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| The Cable Bros. 9/11/2007 |
Being identical twin bruddas, we had to share everything, including the Nintendo. Once in a while, there would be a game that would actually let both of us play at the same time. These games became legendary to us, and raised even the most mediocre of games into a game that could be played daily for months. This has paid off for both of us later in life, thanks to this intense cooperative training teaching us to work together, what with all the uh................ oh yeah. It hasn't paid off at all and we have no lives. :(
A mode vs B mode: One means friendly fire is on, the other means it's off. Which is which changes between games, and the only way to test is to start it up, and immediately start punching each other. Then keep punching and yelling until one player dies, then you're like OKAY ENOUGH OF THAT SHIT. In some cases a game didn't allow for any mode except friendly fire, so we would have to be careful until suddenly we accidentally hit each other with a triple chain swing or dragon kick stone hands punch acro circus instant kill one shot move and then we just go nuts trying to murder each other while going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFUCKYOU and throwing the weapon at the corpse and then picking up the corpse and throwing it across the street and then throw the controllers at each other and start clawing and sissy slapping at the others eyes in a rage. Nowadays we have matured to the point where we would only call each other faggots every 2 seconds.
Xenophobe: Split screen, 1 takes the top, 2 takes the bottom, and you go left and right wandering doing almost nothing, except shooting the occasional alien, and HOPING that panel on the wall can be used in some way to make the game more interesting. A good example of coop making a bad game less bad. The end of the whole game leads to the start again. ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IS A DUCK! ^_^ This was a very early coop joy, but they clearly didn't finish the game because there was some arcade version that let you use the items you collected and insert floppy disks into the wall computers or something really cool sounding like that, but we never got to play the arcade version coop. :( WELL WHO CARES NOW
8 Eyes: One player could control some kind of a bird like a falcon and fly! The graphics were directly from Castlevania, even the stairways and animations were the same. Instead of a whip, you got a sword which had a much shorter range, which meant that the enemies could hit you before you hit them. Whoever was playing the bird had to be at the right angle before attacking, because the bird's only move was a diagonal dive, and if you missed you'd have to try to line yourself up again, and if you did hit you did almost no damage, and I think the bird would take damage just from coming in contact with the enemy, shit I don't know. The game was too fuckin hard, therefore it sucked. Kind of a neat idea though.
River City Ransom: Stands the test of time, was way way ahead of its time, really good coop design as well, might have been too easy? Being able to pick up a tire, have player 2 jump on the tire, then throw the tire with player 2 riding it right into an enemy's fuckin FACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! will never get old. Ever. The game also had an RPG stat system and defeated enemies would drop money so you would progress your fighter as well as progress through the "plot" (fight to River City High and kill bosses). The health system was sorta confusing because you would lose a lot in a few hits but when you reached zero you might still be alive. There was also a super secret hidden shop inside a highway tunnel (the game had some really nice environments for an 8 bit system) where one of the lights would be a hidden door or some goofy shit, and the shop would sell stat buff items for insane prices. The only way to progress through the game was to find boss enemies in very specific locations, defeat them, and then move onto the next area, which nowadays might require a gamefaq but back in the day we would just wander the planet (in game) killing every living thing we saw until we somehow reached the end. That is how fun that game was. The password system sucked, I actually once spent like 3 hours farming cash from some duo bosses so we would have $900, then I copied the password as fast as I could, rushed over to a friends house, put in the password and... it didn't fucking work because I didn't quadruple check it before leaving. :( OR the password system didn't even work right in the first place. I still don't understand the health system in this game either, but whatever, that doesn't matter. Even with the bullshit password system, this continues to be one of the best games, EVER. It really set the standard for what coop games should be, teaming up with another player, building your character up, and beating the holy fuckin dogshit out of some enemies with a variety of bizarre and fun moves, along with having a variety of weapons.
Super Spike V Ball: Existed simply to sell the Four Score add-on with the extra controller ports. The game was decent for 10 minutes. You play volleyball and that's it. The Four Score at least had built in turbo. The game has like 3 moves, passing the ball, hitting it over the net, and spiking the ball which would shoot a missile at an enemy players face.
Rampage: Kalamazoo. The monsters never transformed into a hot ass piece of poon when they died, DISSAPOINTING. They did a good job on the "destroy everything" engine. I loved intentionally falling through a dock, shattering it, and landing harmlessly into the water. Eventually you'd get tired of punching the same buildings into rubble, and start punching each other. Then you'd turn your back to Jso UH UH I mean the other player, and act like oh I don't even see what's behind me, then when he comes up you do a backpunch move right in their face like HA HA NOT, SUCKA! Then they'd jump off a building at you. This game needed more moves. If you're going to fight each other in a coop game, there should be a grapple option too. Both players should be able to fuckin pound the shit out of the controller buttons to determine supremacy.
Gauntlet: Shooting the food ended friendships across the country. This game was fun until it became motjerfucking impossible. They probably designed it to be played by 4 players max at all times. We also played a sequel version on the PS2 or Xbox or some shit, and it was basically Baldur's Gate 2 Dark Alliance but with a slightly different perspective angle, and "YOUR CHARACTER NEEDS FOOD BADLY" which is CD quality for the next generation instead of the original scratchy wav file (the NES did have that didn't it?).
