So. Hard, difficult, awful NES game. Mad Max. It's based on the first two movies, so no Beyond Thunderdome, no "bust a deal, face the wheel," no Auntie Entity, no "Two man enter, one man leave."
Let's begin. You get a badly-digitized picture of Max, accompanied by a cut version of the "My life ends, my vision fades" speech from the beginning of The Road Warrior. (How cut? It omits the bit about the nuclear war that destroyed most of the world.) From here, you are thrust into the desert of
Australia Generica, no direction, no information, just your V8 Super Interceptor and an extremely limited amount of dynamite and gas. Expect to see the death message "YOU RAN OUT OF FUEL" frequently.
Did I mention that your car isn't exactly the most well-built thing in
Australia the Mojave Wasteland Wherethehellever, so it crumples in after about eight or so hits and completely explodes eight hits later? And that there's random murder pits you can try to jump across (hope you're going fast enough, or you get to see death message of frequency number two, "YOU DIED IN THE WRECK".)
So, what the hell is the point of all this random driving around
Australia the Capital Wasteland Not Australia? You go into buildings! Ugly buildings, with awful screechy background music, where you're assaulted by an endless horde of people. Things. Hard to tell because they die after 1d3 shotgun blasts, whereupon they go "BRWNNNNN" and melt into the floor. Why are we in these random sheds in the middle of
Australia Gamma World God knows where? You have to get supplies! An extremely limited amount of First Aid Kits (for restoring health, natch), Ammo (for your trusty shotgun), Gas (for your not so trusty car), Dynamite (the EXTREMELY limited ammo for your car; makes me wish the modern Mad Max game is out so your mechanic/best friend who lives in your V8 Super Interceptor's back seat can take the wheel for a while so you can shoot some raiders, and believe you me,
I am not making a single word of that last sentence up.), and food and water!
You will not be eating or drinking the food and water you find. Nor will it come easily. Most of that is behind locked doors or in boxes, which are unlocked with keys. They MUST be unlocked with keys and only keys, because for some reason every locked door in the random sheds are built to take more bullets than you can ever hope to carry. Keys are in finite supply, and once used are gone forever, so I hope you unlocked the right doors.
Anyway, food and water. You use it to buy supplies at the supply store, which is an unusual sight in
post-nuke Australia Sheffield in the (even more) depressing half of Threads Where The Hell We Are. Along with an awfully-color-converted picture of a raider asking "Something you want?" you get a choice of repairs for your car (not worth it, you'll see why), gas (reasonably worth it), and other supplies. Of the mysterious "other supplies" he's got on offer, you want the Arena Pass. This costs 7 food/water, so I hope you got enough. Did I mention that, like keys, currency is in equally limited supply? Yes, if you waste money and keys, you can't beat the game.
Arena pass in stock, we drive to the Arena (no map in-game, no directional indicator to tell you where it is, so you get to drive around
Australia the world from Adventure Time, and yes, look it up, that's a post-nuclear war setting Generic Desert World until you either:
*Find the arena.
*Run out of gas.
*Die in the wreck.
Arena is found, huzzah. We are treated to more awfully-digitized pictures of some random priest guy from Mad Max, Max himself, and some random doofus. "They're bad," we're told, "They're crazy, and only one will leave here alive!"
And then we're in our car, which is miraculously repaired, refueled, and stripped of dynamite. This segment of the game, we have to destroy 35 cars by either ramming them until one of us explodes, push them into the mazelike arena's central pit, or push them into the random murder pits that open and close at arena intersections/corners. There are no resupplies here, and it gets harder as you get further in the game. The arenas get more complex, there's more cars to deal with, and more random murder pits.
Road War 2 and Arena 2 are more of the same crap I talked about up above.
Road War 3 is about more of the same driving through
Australia Car Wars-era America, yes, that's post-apoc too, technically Genericola Desert Classic, except you're looking for a new supply: Crossbow bolts. Crossbow bolts? Why the hell do we need crossbow bolts?
We get to find out after the extremely excruciating Arena 3, where fifty cars are sent hurtling to their makers and we leave the arena after finding the exit (somewhere.) Ominous music plays, picture of Max and his Interceptor, with the text "THE FINAL BATTLE AWAITS"! Yay! Maybe something good will come of this--
.....Nope. It's a one on one side-view fight between Max and the completely out-of-nowhere Master Blaster, so I guess there
is a Beyond Thunderdome link after all. Anyway. End guy fight. You have to put fifty crossbow bolts into Master Blaster to make him dead. Max Rockastandy doesn't get the same luxury of durability that Master Blaster has, and about 25 or so crossbow bolts sends you to the great "YOU DIED OF INJURIES" in 8-bit Hell. Before you get any ideas about staying far away from Blaster so you can avoid his crossbow bolts, the arena floor starts collapsing from the left, and you're limited to a narrow horizontal strip in the middle of the screen. Veering too far left/up/down, and you fall into the flaming pit below, so "YOU FELL TO YOUR DEATH" and you die. So, uh... learn to dodge and/or jump over(?!) crossbow bolts.
Speaking of which: You are given an initial supply of 48 crossbow bolts to try and kill the extremely fat nearly naked man on the right side of the screen. Remember how I said you were looking for more crossbow bolts? And that Master Blaster can easily take 50 crossbow bolts before dropping dead?
That's right.
The game does not give you enough crossbow bolts to kill the final boss if you don't go driving around
Australia I'm running out of better post-apoc settings The Random Desert, so you need at least one pickup of crossbow bolts (for another 48, hope you're a good shot!) The kicker here: There are passwords for each area of the game except the Master Blaster fight (Arena 1, Road Wars 2, Arena 2, Road Wars 3, Arena 3.) Each password gives you the same stuff you start the game with-- including 0 extra crossbows.
That's right, too.
The password for Arena 3 is fundamentally worthless, because you don't have enough crossbow bolts or gas to finish either fight.Anyway, assuming you actually managed to put up with all of that massive list of crappy game design up above, Master Blaster takes his fiftieth crossbow bolt and drops dead at your feet. How are we rewarded for our Herculean efforts in getting through the game?
THIS.Hand on heart, I did not knock that together in MSPaint. That is, 100% for real, your ending: A badly-colored and digitized picture of the V8 Super Interceptor, and the question "And where does a man like Max go from here?", just in case the image is lost later on.
Where, indeed? Hopefully to a better damn game.
My best friend had this for the NES when he was younger. I felt really sorry for him because this game really sucked.