An EADJ Crapcade Review: Power Games System, Part 2 of 3

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This second Crapcade review of the Power Games System is by Tom Weingard)

Aside from morbid curiosity aroused by the laughable packaging, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to play Power Games. David actually gave it to me to play before he got a chance to break it out himself, and I took so long to play it that he took it back, played it, and then gave it back to me. His assessment was that Power Games is an assortment of Nintendo rip-offs, which I thought meant games like Super Maggio Bros and Tecman Bowl. The hilarity of playing Castlemania still wasn’t enough to motivate me to play it, however, and it continued to sit in my office for another 2 weeks. Nevertheless, last night at 2PM, feeling guilty about keeping it for so long, I plugged it in my bedroom CRT and gave it a whirl. And the disappointment did not disappoint.

I opened the package and saw a variety of gadgets, my favorite of which was the penguin console with glowing eyes. I only realized it was the console when I saw that the only cartridge fit in the penguin’s back like a spine. Wonderfully random. The two controllers, which are needlessly different from one another, felt like hollow plastic shells, as if they were made larger than their internal components to feel more grandiose and hi-tech. Setup was pretty easy after that, as it took me longer to figure out how to change the input signal on my tv than get the games started.

The menu of games is just a text list on a black screen with all the games you can play. The first selection I saw was “Contra II.” Not so bad, as the Contra franchise has always been enjoyable. Upon remembering David say they were hack games, I was presently surprised to discover it was the actual Super Contra game for Nintendo, albeit with a title screen that said “Super Dung Wak He Do” or some such Japanese nonsense written over the word ‘Contra’. I played the first couple boards and was like cool, the real game! So far so good, even with the clunky controller and the annoying need to point the infrared signal at the penguin to make the controller work.

The next game down the list that caught my eye was “Tecmo Bowl.” One of my top 5 faves of all time—hard for anyone to screw up, I thought. I pressed the button and viola! “Dynamite Bowl” pops up on the screen. Just a clever twist on Tecmo football, right? No! It was an actual bowling game! Tecmo Bowl was a bowling game called Dynamite Bowl! I didn’t know whether to laugh or…actually I didn’t want to expend that much energy caring. So I hit the reset button.

I continued scrolling through the titles all the while wanting to go to bed, because I figured I’d give it the complete college try. To be honest, I had more fun reading the names of the games than I did playing them. Among the nuggets of gold you can find on Power Games: DONGkey Kong 1 (aside from being about an ape’s purple-headed yogurt slinger, why note that it’s the first in the series?), Milk Nuts (won’t even try to explain), some Japanese title where the object of the game is to jump up stairs and bash your head against bricks, and Ninja Guider. The only two games I had some fun with were “T & C Surf”, which I totally forgot about, and “City Connection”, which the glorious website Nintendo8.com (check it out) doesn’t even have. City Connection is the mindless gem where you try to drive your Smart car over all the bricks on the screen while you avoid crashing into cop cars and cats waving flags. Awesome.

After combing through the stack of 110+ Nintendo relics, I decided that the frustratingly complicated 6-button Nintendo controller (whu?), coupled with the lack of instruction manuals and misleading menu titles were too annoying to deal with. Conscience having been cleared, I unplugged the penguin and put it away, never to ‘enjoy’ Power Games again.

All in all Power Games is pretty much a waste of money, especially for the low-income families I suspect it hopes to entertain. At $30, it’s not exactly cheap, because I suspect at this point you can get an actual Nintendo with like 20 games for that price. But then again, real Nintendos aren’t exactly reliable so it’s a crapshoot either way. I’d say just play them on the computer for free. Granted, the market for Power Games is probably families without a computer (judging from David finding the thing in a basket at a Brooklyn bodega), but still, there are better things to spend your money on. A bag of dust, perhaps. However, if you’re 8 years old and stuck at grandma’s, you can plug it right in to her 20yo CRT and probably keep yourself occupied until mom picks you up. After all, who ever looked at the instruction manual when you were that age anyway?

Overall rating: The equivalent of douche popsicles—a quick, convenient treat, but once you start eating it you realize it’s frozen douche and you put it down.