1. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Famicom)
2. Dragon Scroll: Yomigaerishi Maryuu (Famicom)
3. Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken (Famicom)
4. Hello Kitty World (Famicom)
5. Galaxian (Famicom)
6. Esper Dream 2: Aratanaru Tatakai (Famicom)
7. Ninja Jajamaru-kun (Famicom)
8. Jajamaru no Daibouken (Famicom)
9. Front Line (Famicom)
10. Field Combat (Famicom)
11. Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (Famicom)
12. Mississippi Satsujin Jiken: Murder on the Mississippi (Famicom)
13. Space Harrier (Famicom)
14. Geimos (Famicom)
15. Attack Animal Gakuen (Famicom)
16. Sky Destroyer (Famicom)
17. Ripple Island (Famicom)
18. Oishinbo: Kyukyoku no Menu 3bon Syoubu (Famicom)
19. Bird Week (Famicom)
20. Baltron (Famicom)
21. Yie Ar Kung-Fu (Famicom)
22. Challenger (Famicom)![Image](https://gamefaqs.akamaized.net/box/5/7/3/40573_front.jpg)
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Challenger is a 1985 Famicom game by Hudson Soft. You play as an Indiana Jones lookalike, attempting to rescue a Princess Leia lookalike from some big evil dude. This one character on the game's box art is exclaiming "Garf!" presumably as a tribute to the all-time Famicom classic A Week of Garfield.
Press the start button on the title screen and the game opens in a spectacular fashion. "STOP THE EXPRESS!" flashes boldly, and diagonally, as a speeding train whips into view. Indiana Clone skillfully hops on top. The goal is to work him to the train's end, enter the innards, and then approach the supreme villain and his hostage. Attempting to thwart Indiana are a barrage of thugs, dive bombing ducks, sentient clouds, and invincible fireballs ripped straight from Donkey Kong. The game plays nicely here, for the most part. It's fast-paced, fun, arcade-y action with a simple-but-pleasant graphical style and upbeat soundtrack that fittingly complements the action. Indiana can leap high into the air and toss knives. My only quibble is with the backwards controls: B is jump and A is attack. While there's nothing objectively wrong with this (Challenger was released a month after Super Mario Bros.) it will screw with the muscle memory of anyone who grew up playing the NES. I suppose Master System kids (insofar as such a thing ever existed) will feel right at home.
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Reach the end of the train only to see Indiana booted out before he can successfully save Leia. Stage two beings and... What... Suddenly Challenger transforms into a completely different game. Now it's like a top-down proto-Zelda adventure. There's a vast cluttered landscape of towns, roads, and mountains to be explored. Caves to be entered and plundered. The old-school one-hit-death system of stage one has been traded in for an actual lifebar. What gives!? The transition from stage one to two was so jarring that it prompted me to do some actual research(!). The story here is somewhat interesting. See, in 1983 Hudson released a game called Stop the Express for the Sharp X1 computer in Japan. It was later ported to the MSX, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64. The entire game consists of nothing but the eponymous (and aforementioned) "Stop the Express!" train scene, repeating on a loop. Standard design philosophy of games of that era. When Hudson decided to craft a Famicom variant of Stop the Express it was presumably deemed too simplistic and archaic, thus additional content was (quite literally) lobbed on and Challenger was born.
Stage two features the exact same enemy sprites as stage one, which is a bit surreal as the viewpoint has been flipped. It's like watching cardboard cutouts slide across the screen. In any event, this "adventure" sequence is rather lacking, featuring an ugly sloppy monstrosity of an overworld. The goal is to enter a series of caves and collect treasures (referred to as "keywords" for some odd reason), which will open the pathway to the final area. Said cave entrances are guarded by dancing skeletons. It takes a powered-up knife to slay the bony fiends. Obtaining these power-ups requires that one "grind" briefly, slaying regular foes until the item appears. It's tedious, and though Indiana technically has a lifebar there's no mercy invincibility, which means that his entire cache of HP can be depleted by a foe in a matter of seconds. Enter a cave and Indiana must navigate across a series of rising and falling geysers to reach a sparkling treasure. It's here that the jumping controls completely fall apart. Crossing the geysers requires pixel-perfect precision. Failing early, and often, is inevitable. Oh, and there's fall damage too, so you can't simply "drop" to a lower geyser.
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Following the treasure hunt comes the game's final segment: an interior single-screen cavern level like something out of Canyon Climber or Miner 2049er. It's a sleek-looking stage, but once again the jumping mechanics are unacceptable. Oh yeah, there's also a final boss battle at the cavern's top tier, which is lazily programmed and just brutally uninteresting. Shame.
I feel compelled to touch on the adjustable difficulty setting. By default it's set to "medium." This is the only way to play the game if you wish to hold on to some semblance of sanity. Adjusting the difficulty does little other than adding or subtracting enemy sprites. Set the difficulty high, and the game just transforms into an annoying jumbled mess. Conversely, the game essentially becomes broken if the difficulty is dropped too low, as the enemies that drop essential power-ups never show up. What a hilariously embarrassing oversight.
Truth be told, the only real quality to be found within Challenger is contained within that initial "Stop the Express!" train stage. Everything else is shoehorned in haphazardly and the overall game experience lacks cohesion, no to mention competency. I'd wager that the original loopin' score-chasin' Stop the Express is actually the superior experience. Sometimes less is indeed more.