NES Games I (along with Nick and John) Beat (Played) #52:  Anticipation

                                                                                                                                                 

                Anticipation was released in 1988, developed by Rare of Banjo Kazooie and Conker fame, who at the time hadn’t released a lot yet. This was billed as the very first board game on Nintendo, boasting fun game play for the entire family and four simultaneous players! Also, how about that box art huh? lol

                To start you can pick from a horn, a bear, a pair of shoes, and an ice cream cone, what a selection! You can choose to play the computers as well but their always going to win so grab some friends and put a controller in each of their hands… but oh wait, you can’t do that. Soon after selecting your difficulty (easy being the only one that will keep you sane) you’ll notice a slight problem. Only two controllers will function. See back in 1988 accessories like the Four Score and Satellite didn’t yet exist so instead they opted to make the control scheme a bit different. Not only do two people have to hold one controller, one hitting the Dpad to buzz in the other hitting the A or B buttons, but also this leads to a plethora of issues when passing the controller to the person who buzzed in as you accidently tap a letter and take away one of their guesses. It’s an annoying quirk but it was an ambitious solution at the time to the problem.

                The object of the game is to buzz in as it draws a shape for you based on several categories. If you type in the answer correctly by scrolling through the letters, you obtain the color of square you’re on. The object is to get a pink, yellow, green, and blue piece, all of which are colors signifying the categories of that floor. If you fail, the category remains until a puzzle is solved. Once you have them all, you advance to the next floor for more challenging puzzles and categories. Get through all three floors and you are the winner. Often you’ll find yourself trying to always win the color even if you don’t need it just to keep it from the other players or everyone banding together to figure it out if nobody needs the color, just to get through it. This does point to one of the flaws, like many board games it’s a long experience sometimes and eventually it does start to lose a bit of it’s charm.

                The main problem and fun of the game comes from all the players bashing their head into a wall trying to interpret the NES’s version of what is being drawn. Due to limitations of graphical power and the fact that they solely us a vector based line system to draw their picture, it is often extremely challenging to wrap your head around the most basic of shapes. The best part is that if you don’t guess correctly, the game never tells you what that object was so it’s a mystery if you can’t interpret what’s there and you’ll wonder for the rest of your life (well, nowadays there’s the internet but back then it wasn’t so clear).

                Major flaws aside, I actually sort of like this game. It’s not a great game but it’s worth a lot of laughs over what in the world the object could be. I’ve found both times I’ve played it with friends rather enjoyable. It’s another game I’m a little soft on for some reason because it makes me laugh at how truly ridiculous it is. Bottom line is, it’s cheap, it’s worth a bit of fun, it’ll get some laughs, and while it has some serious flaws, it’s not as bad as some other bad games for the console that are just boring. I’m giving Anticipation a 6/10. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine I guess.