The Nintendo Fun Club High Score Competition is Calling Your Name
Issue #003 Continued - July 1987
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Sweet Nintendo Scorepads
Nintendo of America launched the Nintendo Fun Club newsletter in early 1987, and with it, an advertisement for FREE goodies.
Goodies like the How to Win at Super Mario Bros. book which I briefly covered here and these nifty Nintendo scorepads for Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, and Hogan’s Alley respectively.
Why these three games, you ask? I’m unsure if they were chosen at random or because they sold well. Either way, all three were featured prominently in that first issue of the Nintendo Fun Club newsletter, and all three were part of the Nintendo Fun Club High Score Competition.
Here are instructions directly from the newsletter…
Here’s your chance to become famous! The Nintendo Fun Club is sponsoring a nationwide High Score competition open only to Fun Club members.
Meet the challenge and submit your best scores for SUPER MARIO BROS., EXCITEBIKE, or HOGAN’S ALLEY (or all three!)
Winners’ names and scores will be printed in a future issue of NINTENDO FUN CLUB NEWS, and also in “Top Score,” a publication of the Amusement Players Association. (see Page 6 for related story).
How to Enter
1. Write the score of your game on an Official Nintendo Scoresheet. (To get your official Scorepad set, see brochure in this mailing).
2. Take a photograph of your TV screen showing your score. (For best results, turn off all lights in room, do not use a flash, and use a 35mm camera if possible)
3. Mail both the photograph and your Official Scoresheet to:
Nintendo Fun Club
High Score Competition
P.O. Box 957
Redmond, WA 98052
You may enter as many times as you want (practice makes perfect) for any of the featured games you choose. Entries that are submitted without a photograph or an Official Scoresheet will not be accepted. Good luck!
Hey, even if you didn’t care about high score bragging rights, free stuff is free stuff. Well… “free.” I bet both the Scorepad set and the book still cost shipping and handling, but I didn’t see that mentioned in the newsletter.
At any rate, here’s what you could expect from the EXCITEBIKE scorepad…
So much space is devoted to teaching you how to design your own courses, even though you’re only allowed to use Selection A solo races in the High Score competition. It’s cool and all, just odd, since Design Mode information could be found in the Excitebike NES manual.
Here’s the HOGAN’S ALLEY scorepad…
Nintendo wants you to stand at least eight feet from the screen for your score to count, which is fair. Still, how would they have been able to tell if you were lying or not?
The 1980s was a more trusting time.
And finally, my personal favorite, the SUPER MARIO BROS. scorepad…
The “Discovery Log” that allows you to keep track of the different kinds of power-ups and secrets as you progress is the absolute tops.
Perhaps the Log is rendered moot if you also got the How to Win at Super Mario Bros. book, but still a neat addition for the hardcore sort who would never use a strategy guide.
Did you or anyone you know ever have these scorepads? Most importantly, did you ever send your high score in to get judged by Nintendo of America’s game wizards? Let me know in the comments!
BOMB SWEEPER
Game & Watch! Before Nintendo unleashed the NES upon a wary United States in 1986, the company had already seen reasonable success with their single and dual-screen Game & Watch handheld line in the early 80s.
But by mid-1987, as the company grew more focused on their booming Famicom/NES business, Game & Watch releases became more sporadic.
Bomb Sweeper is a curious and clever late entry into the Game & Watch lineup, one I’d personally never heard of until I researched it for this issue.
The following is quoted verbatim from the Nintendo Fandom page on Bomb Sweeper…
PLOT – Dynamite Jack, a masked bomber, has planted many bombs in the sewers. You play the role of John Solver, who must descend into the sewer and defuse the bombs before it’s too late!
GAMEPLAY – Using the D-pad to move John Solver, you must reach at least one of the bombs hidden in the walls to clear the screen and receive a bonus for the time remaining. The only obstacles in your path are the walls, which you must either maneuver around or push them along provided there is no obstruction in the way. Some levels are a test of speed, others are a test of logic and intelligence.
GAME A – Game A consists of a set sequence of maze layouts. These range from a maze requiring no wall-pushing to mazes where you must carefully choose which walls to move to reach the bombs. There is a constant 40-second time limit to each level. Every ten levels you will enter a scrolling maze where you must avoid getting squashed by the advancing walls until you reach the bomb at the end.
Whilst the generous time limit means you can rack up a very high score on this mode, the levels do get more and more devious and testing as you progress. This mode is for the logically minded player.
GAME B – Game B consists of a number of maze layouts, each level is chosen at random from the set. The levels are generally very straightforward and good players can complete each one in 2–4 seconds. The time limit begins at 40 seconds, but steadily reduces as you progress, until you are left with just 4 seconds for each level. However, this mode is potentially never-ending, thus the highest scores are possible. However, as there is no pause button, there is no rest and your reactions will be tested. This mode is definitely for the quick-thinking player.
Bomb Sweeper runs for about $125 used these days. One day, when I’m independently wealthy and running my very own private Nintendo museum, I’ll purchase the game and give you my uncensored personal thoughts.
Until then, here's a gameplay video.
At some point, I’ll be going over the history of the Game & Watch in full and highlight many of the games I missed from the early 80s.
In the meantime, did you own Bomb Sweeper or any other Game & Watch handhelds? Let me know in the comments!
*all images courtesy of eBay
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Good finds! Not much I'm familiar with here.
Don't recall these score sheets despite being part of the Nintendo Fun Club -- maybe I saw them but I just dismissed it as busywork. But my favorite part is the innocence of a world in which a kid says, "I made it to 6-1 in Super Mario Bros! Guys, I'm taking a photo and mailing this one in!"
Though I was never so innocent; a friend has a photo of himself beating SMB at like age 5 or 6. He kept up with the game into high school too, was always crazy good at it. So yeah, I never imagined that I was a gaming wizard.
Meanwhile the "Discovery Log" idea is a funny anecdote, but surely we were all committing that stuff to memory! The more meaningful the powerup, the more deeply it was seared into our brains.
Long, long ago, I had a girlfriend that really liked SMB but was so bad at it. She really struggled with managing Mario's running. So she had to very consciously tell herself that Mario needed to run for this part, then look down at the control pad to find the B-button, hold it, and then start running. And she played the game a LOT too, I want to be clear. I'm describing her after like 20 hours of practice trying to get better at it.
Anyway, she's the user I imagine for the Discovery Log.
As for Game & Watch, I had never heard of it until the Smash Bros. character was revealed. I'm really surprised that one released this late, and yet we still had no awareness of it. I wonder how widely it was marketed, how much shelf space was given to it at how many stores.
I was familiar with the Sega Master System just from seeing it in stores. I recall Toys R' Us having an unusually large amount of shelf space dedicated to SMS games circa 1988, so it entered my consciousness even though I never knew anyone who owned one. Yet Game & Watch never entered my consciousness the same way.
I had a few Nintendo Power issues and I called into the hotline one time. I never really interacted with Nintendo any other way outside of the video games themselves. But I find all of this stuff super fascinating. I love reading about the history of video game companies.