. All reasons why I would start my Saturday morning cartoons at 5:00am,
Fox had the best cartoons as a kid and my buddy has several vhs full of Saturday morning cartoons from the early 90s we were born in 87 so from when we were a kid ... Man street sharks haha why
Bart vs the Space Mutants and the Home Alone titles were developed by Imagineering, the dev arm of Absolute Entertainment. A number of former Activision programmers started the company and, since they owned the code and sounds, they reused the elements. Activision's games for 2600 also recycled code for different titles.
James Bond Jr. is not perfect but it's far from bad. It has an amazing soundtrack though. I also have a soft spot for Where's Waldo. You know it's bad but every now and then it's fun to play.
"Home Alone 2: Lost In New York" and "The Simpsons: Bart versus The Space Mutants" share a lot of sounds in common because both games came from the same developer right down to the sound engine: Imagineering in Glen Rock, New Jersey. They're not to be confused with Walt Disney Imagineering. Imagineering was apparently an in-house developer of Absolute Software, which would make sense considering the people involved with Imagineering were also involved with Absolute. And some of the other games on the list ... if it's developed by Radical Software, then that's almost always a guaranteed F.
I have the same The Great Waldo Search game by THQ for the SNES I also used to like the Waldo books very much I even remember back in the day Life cereal had Where’s Waldo things on the box
What a travesty that Waldo game is! The books were a favorite of mine, too. I loved just looking at all the stuff going on in the pictures on the giant pages of the books. They were intricate pieces of art, the game on the other hand...
Good to hear I'm not the only one. When you're a kid and still in your single digits, it's really cool. It was a very unique and innovative game back then too. It's much like Mario Paint, but it actually came out a little over a year *before* Mario Paint.
ugh, i remember renting home alone being so mad at it. i never thought the animation was falling down, it looked like the bandits just got crunched down and crumpled into a box. lol I did'nt translate the animation .
James Bond Jr is the best looking game by far of these. The game has one major problem: the time limit! Fun fact: this was actually another game called "John Smith: Special Agent". THQ picked it up and decided to put the James Bond Jr license on it.
Good job. You took a list of mostly lame games and made it quite entertaining for us. Looking forward to future ranking videos.👍 Oh, and hopefully the next list will give you more quality to work with. Lol.
It's clear from what he said about all these late release games that video games were never THQ friends; and, they just hopped on the bandwagon once the game market became very profitable. Likely was just a capitalist venture - consider all the license games they had - where rich people bunched their money together to make crappy games that relied on a film or IP that they paid a lot for to move items to unexpected kids and grandparents buying for grandchildren.
I played Home Alone 2 about 2000 times because it was my favorite movie as a kid and never knew what to do during that damn elevator section on the first level. And I had to wait months until I got my next game or wait weekly for movie rental night just to play something else. Oh the memories of playing crap nes games lol.
If anyone is wondering why Two THQ games, Home Alone 2 and Swamp Thing, use sfx from The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutant, that is because of their Developer, Imagineering, Inc. of Glen Rock, NJ, which makes the music really stink, IMO. Guess you chose to rule out the Game Show games, Win, Lose, or Draw, Fun House, and MTV Remote Control.
I hated on new SNL for the last 20 years without ever really watching, but it's actually as good as it's ever been. New music and movies do suck though. Thanks for another great video.
Its funny I actually liked the original Wheres Waldo better than the Great Waldo Search. Yes you could beat it in about 10 mins and the harder difficulty could get very frustrating, especially the subway level where if the guy gets you your timer goes from 100-0 in 3 secs, but just like you I kept going back to it. Once I beat the Great Waldo Search I never went back.
Brennan Stimpy didn't come out of nowhere the animators who created it got their start on Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse the New Adventures (not to be confused with the new adventures of mighty mouse) If you watch mighty mouse the new adventures you will quickly see how much influence it had on running Stimpy unfortunately despite airing on Saturday mornings most people don't remember it
Where's Waldo for the NES has three game difficulty levels. In easy, he can be seen immediately. In the other two, he's practically invisible. And what the hell was up with that slot machine? NEVER beaten that!
Compare these to the NES games from LJN ua-cam.com/video/yols92IkR3E/v-deo.html
I stream some of these on Twitch - follow me! www.twitch.tv/johnblueriggs
hi Riggs, I never got to see Attack of the Killer tomatoes wanted to though RIP, great video Riggs
Hi John Riggs!!!
I love Troma movie's!!!
AVGN played all of this games
Good idea on that one John !
When I was recovering from major surgery as a kid, they had a Nintendo you could check out and one of the games was "Where's Waldo?".... honestly the hip surgery was more pleasant than the game. Luckily the kid I shared a room with had his parents bring his games from home, so we played Contra and Gauntlet 2 a lot during the week I was there.
Thank God for good neighbors!
