8-Bit Football, Baseball, and Whatever the Heck Clu Clu Land Is
NES Catalog #001-003
Nintendo is Great is a Substack devoted to playing and exploring every game ever released for a Nintendo console/handheld in chronological order. Some posts are free, some are for paid subscribers only. Don’t forget to sign up below. Thanks for reading!
On October 18th, 1985, Nintendo proudly presented our childhood. In New York City, anyway.
Los Angeles would eventually get the NES in February 1986, while the rest of the country – us poor rural folk – would finally see Nintendo’s first console on store shelves starting September 27, 1986.
The system launched with 17 games and a heavy emphasis on ROB “Don’t Call Me A Marketing Gimmick” the Robot. Can’t let the American public know that the NES is actually a video game console disguised as a VHS player, after all!
Much has been written about the history of the NES launch, and it’s all fascinating, so I recommend checking out the following articles if you want to learn more.
Oct. 18: 1985: Nintendo Entertainment System Launches
How Nintendo Conquered Manhattan in 1985
As for me and my Substack, however, we will discuss games. All the games! Nintendo Entertainment System Launch Titles Part 1, away!
10 YARD FIGHT
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
DEVELOPER: Irem
RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 1985 (JP), Oct. 18, 1985 (US), Dec. 6, 1986 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, MSX, PS4 (Arcade version), NS (Arcade version)
10-Yard Fight is an arcade football game developed by Irem and released in North American arcades in 1983, just as the market was beginning to crash. While I couldn’t find any hard evidence of how well the cabinet performed, I’m going to guess either “adequately” or “poorly” given the time frame of its release.
The arcade game and the NES release differ from one another in the ways you’d expect, like the arcade version having superior graphics and sound effects (the bone crunching noise is surprisingly realistic). But the NES release allows you to play defense as well as offense, unlike the arcade which only supports offense. The NES version also has a two-player simultaneous mode, a necessity for those lazy Saturday afternoons when your mom won’t take you to the video store to rent a better game.
Not that 10-Yard Fight is a terrible game, mind you, but it is a simple one. Limited plays. Basic mechanics. When playing offense, you smash your team into the opposing team and get the quarterback as close to the goal line as possible. With defense, tackle whoever has the ball on the opposing side as often as possible to prevent them from moving forward, then hope one of your team eventually intercepts the ball so play can switch back to you playing offense. You start in high school, move onto college, pro, playoff, Super Bowl, and finally, retirement and knee replacements around age 40.
Football taken down to its core, then. Or maybe not, I don’t know. I don’t care about football, which is why I think I like 10-Yard Fight still, nearly 40 years later. Even scrubs like me who don’t know what a down is can control an entire team running down the field all at once. That said, play it with a friend or sibling or someone who can appreciate the players’ probably unintentional pixelated rickets.
C+
WHAT I WROTE ABOUT 10-YARD FIGHT IN 2010
10 Yard Fight a.k.a the Japanese attempt to sabotage the sport of football. The year is 1985. Two Irem developers walk into a bar. They’re talking about Nintendo’s Famicom, or as it’s about to become known in the states, the “Nintendo Entertainment System.” They’re looking for a way to break into the American market, but how? They order a drink or five to forget their worries, and eventually get on the subject of how inane American football is. “Why would anyone play such a sport? Everyone knows baseball is the sport of kings!” (another shot down the throat). There’s a pause as the liquor burns holes into their stomachs. One of them snaps their fingers: “That’s it!” he says (in Japanese, not English). “We’ll become one of the first Japanese companies to develop a football game for the States. We’ll make a mockery of the sport, but sports fans will buy it anyway, because it will be the only one of its kind!” Cue mirthless laughter, more drinks, and hours of off key, heartfelt karaoke.
The next day, the developers nursed their hangovers with a cold compress and a couple dozen cigarettes. They realized they had already made a crappy football game for the arcades two years prior. That game was 10-Yard Fight. “Good enough,” they muttered, and stuck the code into an awkward grey casing.* Later that year, it would become one of the launch games for the Nintendo, and the world would know not to trust any football games developed outside of America.
D
*dramatization absolutely didn’t happen.
BASEBALL
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Nintendo
RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1983 (JP), Oct. 1985 (US), Sept. 1986 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, Famicom Disk System, Gamecube (via Animal Crossing), e-Reader, Virtual Console (Wii, Wii U), Nintendo Switch Online
Early NES sports games are difficult to play now, particularly if you have no nostalgia or affinity for them. They’re slow, crude, and rarely dynamic or engaging beyond a few minutes of play. Baseball is different. It’s an unpredictable wild beast of a game that’s both thrilling and infuriating in equal measure.
