Dirty Harry
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The best part of waking up.
Read the review.
“This is not a fun video game. It is extraordinarily challenging, but not in a good way, like Mega Man 2 or Ninja Gaiden.”
– from the full review, which you can read here.
The NES had a lot of movie license games.
Imagine an 8-bit experience comprised of a side-scrolling platformer with multi-weapon inventory taking place in a gritty urban setting in which the protagonist can not only scroll sidewards but also vertically into streets and alleyways to cross town. Then, imagine that you can also enter any building, busting up the place for additional items, as you are attacked by thugs, dealers, mercenaries, and hoodlums the whole time, indiscriminately slaughtering them in a magnum-powered bloodbath of gunfights and fisticuffs.
A typical scene from the Dirty Harry video game.
This sounds like a solid foundation for what could have been a revolutionary NES cartridge. Instead, we get profound disappointment. It is perhaps only a sad sidenote that among the very few other titles that have up-button functionality to traverse to another side-scrolling street would be, oh yes, Mario Is Missing.
And that is not to get hung up on just a couple gameplay mechanics, but Dirty Harry truly is a game that, if someone tried to describe to you, you may think “Oh, well that doesn’t sound so bad — it actually sounds pretty frickin’ sweet. Give me that controller.”
Then you actually play and immediately realize that this is not a well-made digital adventure at all.
Read The Full Review For: Jerky, an 11-letter string in which 4 of the letters are “m,” use of the phrase “However, the snakes look ridiculous,” the surprise that the sound effects hold, the word “damning,” the year 1971 being the answer to a relevant trivia question, and the tragic tale of the sad fact that this game actually had real potential for greatness.
NES Gameplay Tips For Dirty Harry: Play the entire game as though you are a frantic, manic, adrenaline-overdosed paranoid schizophrenic with ADHD and OCD. If you fingers can manage to properly relay the signals from your brain in time, it is the only chance you have for survival.
Dirty Harry stumbles home from a wild night.
5 Responses to “ Dirty Harry ”
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I see you’ve watched Spoony’s review of this game, I presume.
Oh, I actually haven’t! Should I? Did I sound like I did? Weird. Good to know.
Loosely sounding like someone else happens – especially when reviewing 1-star games. It just sucks when you feel (and know) your idea is funny and original and someone else was thinking along the same lines.
Well, you should go and check it out. Here’s the link:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2009/05/08/dirty-harry-the-war-against-drugs-nes/
In fact, here’s a quotes from Spoony’s review on the room with the “Ha ha ha” graffiti which you cannot exit after you enter it:
“There’s another room I go into and search, when all of a sudden, I realize there’s no way out! What the fuck?! Most of the time, there’s a door on the left hand side, but not here! There’s just “HA HA HA” spraypainted on the fucking wall, as if this was some kind of death trap conceived by The Joker! I tried doing everything: punching the walls, shooting the walls, jumping around, kicking stuff, placing bombs on furniture, placing bombs on the wall, now of course, you’re probably just thinking I’m fucking stupid, there *is* some way out of this room, but no, I looked it up, this is some kind of sadistic fucking easter egg programmed by the designers into the game! There is *no* way out of here! It’s just a trap! It *forces you* to reset the game because there isn’t even a way in here to kill yourself!
What was the point of that?! You know, incompetence I can handle, but this isn’t even a glitch! This is the game designers fucking you up the ass with a splintered broomstick and then breaking off the handle! They’re deliberately wasting your time! The programmers of this game *want* you to fail, and when you do, they write “Ha ha!” on the wall and they *laugh* about it!”