Caveman Games (NES) Quick Review
Remember all those history classes in school where they taught us over and over how it was the ancient Greeks who gave birth to what we now know as the Olympics? Well apparently they were wrong. Unless Nintendo is just making stuff up for video games...but they wouldn't do that...would they? Nonetheless, let's kick it back to the stone age and check out some Olympic style games!
The Good
- Theme-Specific Games. So the idea of caveman Olympics sounds pretty silly, but it actually comes off pretty well done. The games included in this one are mostly variations of Olympic games you're already familiar with. There's Mate Toss, which is a lot like disc toss, but instead of throwing a disc, you are hurling your cave-bride. There's also clubbing, a gladiator beat-down variation, Dino Vault and Dino Race which are (respectively) pole vaulting (over a dinosaur instead of a bar) and 100m dash/hurdle (except you're riding on a dinosaur's back and jumping over rocks instead of hurdles). There's even an original game which involves you sitting next to another cave-person (there's girls in here too) racing to get a fire started.
- Fun Games, And Controls Too. All of the variations in this game are a lot of fun to play, and the controls are pretty innovative, especially for an NES game. In the clubbing game, it's not just about mashing A or B to eliminate your opponent. Holding up on the D-pad while pressing A does a power swing, while pressing down and A makes you point behind your opponent to distract them. Even in the fire starting game, you have a meter below you to show your progress, with half of it being green and half being red. In the green section it's all about mashing A as fast as you can, but once you get it into the red you're supposed to find a combination of up and down to inhale and exhale air on the fire to get it roaring.
The Bad
- No Control Explanations. While the controls are fun in each game, you don't get any explanation as to what they are before the game (I had to make a sacrifice to the Google Gods to find out what they were). At first, it doesn't seem like an issue, with the very minimal options you have with an NES controller. But, as I explained above, some of these controls find ways to make great use of the limited options. So just mashing around on the controller won't help you out as well as an internet search well. Still, though, I've seen NES games that give you a quick on-screen text overlay with a brief description of the controls.
- Lonely Competiton. There are two modes of playing the different games in Caveman Games. One is practice mode, where you can choose from any of the seven games, and play or replay them as much as you want. The other mode is a challenge mode which pits you in a gauntlet of all the games. One downside to this is that you only get one crack at each of the games (technically more if the game you're playing has a best of three rounds). The other downside though is you're not actually competing against anybody but the high scores. Sure, there are rounds where you face off head-to-head against someone, but when you hit the results screen for each game it's only your score that pops up. The only thing you're trying to beat, really, are the records for each game. It just seems silly to put you in a competition when the only real competitor is you.
Is it Worth it?
When I picked this game up, it was merely because I literally had never heard of it before. I didn't research it or look into what it was because I wanted to be surprised by what popped up when I flipped the power on. What I got wasn't what I had expected, and it was definitely in a good way. This game is a unique and fun idea. Nintendo could have been lazy and just put cavemen into our current Olympic games, but no. They went all the way back to the stone age and made everything fit the theme and it's a really cool result. It would be more having you directly compete against other people, especially if it led up to an award ceremony (especially with how cool the cover art looks), but it's a small let down, and a very small price to pay for this fun game. You can find a loose copy for a little more than $5, or closer to $30 for a CIB copy. Picking up the loose cart definitely gets your money out of this one with it's gameplay, and if you go for a CIB copy, you get double the worth from the game and the cover art. I like the art for this one so much that I chose to use it instead of a picture of my cartridge like I generally do for these reviews.
The Good
- Theme-Specific Games. So the idea of caveman Olympics sounds pretty silly, but it actually comes off pretty well done. The games included in this one are mostly variations of Olympic games you're already familiar with. There's Mate Toss, which is a lot like disc toss, but instead of throwing a disc, you are hurling your cave-bride. There's also clubbing, a gladiator beat-down variation, Dino Vault and Dino Race which are (respectively) pole vaulting (over a dinosaur instead of a bar) and 100m dash/hurdle (except you're riding on a dinosaur's back and jumping over rocks instead of hurdles). There's even an original game which involves you sitting next to another cave-person (there's girls in here too) racing to get a fire started.
- Fun Games, And Controls Too. All of the variations in this game are a lot of fun to play, and the controls are pretty innovative, especially for an NES game. In the clubbing game, it's not just about mashing A or B to eliminate your opponent. Holding up on the D-pad while pressing A does a power swing, while pressing down and A makes you point behind your opponent to distract them. Even in the fire starting game, you have a meter below you to show your progress, with half of it being green and half being red. In the green section it's all about mashing A as fast as you can, but once you get it into the red you're supposed to find a combination of up and down to inhale and exhale air on the fire to get it roaring.
The Bad
- No Control Explanations. While the controls are fun in each game, you don't get any explanation as to what they are before the game (I had to make a sacrifice to the Google Gods to find out what they were). At first, it doesn't seem like an issue, with the very minimal options you have with an NES controller. But, as I explained above, some of these controls find ways to make great use of the limited options. So just mashing around on the controller won't help you out as well as an internet search well. Still, though, I've seen NES games that give you a quick on-screen text overlay with a brief description of the controls.
- Lonely Competiton. There are two modes of playing the different games in Caveman Games. One is practice mode, where you can choose from any of the seven games, and play or replay them as much as you want. The other mode is a challenge mode which pits you in a gauntlet of all the games. One downside to this is that you only get one crack at each of the games (technically more if the game you're playing has a best of three rounds). The other downside though is you're not actually competing against anybody but the high scores. Sure, there are rounds where you face off head-to-head against someone, but when you hit the results screen for each game it's only your score that pops up. The only thing you're trying to beat, really, are the records for each game. It just seems silly to put you in a competition when the only real competitor is you.
Is it Worth it?
When I picked this game up, it was merely because I literally had never heard of it before. I didn't research it or look into what it was because I wanted to be surprised by what popped up when I flipped the power on. What I got wasn't what I had expected, and it was definitely in a good way. This game is a unique and fun idea. Nintendo could have been lazy and just put cavemen into our current Olympic games, but no. They went all the way back to the stone age and made everything fit the theme and it's a really cool result. It would be more having you directly compete against other people, especially if it led up to an award ceremony (especially with how cool the cover art looks), but it's a small let down, and a very small price to pay for this fun game. You can find a loose copy for a little more than $5, or closer to $30 for a CIB copy. Picking up the loose cart definitely gets your money out of this one with it's gameplay, and if you go for a CIB copy, you get double the worth from the game and the cover art. I like the art for this one so much that I chose to use it instead of a picture of my cartridge like I generally do for these reviews.
