Thursday, January 23, 2025

Video Game Review #553: Paperboy

Paperboy
Nintendo Entertainment System


Nostalgia Factor:

Paperboy is one of the oldest games in my NES collection. I've had it for as long as I can remember. I played this a lot when I was a kid, to the point where it was no longer a challenge for me anymore. Most people consider Paperboy to be a tough, frustrating experience. But not me. I could beat it with my eyes closed. It was always my goal as a kid to have a perfect run, and I would come close, but I always would end up missing a house or two in the process. Still, I considered myself to be a very good player.

I cannot say the same for other versions of the game. The arcade game is fun as an experience, but not as a game. It is a quarter-eater. It's supposed to be over the top in its difficulty. The Genesis version is just more of the same, but with worse controls. I consider both games to be virtually unplayable and impossible to complete. The NES version, however, is completely different. It's slower paced, it's more forgiving in its difficulty, and it's actually a fair, playable experience. The NES version has always been the best Paperboy in my mind, and it is not even close. 

All that said, I have not played the game in a good 15 years or so. Maybe even longer. My NES copy stopped working. It wouldn't recognize the controller, even though the controller worked fine with other games. I'd just turn the system on with Paperboy, the game would turn on, but then nothing I would press on the remote would do anything, as the game cycled between the title screen and the high score/demo sequences. I tried multiple controllers, and even ended up getting a different NES console in the process. Still wouldn't work.

I ended up having to seek out other means to track this game down and play it. So that's where we are. Paperboy for the NES. It came out in 1988, when I was 6 years old. Would I still enjoy it at the ripe old age of 42? Let's find out.




Story:

You play as an unnamed paperboy. It is your goal to make it through all seven days of the week, delivering papers to your customers. If you miss a house or destroy something on their property, you lose them as a subscriber. If you lose all subscribers, you lose the game. As you deliver, you'll encounter all sorts of shenanigans. Dogs will chase you, kids will try to hit you with their tricycles, bees will swarm after you, skateboarders will try to knock you off the sidewalk. It's a constant onslaught. While the game has no real "story", its neighborhood does exude a lot of personality. It gives the game an identity that is very much its own.

If you make it through all seven days, you get a newspaper article about you, which proclaims you a hero. 




Gameplay:

This is a simple game with a learning curve. Mastery of the bike's controls is the #1 most important thing in the game. Learn to control the bike, and you can do anything. Struggle with the bike, and you have no chance. You have to be able to react at a moment's notice to avoid a skateboarder, or swerve off into the grass and around trees, if there are too many unpredictable moving obstacles in your way.

Throwing papers is another must-learn skill. You might struggle at first, but once you get the timing down, it becomes quite easy. I was surprised at how quickly I jumped back into the game after having not played it in over 15 years. I didn't miss a house until late Tuesday, when my paper hit an RC car that blocked it from going into the mailbox. Apparently the timing of Paperboy is a skill you never really unlearn. Kind of like, uh, riding a bike?

Once you get the controls and the timing down pat, the game really is not that tough. My strategy is to hold up and go as fast as I can. If there is a moving object in front of me, like a tricycle or a rolling tire, I adjust my speed to avoid it. If there is a swarm of bees, I will outrun it. If there is a dog coming, I'll get on the right side of it and hit it with a paper immediately. If I see an RC car buzzing around a front door, I'll just continue to hold up to go as fast as I can - and my paper will always miss the car and hit the door mat or the mailbox.

I was shocked how quickly I was able to ace the game. I finally put together that perfect game I've been aiming for. Spoiler alert: it does not change the ending at all. But the game is a blast. It was fun when I was a kid and it is fun now. The only bad thing about it, is that it is a very short experience. And unless you are going for a perfect run, it has little replay value.

Still, this game is MUCH better than the arcade or the Genesis version. I gave the Genesis version a C-. I'm certain this game will get a much higher score.




Graphics:

The only area that this game suffers in comparison to the other versions is the graphics. This game looks less like a living cartoon neighborhood and more like a weird, sterile Tim Burton suburb you'd see in a movie like Edward Scissorhands. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if the people in the neighborhood are all robots or something like that.

The game looks fine. It's not pretty, it's not ugly. It's just very basic looking. If you are a graphics snob, you'd probably turn your nose up to this game. To me, I don't care, because the gameplay is what matters.




Sound:

There are only two musical tracks in the entire game, so you'd better get used to them. There's the calmer, more serene stage music, and then there is the faster paced, more hectic bonus stage music. You'll probably be hearing the serene stage music more often. I like it. It's a song from my childhood that always evokes warm memories.

Sound effects are nothing special. Lots of loud blang noises, like when you land a paper on a porch or mailbox, or knock over a target in a bonus stage. It can get grating after a while. One thing I always like to do is get a paper in the mailbox and on the porch at the same time. It makes this long protracted blaring sound. Otherwise the game is very quiet.




Overall:

I love this game. It is such a comfort game for me. I can pick this up anytime, anywhere, and immediately jump right into it. Right away, it brought me to my happy place when I started playing it. It's not a challenge, but it is not a complete cake walk either. It's perfectly balanced for me.

To me, this is the best version of Paperboy out there. Nothing else I've played has come close. Not the arcade version, the Genesis version, or any of the versions of the sequel, Paperboy 2. It's this one right here. That being said, I need to review Paperboy 2 at some point in the near future. I've only played it a small handful of times in my life, but never enough to the point where I could invest a lot of time into it. But I've always been intrigued by it, and how you can jump off ramps and deliver papers to both sides of the street. I digress.

Paperboy for the NES. One of my favorite games on the console. I can barely think of anything bad to say about it. Maybe that it is too short, too simple, too repetitive, and the graphics are inferior to the other versions. There also seems to be something about this game that other people don't like. Every time I have played this with someone else, they pick the game up, die right away, and then want to play something else. Maybe they'll give it a couple tries, but I've never seen someone become as invested in this game as I did when I was a kid. Am I the only one who likes the game?



THE GRADE:
A-


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