You have, at best, 75% control of your team at any given time. Example: even if you smash the Run button as hard as you can, your outfielders won’t run any faster. An incoming ball is not their immediate concern unless it lands directly on top of them. Another example: a pop fly that should land directly in your player’s outstretched mitt lands directly next to him for seemingly no reason. Both examples happen frequently. Shoddy programming? Glitches? Perhaps Baseball just likes to toy with its players? Who can say.
Baseball isn’t particularly enjoyable when you’re playing against the computer, which is considerably more adept in its skills than you are. Grab another person, however, and the game blossoms. Suddenly, you and a friend are wrestling with the game’s bizarre mechanics. The team that sucks the least in the outfield will likely win, but only if they’re able to hit the ball and score, which is its own unique challenge. No matter how many games you play, no matter how good you think you are, Baseball’s temperamental nature ensures that it’s anyone’s game up until the last brutal inning.
Baseball is indeed more than a game. It’s a revelation, an experience, a journey into the unknown. Just when you think you’ve cracked its code, the game throws you a screwball and profanity ensues. You hate it. You love it. Baseball has you in its snares and won’t let you go. Truly a king among the NES launch lineup.
C – by yourself
A – with a friend
WHAT I WROTE ABOUT BASEBALL IN 2011
“I grew up playing Baseball. It’s a simple, often boring game, but like any game one grows up with, nostalgic memories are forever attached to it. Something that fascinates me about Baseball, though, is how little its actual gaming value has changed. Even when I was a kid, I knew it wasn’t that good of a game. The computer cheated like mad; the in-fielders seemed to only catch hits when they felt like it; and the outfielders appeared to be running through sludge. Years later, I still know it’s not that good of a game, but the aforementioned flaws, along with other random quirks, strangely give the game character….”
NOSTALGIA: A-
ACTUAL: B-
CLU CLU LAND
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Nintendo
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1984 (JP), Oct. 1985 (US), Feb. 1987 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, Gamecube (via Animal Crossing), e-Reader, Virtual Console (Wii, 3DS, Wii U), Switch (Arcade Archives), Nintendo Switch Online
Clu Clu Land is less a game than an experiment that never feels quite right to play.
You steer Bubbles, a female balloonfish, around a series of mazes uncovering golden bars. In any given maze, these bars (the design of which would later be used as rupees for The Legend of Zelda) form an image that, once completed, ends the level and moves you onto the next maze. Hindering your progress are sea urchins called Unira that emerge from portals intermittently to meander around and get in your way. Bubbles can spit out frequencies that stun the Unira, allowing her to touch them (and splat them into a wall) without getting hurt.
To uncover the golden rupees, Bubbles must swing around poles in 90-degree angles, but this is easier said than done. While you do control Bubbles’ swinging abilities, she moves automatically through the level. Because she’s constantly moving and because the NES' has a stiff, unyielding D-pad, swinging her in the correct direction is burdensome. Also, her swings depend on the direction she's facing. If Bubbles is moving east, and you press left, she'll swing north, but if she's moving south and you press left, she'll swing west. Perhaps this doesn't sound too confusing, but in practice, a keen directional sense is required for success.
Clu Clu Land’s been around for decades now, and the experience has not become more intuitive with time. As of this writing, Nintendo has not attempted to refine the concept in a sequel nor have they released a version designed with an analog stick in mind. It’s a shame too, as the game carries that unique Nintendo spark of imagination and whimsy so prevalent in their earlier titles. Nintendo fans want to love Clu Clu Land, but the game, in its present form, cannot love them back.
C-
WHAT I WROTE ABOUT CLU CLU LAND IN 2011
“Clu Clu Land is one of these games that feels tailor-made for an arcade: it’s fast, it’s difficult, it’s both time-based and point driven, and its play style is definitely unique. While I wouldn’t cry out for Clu Clu Land‘s resurrection, I can appreciate the originality behind this early, oft-forgotten game.”
B-
NEXT TIME! - Duck Hunt, Excitebike, and Golf
Of these, Baseball is definitely the one that holds a place in my heart.
A friend and I rented 10-Yard Fight one time circa 1989. I recall being bewildered from not knowing the rules to football at the time. After experiencing its mechanics, my friend pronounced, "This game is more like 10-Yard Fart." A review that resonates across the decades. He later picked up Tecmo Bowl, a game that we both knew was too good to compare to any smelly bodily function, even with the word "bowl" just sitting there.
My childhood was such that I knew baseball pretty well by age 5 (learned from playing NES Baseball with dad) but didn't know much about football until a few years later (learned from playing Tecmo Bowl with that friend).
Clu Clu Land, on the other hand, is a game that after renting I suspected must be good but I just didn't "get it." As you said, I wanted to love it, and all these years later, maybe I still do want to. But I don't.
Oh man, I'm loving this so far. I was a Genesis kid in the early 90's, so a lot of the NES/SNES stuff I missed. Of course I had both.