1001 Games To Play Before You Die: #0141 Nebulus

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

#0141 Nebulus

Today was a lot of fun. Today I played Nebulus, a 1987 puzzle platformer by John Phillips for various computer systems.

That's right, this was a puzzle platformer, not on the NES, not on Arcade, but on PC and it was AWESOME! You play as this little alien dude and your goal is to climb this big ol' tower avoiding obstacles along the way. You get hit by a bad guy, you go tumbling down a couple of levels, fall all the way back down into the water, and you lose a life.

this game introduced a mechanic that I don't think I've seen on the list before, where the main character remains stationary, while the entire world moves around them. It helps you keep track of your character while you move around and the result is some very fun platforming action.

It's helped even more by the fact that the graphics in this game look amazing. It has this affect that you really can't see in the static screenshots, but the sides of the tower narrow and fade as you move around it, giving you this cool 3D looking affect.

If I had to gripe, it'd be about the controls, they're pretty stiff and slugish. Reaction time to jump is pretty slow and the result is not being able to perform the manuvers you'd LIKE to do as well.

but honestly it's just a nitpick, the game overall is pretty amazing, especailly for a PC platformer. If you're into challenging puzzle platformers, give this one a try, it was ported to NES and Gameboy as well as Commodore 64, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST etc.

Next up: Oids

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Why I'm taking this challenge

So! I’ve spent nearly my entire life as a Nintendo Fanboy. A rabid fanboy to the point where when my family got a brand new Playstation 2 back in ‘02 (One of the best consoles ever). I refused to play it. I refused to have anything to do with the company that stole my beloved Nintendo’s thunder! This fanboyism ran rampant in my gaming life through high school and even when I moved out to live with the woman who would one day become my wife. I still didn’t play anything but Nintendo consoles. In fact, it wasn’t until we were gifted an Xbox 360 did I FINALLY play a game on a different console. That was Bioshock, it was also the first shooter I had ever played.It became one of my favorite games of all time. The rest is history, I’ve been playing games on any console I want now.

That’s all well and good, but this means that there is an entire other gaming WORLD that I’ve never played. Never experienced in my life. I love shooters, but with the exception of the half-life series, and System shock 2, every shooter from Doom all the way up until Bioshock, I’ve never played. Not Quake, not CoD, not battlefield.

So, since I’ve missed out on nearly 30 years of gaming, I decided to take a challenge. My lovely wife got me a book called 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die I am going to play through every game in this book. Starting with Oregon Trail (1971) and finish with Bioshock Infinite (2013) I plan to do at least one generation per year. At least. And to help me keep track of what I've done, I started doing small reviews of every game.

At first I wrote these in the starment.net forums, but eventually they became too lengthy to only be posted there, so I created this blog to not only help keep me organized, but so others can follow along as well. It won't be easy, but I think it's worth it to play games that I may otherwise never have played.