User:Bro3256

Hello there! My name is Brenden but you can call me Bro. I am a 21 year old video game player and have a passion in researching video games, mostly from the 80s and 90s.

About Me
I was born on April 7th 2002, growing up I had trouble connecting with other kids and would later be diagnosed with ADHD. It wouldn't be until one day my dad got out his old NES for me to play. I had already been watching Mario videos on YouTube at this point but playing Super Mario Bros. on original hardware is what got me into retro gaming. Later I grew an interest in learning about these old games, especially from YouTube creator Gaming Historian. In 2015 I started seriously collecting video games and also begun exploring areas that a good amount of folks in America don't know a whole lot about, which led me to a rabbit hole of importing video games that I have yet to recover from.

The Famicom and NES fiasco
One of the main reasons why I founded FamiWiki was to clear up a long misconception about the Famicom being a simple regional variant of the NES. For the past 3 decades the Famicom has largely been seen as the "Japanese NES". I've noticed that this mainly came from folks who had a flawed understanding with Japanese gaming in general but also the lack of standard definitions that resulted in this mess such as console and platform being mixed up. I attempted to get the Famicom and NES separated on several wikis most notably Wikipedia, but due to how deep rooted these misconceptions were I failed to create change. FamiWiki has taken steps to properly document and organize both the console and software releases for the Family Computer, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Famicom, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. As of May 2023, FamiWiki is one of the only English wikis to have separated the Famicom and NES (and by proxy the Super Famicom and SNES) with many other wikis currently having everything under NES (and SNES). I will keep fighting for this change elsewhere and hopefully with the existence of FamiWiki that makes arguing for the separation much easier.

Software Reviews
Super Mario Bros. (8-bit Nintendo, 1985)

What else can be said at this point? It's not only an important game for Nintendo but an important game for the entire video game industry. It's by far the most jam packed Famicom game when it released back in September 1985 and was more or less the last hurrah for Famicom cartridge games from Nintendo before moving to the Disk System (and we all know how that ended). Meanwhile in North America this game is credited for saving the video game industry which I personally think is a bit silly although there is some level of truth to that. As for the game itself, its still fun 35+ years later! This is the game that got me into retro gaming and I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't played this on original hardware when I was a kid. A timeless game that will never get old.

Dragon Quest (Famicom, 1986)

While western players are mostly unaware of the importance of the Dragon Quest series, it's as important for role-playing games as Super Mario Bros. was for platforming games. Unlike Super Mario Bros. however the original game is hard to go back to. It is a chore to do really anything in the original game that future ports and remakes rectified. It's also not a very long game outside of having to grind for a while. I'd only recommend playing the original release if you really want to experience what kickstarted this legendary series. Otherwise play any other version along with Dragon Quest 2.

BPS Tetris (Famicom, 1988)

Let's get this out of the way, this is by far the worst 8-bit Nintendo console port of Tetris. What kills this version is the controls as the Famicom version is based on various computer ports Bullet Proof Software also developed but for some reason directly mapped the controls from said computer versions onto the Famicom controller. What used to be space to hard drop is now the A button and you have no way of soft dropping. You rotate by pressing the directional buttons which makes trying to play this version a chore. While it's historically an important release there's little reason to play this one now.

Nintendo Tetris (NES, 1989)

One of the dozen ports of the original falling block puzzle game, Tetris by Nintendo on the NES is easily the best version on 8-bit Nintendo hardware. Sure feature wise its lacking compared to Tengen's NES version but it plays far better than anything from Tengen. There is a good reason why this is the go-to version for competitive Classic Tetris.

Captain Tsubasa Vol. II: Super Striker (Famicom, 1990)

I don't normally sit down to play sports games, but very few managed to hook me quite like Captain Tsubasa Vol. II: Super Striker. This is easily my favorite sports game on the Famicom, easy to play and understand but hard to master. Even when you do lose against the computer you still level up and have a slightly better chance at winning the next game so there is incentive to keep on playing and eventually beat the game. I couldn't recommend this more than enough.

Sanrio Carnival (Famicom, 1990)

The first Famicom game to be published by Character Soft and while its not one of the best puzzle games released at the time, it's not bad either. The problem with this game is purely due to there being better alternatives to similar playing games such as Puyo Puyo, but if you want to play a puzzle game that plays a bit differently, this isn't the worst option.

'''Gimmick! (Famicom, 1992)'''

This is without a doubt the best game to have been released during the initial lifespan of the Famicom. The music is outstanding that sadly didn't hit as hard when it released in Scandinavia as Mr. Gimmick on the NES due to hardware differences. While it is challenging its never unforgiving as with enough practice you can easily beat this in less than an hour. Unfortunately getting ahold of an original cartridge will set you back tens of thousands of yen or a few hundred dollars but thankfully with the release of Special Edition the game can now be played on modern platforms so I'd recommend picking that release up if you want to experience this masterpiece.

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