I remember renting home alone and it was so bad i got angry and demanded my mom drive me back to return it. I complained to the video store guy and told him how boring and repetitive it was and he just shrugged and said im not supposed to do this but....he let me switch it to master blaster what a weekend that was
That's very nice of the video rental guy to have done that for you ... and "Master Blaster" is one heck of a game and a very nice step up from "Home Alone."
We used to say that THQ stood for “TO HELL with QUALITY”
Things not to put on a job resume :
“Programmed NES games for THQ in the late 80s and early 90s”
With that said , I got stuck with a couple of these rentals as a kid and hey, it got me through the weekend.
I never played most of the games on this list, it looks like that was a good thing!
Same here, though did play a few of the SNES variants.
I was born in 1981 and I remember the NES just being full of crappy games. Lol. Super Nintendo though that system was awesome
Well thank goodness THQ made some great wrestling games for the N64. Quite the rocky start on the NES 😬
James Bond Jr seems to have cool effects and good music at least
Dang. That Swamp Thing burn was brutal 😅
First thing I thought of when I saw the title of this video is "just drag every game into the F column and call it a day".
Tim Curry doing the voice of Captain James Hook on Peter Pan & the Pirates was the one highlight of the cartoon.
Space!!!!
James Bond Jr. is at least a C. It's tough to start, but I'm glad I got through it. Not a bad soundtrack either.
I agree, I got a copy of this for my birthday one year and despite the difficulty of the game I enjoyed playing it. A friend of mine borrowed it and was able to play through the whole game, while I watched him play. I am sure that had I written down the passwords and kept working at it, I would have beaten James Bond Jr. eventually.
I did find it a cheap move on the developers part that to see the real ending of the game you had to play through the game a second time.
You have my vote! Soundtrack is fine, so is gameplay. It feels a bit repetitive, though.
Most of these ratings were fairly accurate but it is super sad to see James Bond Jr at an F rating, difficulty wise its definitely the least friendly of THQ published games to get into and learn how to play without at least the manual or knowing facts before hand about it. But honestly, once you learn to get the gameplay down it becomes a decent challenge, and graphically and especially music wise the amazing Neil Baldwin soundtrack bumps it up to a C, as at least Eurocom were the most talented of the pool of developers THQ ever got to do a game for them, Eurocom really deserves more credit for what they have made, and of course, Neil Baldwin's efforts on the musical compositions always are worth the shout out.
Agreed
What else did Eurocom make?
Trivia, Wayne Gretsky's Hockey had two non NES sequels. Part 2 and 3 were PC, and the one for the NES was released in 1991 and was a port of the 1988 Wayne Gretsky's Hockey for the PC, Amiga, and DOS.
My Current Day Where's Waldo Experience:
I pop it in, dance to the main title music for awhile, play it on easy mode, beat it (i have already beaten every difficulty, not doing that again) then wait for the main menu to pop back on. Do some more dancing to the main title music then power off the NES. :)
From what im seeing Rocky and Bullwinkle is just Wayne's World it is totally the same engine
I grew up with the old Ren & Stimpy cartoons--they were hysterical. The 2003 revival on Spike TV wasn't the same.
I think it was after R&S: veediots that I learned that their forte was licensed garbage, so not surprised with the way the list played out! At least they seemed to get better in recent years with THQ Nordic but back then... yeah it was like the kiss of death for those games back then.
Just starting the video, I see some Fs in my future! Lol
The Waldo games not your jam? Lol
Less Fs than I was expecting
I am one of those weird people that actually really liked Home Alone on the NES. Instead of a crappy platformer on the SNES it was a stay alive challenge. Admittedly a bit shallow but I enjoyed it.
Wayne Gretzky's hockey was a worse betrayal than him leaving the Edmonton Oilers.
The Where's Waldo books were never about finding Waldo, I mean they were, but I spent way more time pouring over the pages looking at all the crazy things.
As a kid, watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on Nickelodeon was the highlight of my weeknights. I was excited to finally rent the NES game when my local video store got it, on my birthday no less! That game contributed largely to that particular birthday pretty much sucking. It was soooooooo bad.
And now, here's something we hope you'll really like... but don't count on it!
Hahahahahaha you made me spit out my wine with laughter with that “Figure it out”reference 🤣🤣🤣😂😂
I grew up watching The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I meant, I grew with its reruns. It was one of those cartoons that would come on at like 5 a.m., 5:30 a.m. super early. The video game, however is great.
"Figure it out" pops into my head more than it should
THQ, NES, those acronyms... :) I wrote a sequel story about the tomatoes becoming helpful. "Tomatoes of Happiness", I liked the Waldo book, they were like Highlights 'Search and Find' pages.
Everyone asks "where is waldo", no one cares "how is waldo".
He's not doing well if he's escaping on a one way trip to the Moon @ the end of the 1st game😂
Hehe.
