Nintendo is Great is a Substack devoted to playing and exploring every game ever released for a Nintendo console/handheld in chronological order.
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Slalom
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
DEVELOPER: Rare
RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1987 (US), Oct. 15th, 1987 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade
The skiers in Slalom have large behinds. Now, when you’re traveling fast downhill on a mountain, you will likely be looking at the course, not the skier’s butts. But if you have any friends and they’re watching you play the game, the butts will draw all their attention and you will hear about it repeatedly while you’re trying to concentrate. You have been warned.
In Slalom, you race the clock downhill on one of three different mountains, Snowy Hill, Mt. Nasty, and Steep Peak. Each mountain has eight courses, a set time limit for you to complete the course, and a variety of crap for you to avoid. Other skiers get in your way, as do sledders, snowmen, and trees, all arranged in a variety of suspicious patterns. Should you hit any of these obstacles, your skier will twirl in the air, and either crash into the snow or land upright on his feet. Either way, it’s a sight.
Sets of two flags also occupy a significant amount of real estate on each course. Ski in between the arranged flag poles and you’ll receive a slight boost, but fail to ski through them, and you’ll slow down a bit. Sometimes these poles are spaced out nicely, but other times, you’ll have to decrease your speed, avoid the pretty boy skiers in your way, and squeeze through the narrowly spaced poles.
When you’re soaring down a course at 100km/h, with the wind at your face, and your butt in the air, Slalom is marvelous. If you hit a snow pile and execute some late 80s freestyle tricks, all the sweeter. Yes, the twenty-four courses don’t differ much in their construction, and yes, your skier is a bit wobbly at times, but who cares? Slalom is Excitebike on the snow, and that’s a very good thing.
Straight From the Arcade
Anytime I read about a Nintendo-published VS. arcade game, I always presume that it’s just the NES version of a game shoved into the PlayChoice-10 cabinet.
So imagine my surprise when I looked up VS. Slalom and found that it’s a legit arcade skiing game?! Released in 1986, a whole nine years before Namco’s Alpine Racer!
Has anyone played VS. Slalom out in the wild? Please let me know in the comments!
*images courtesy of Reddit, Internet Archive, Captain’s Auction Warehouse
Volleyball
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
DEVELOPER: Pax Softnica
RELEASE DATE: Mar. 1987 (US), Nov. 15th, 1987 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Famicom Disk System, Arcade, Virtual Console (Wii, Wii U), Nintendo Switch Online
Volleyball has a bunch of cute sprites, the Soviet Union as a playable team, and terrible hit detection. Welcome to 1987!
The title screen has two players hitting a volleyball back and forth to each other. Very nice, indeed. But do you see what lurks under their gentle volleying? A training mode, something that has not been seen in any Nintendo produced sports game up until this point. Its mere presence is intimidating. Is virtual volleyball really that hard to control, or do developers Pax Softnica just have no faith in the abilities of their players?
Turns out, six-player Olympic-style volleyball is proper difficult to get right in 8-bit form. For starters, the NES controller only has a D-pad and two buttons, which means doing anything other than hitting (or ‘setting’) the ball with ‘A’ is awkward and confusing. Whether you set, receive, serve, or spike, the game wants you to hit the ball with either ‘A’ or ‘B’ and direct its trajectory with the D-pad. This sounds simple in theory, but the in-game movements are so fast that just keeping track of the ball is difficult enough.
Which leads us to the ball’s shadow, a finicky apparition if ever there was one. Based on the shadow, sometimes you know exactly where the ball’s going to land, you hit it, and the game continues. Other times, you miscalculate, the ball lands in the wrong location - but this all happens so fast, you can’t discern why you messed up. All you’re left with is a pile of confusion, rage, and your opponent’s score rising ever upward.
Nintendo’s take on the most laidback, bro-chill of all sports might have an adorable presentation, but hot dog, does it play for keeps. Unless you can make peace with the controls, speed, and timing, Volleyball isn’t worth the effort.
Straight From the Famicom Disk System (and Arcade, Sort Of)
Volleyball was originally released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan on July 21st, 1986, and my word, is this cover adorable. Really makes you think you’re in for a good time here. Shame that this isn’t the case at all.
The NES and Famicom Disk System versions are nearly identical, save for some color changes on the title screen. The “Famicom Cup” was also renamed to the “World Cup” in the NES version.
VS. Volleyball was available in a PlayChoice-10 cabinet, along with - you guessed it - nine other games.
Was VS. Volleyball ever available to play outside of this cabinet? I couldn’t find any evidence to suggest otherwise, but individual sitdown cabinets were released for games like VS. Super Mario Bros. and VS. Goonies so anything’s possible.
Did you ever play one of these PlayChoice-10 cabinets in the wild? If so, what were the games offered in them?
*images courtesy of GameFAQs and Arcade Heroes
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Neither of these games mean much to me. But the Slalom arcade cabinet is a really cool find! I definitely never saw one. But I was always drawn to immersive cabinets. Now when I observe my son, I notice that he considers a cool cabinet the entire point of an arcade. If we're just going to stand up and play some game with a joystick, we might as well go home.
I remember the local Mexican place having a Playchoice-10 cabinet circa 1990. I distinctly remember playing Baseball Stars and Rockin' Kats on it, which sounds odd since those weren't Nintendo published games. But even at that time, I remember thinking it was kind of a rip-off and just something to do to pass the time because my parents gave me a quarter. I think a game rental at Blockbuster was $4 in those days, for a whole weekend, vs. like 2 minutes on the Playchoice for $0.25 (or maybe even $0.50). And when the exact same NES game is available at Blockbuster, it hits a little different compared to an arcade exclusive.