@William Burns Is Waldo?
I have the hockey game: On the scoreboard it says “No smoking 🚬 unless you are on Fire 🔥!!
Hair is off the charts bro. Love it, great vid & have a nice day!!
Where's Waldo was so bad it kind of wrapped back around off the scale and became fun. I know it's bad, but it's amusing in its badness. Great video!
I just gotta wonder how often you’re going about your day and randomly think to yourself “wow I really wanna play some Wheres Waldo on the NES when i get home!” Lol
I've never even seen the Home Alone on NES, let alone played it. Definitely has nothing on the Genesis version by this footage. Sad list; good video.
I love the way you overlayed the "F" grade for "Home Alone" onto the "Oh no!" text.
"F! Oh no!"
My sentiments exactly.
These videos make my day. I’m sure there are other companies you can do such as Square or Nintendo published games. I would love to see how you rate games such as StarTropics, Rad Racer, etc
Check out his previous videos and he may have done these. I believe Star Tropics is a nintendo game made from an American or European nintendo development team, so a ranking of that game would likely just go in ranking nintendo published games since the developer of Star Tropics likely just did two or three games.
Star Tropics was in his video covering top games with a beach theme
Long, rough week at work. Seeing a new riggs video, perfect way to kick off a long weekend!
Feeling great John !
I loved Ren and Stimpy when it was on Nickelodeon and I really liked the NES game. There was some cool puzzle elements and I enjoyed the platforming.
"Just like they're making that new Little Nemo game..."
WHAT?! First I've heard!
Looking at my CIB copy of the NES game, reflecting on great childhood memories.
15:19
Did you know Wayne and Garth are doing ads for UberEats now?
It's like people only do things because they get paid. And that's just really sad.
home alone could be reskinned into John carpenter's Halloween. Have Laurie evading Michael Myers.
Fox's PEter Pan and the Pirates was a great cartoon really! The game obviously not so much.
I agree
If they had a digitized Tim Curry voice for Hook the game would have improved 2 times over 😉
Oh no THQ lol.
Rented Home Alone and Where’s Waldo as a kid. Each time my lamentations regarding my selections were immediate.
If you are running out of NES games by publisher, rank by genre or similar such as golf, baseball, puzzle, racing, etc. It's a limitless well of nes content.
Remember the Swamp thing movie and the tv series ?., wow you woke up some memories i totally forgot about swamp thing
Calling Home Alone for the NES 'kind of not fun' is the understatement of the day.
Loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, Peabody and Sherman, Johnny Quest, Fables of the Green Forest and The Mighty Hercules. All reasons why I would start my Saturday morning cartoons at 5:00am,
Fox had the best cartoons as a kid and my buddy has several vhs full of Saturday morning cartoons from the early 90s we were born in 87 so from when we were a kid ... Man street sharks haha why
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do Sega Genesis rankings! I think yours would be awesome!!!
Dude the Handcock stole Riggs idea and is already doing them. Not nearly the quality. Apparently he has trouble coming up w his own original ideas.
I know Hancock is doing them, and I think Riggs can do a better job. That's why I asked.
Bart vs the Space Mutants and the Home Alone titles were developed by Imagineering, the dev arm of Absolute Entertainment. A number of former Activision programmers started the company and, since they owned the code and sounds, they reused the elements. Activision's games for 2600 also recycled code for different titles.
They could make a where's waldo on modern systems and do it justice with the better technology.
James Bond Jr. is not perfect but it's far from bad. It has an amazing soundtrack though. I also have a soft spot for Where's Waldo. You know it's bad but every now and then it's fun to play.
Kevin was orange in the Home Alone 2 video game as a nod to a celebrity cameo in the film version.
Keep it up John, we love you up in Canada! #1 keep em coming!
Thanks John!
"Home Alone 2: Lost In New York" and "The Simpsons: Bart versus The Space Mutants" share a lot of sounds in common because both games came from the same developer right down to the sound engine: Imagineering in Glen Rock, New Jersey. They're not to be confused with Walt Disney Imagineering.
Imagineering was apparently an in-house developer of Absolute Software, which would make sense considering the people involved with Imagineering were also involved with Absolute.
And some of the other games on the list ... if it's developed by Radical Software, then that's almost always a guaranteed F.
Just so you know, that very last Waldo, he was in the car and you clicked on the very corner of his elbow so it counted!
“You give everyone sweet chin music” 😂🤣😂☠️☠️
Love the ranking videos!
How many more nes game ranking videos can you make..I love em..
I played the hell out of Ren & Stimpy. Didn’t have cable. Never watched the show. My NES was my only window!
Thanks for the content Mister Riggs.
I have the same The Great Waldo Search game by THQ for the SNES I also used to like the Waldo books very much I even remember back in the day Life cereal had Where’s Waldo things on the box
I loved Waldo Growing up!!!
What a travesty that Waldo game is! The books were a favorite of mine, too. I loved just looking at all the stuff going on in the pictures on the giant pages of the books. They were intricate pieces of art, the game on the other hand...
You’ve really inspired me to keep going with my gaming channel.,!
Videomation was one of my first Nintendo games. I loved it!
Good to hear I'm not the only one. When you're a kid and still in your single digits, it's really cool. It was a very unique and innovative game back then too. It's much like Mario Paint, but it actually came out a little over a year *before* Mario Paint.
how do you play all nes games ? how do you have time to do so ?
Proper scheduling.
You may enjoy the classic Swamp Thing comics from the 70's and 80's there still making new stuff about him currently.
I dig the blue frames on your glasses
The manual for Where’s Waldo specifically says Waldo where’s different colored clothes on the harder difficulties
ugh, i remember renting home alone being so mad at it. i never thought the animation was falling down, it looked like the bandits just got crunched down and crumpled into a box. lol I did'nt translate the animation .
James Bond Jr is the best looking game by far of these.
The game has one major problem: the time limit!
Fun fact: this was actually another game called "John Smith: Special Agent". THQ picked it up and decided to put the James Bond Jr license on it.
I never knew that. Great game.
I actually really enjoyed Home alone, liked the concept and its not like any other game on the NES!
Good job. You took a list of mostly lame games and made it quite entertaining for us. Looking forward to future ranking videos.👍 Oh, and hopefully the next list will give you more quality to work with. Lol.
It's clear from what he said about all these late release games that video games were never THQ friends; and, they just hopped on the bandwagon once the game market became very profitable. Likely was just a capitalist venture - consider all the license games they had - where rich people bunched their money together to make crappy games that relied on a film or IP that they paid a lot for to move items to unexpected kids and grandparents buying for grandchildren.
The only thing I remember about the Swamp Thing movie was Adrienne Barbeau.
Nice with the shout out to Adam Koralik!
Definitely rented Videomation more than once. I remember trying to set my VHS up to record what I made, but I don't think I ever succeeded...
7:54
Did John just say NEW LITTLE NEMO GAME?!?!?!
Donald Trump was in the Hone Alone 2 movie. Characters in the video game are unnaturally orange. Coincidence?
I still go back to Home Alone. I know it's bad, but I have to beat it. Someday. Lol
It’s really not that bad of a game. It’s actually pretty fun if you give it a chance and learn how to play it.
THQ was founded by the same guy who founded LJN proving LJN's problems were not a bug but a feature.
New glasses ... Solid color
I played Home Alone 2 about 2000 times because it was my favorite movie as a kid and never knew what to do during that damn elevator section on the first level. And I had to wait months until I got my next game or wait weekly for movie rental night just to play something else. Oh the memories of playing crap nes games lol.
James Bond Jr & Quest 64 both THQ but I loved em 😰
These guys make LJN look like gods lol
Both Home Alone 2 and Bart vs the Space Mutants we’re developed by Imagineering (with David Crane, Garry Kitchen and composer Mark Van Hecke)
Not only Home Alone 2 from this video. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Swamp Thing as well.
If anyone is wondering why Two THQ games, Home Alone 2 and Swamp Thing, use sfx from The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutant, that is because of their Developer, Imagineering, Inc. of Glen Rock, NJ, which makes the music really stink, IMO.
Guess you chose to rule out the Game Show games, Win, Lose, or Draw, Fun House, and MTV Remote Control.
I didn't miss anything by not playing these games.
I hated on new SNL for the last 20 years without ever really watching, but it's actually as good as it's ever been. New music and movies do suck though. Thanks for another great video.
Finally, a video that proves my theory that THQ was worse than acclaim and LGN
Its funny I actually liked the original Wheres Waldo better than the Great Waldo Search. Yes you could beat it in about 10 mins and the harder difficulty could get very frustrating, especially the subway level where if the guy gets you your timer goes from 100-0 in 3 secs, but just like you I kept going back to it. Once I beat the Great Waldo Search I never went back.
Brennan Stimpy didn't come out of nowhere the animators who created it got their start on Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse the New Adventures (not to be confused with the new adventures of mighty mouse)
If you watch mighty mouse the new adventures you will quickly see how much influence it had on running Stimpy unfortunately despite airing on Saturday mornings most people don't remember it
New record for F's!! Man that's a lot of bad games!
I hope to oneday see ranking videos of Gameboy games
You should do a ranking of companies as a whole. Where would THQ or LGN end up?
Where's Waldo for the NES has three game difficulty levels. In easy, he can be seen immediately. In the other two, he's practically invisible.
And what the hell was up with that slot machine? NEVER beaten that!
Images that precede unfortunate events
John I love these vids man. You always seem to give the opinions I have and you’re very reasonable. Can’t wait until you move on to other systems :)