Shadow of the Ninja: Very obscure Ninja Gaiden clone that was 50x easier with almost equally nice graphics. Awesome awesome game, awesome. It's a pretty normal side scrolling ninja game, where you go around beating enemies until they explode. This came out near the end of the NES's run, so it's more polished and modern than the majority of NES games. You could grab overhead poles and swing yourself up on them, which is always nice to have as an evasion move when you're going to go slice some evil robot ninjas or whatever. I remember what made this game not fuckin impossible bullshit was there was some really weird secret trick where I think you paused and hit select 5 times or up or some combo, and when you unpause it would fire off some screen clearing lightning bolts in exchange for a little health. And with the two of us we could lightning bolt all over the fuckin joint. Revisited update: you just hold the b button, it was especially helpful for boss battles since it did significant damage and some bosses had destructible pieces.
Bubble Bobble: Fun. Just plain fun. Although I think one of the levels becomes impossible, where the enemies are all at the top of the level and you're all the way at the bottom with no way to get up there. It's made up for by all the previous levels where you pop that water bubble and it washes everyone, including the other player and possibly yourself, all the way down the drain, popping you out at the top of the screen (which is definitely a better alternative than just killing you).
Snake Rattle n Roll: At first, the game seems like a really fun quirky game where you and a friend play snake heads (literally) that run around eating pellets that add spheres to your snake, growing its body, which served as your health. Then you tongue whipped enemies such as toilet seats, and jumped around the isometric overhead world. After the second level, it's all instant death jump puzzles where you have absolutely no depth perception and can't tell where you're jumping to, making the game impossible. That first level sure was fun.
Battletoads: That first level sure was fun. Remember comboing all the enemies and murdering them with super detailed comically enlarged fists and boots and rams horns and then shattering a mech with its own leg and RIDING A MOTHERFUCKING FIREBREATHING DRAGON THAT YOU COULD "JOUST" ENEMIES WITH THE MECH LEG. The first boss, a gianter strider type mech, was also really creative and fun, where it switched to first person from the boss's point of view while you picked up and threw boulders at it. The very next level dropped some of the best ideas in the game, for a giant instadeath pit that you rappel down on a rope, but it would have still been cool if it was just a side mission break from more dragon riding fucking juggling enemies with insta-murder combos. But no, the third mission was a severely truncated version of the combo system with no real ideas, cut in half to include the motherfucking stupidest disappointing instant death pod race. Novelty levels seemed like a good sign when the game started, until every fucking level was a novelty level where you're jumping or running away from instant kill pits, spikes, traps, bullshit, fagfuck, cuntflap. Verdict: NEGATIVE.
Mega Man 3: The only cooperative aspect of this game was the thing where if you held down right, as in the direction, on the pad on controller 2, and jumped into a pit, you could become invincible for the rest of the level. But this really means that you're cooperating with a book (or Nintendo game case) that you would carefully adjust to hold down right on the pad. Or was it left. It has been so many years. :(
Double Dragon 2 and 3: FLYING KNEE SPAM PEOPLE OFF THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE. Odd fight system for DD2. Double Dragon 3 sucked balls. The strange thing about DD2 was that the direction you were facing would decide which attack you would be doing based on the A and B buttons. A would punch and B would kick, and when you face the other way, B would punch and A would kick. You get used to it after a while, but I don't know why they did it either. I liked face crushing someone and then while they were doubled (DRAGFOND LOWL) over in severe internal organ rupturing pain, I would grab their hair and knee them in the face 3 times or throw them off a cliff. MURDER, YOU'LL ALL BE GUILTY, *AND YOURE DOING IT FOR *NOTHING!!!**! We used our Four Score to turn on turbo for A and B, so we'd just hold down A and B the entire game spamming the knee kick move (most damage, makes enemies fly like 2 screens away) from level one to the final boss. It's not cheating because Nintendo themselves created the four-score.
Nightmare on Elm Street: I remember loving this back then with 3 players, but angry Nintendo nerd gets this right, YOUR PETS ARE BEING SKINNED ALIVE. Actually that was about Friday the 13th Jso. You go around houses collecting bones and punching ghosts with your big meaty fists. When you fall asleep you can get little icons that give you a class and therefore a weapon. A pretty bland game made more fun by the fact that you and other guys can run around these little areas pounding the shit out of some skeleton or ghosts with a big balled up fist, and have your friend be there like hey what's going on and you fuckin mercilessly beat the ghost back and forth in between each other. Then dump the ghost's books.
Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers: You pick up tiny to-scale sized crates and throw them at enemies. Not a bad game for its time.
TMNT 2, 3, 4: No one needs to be informed on how super fucking awesome these are. We video taped ourselves doing a full clear and showed it to our 3rd grade class, pausing adventures make us look like fawgs. This didn't allow for 4 players at the same time, sadly. The first two games were sort of basic with limited moves, until the massively superior SNES version which had tons of moves, awesome awesome fuckin graphics, bosses from the TMNT cartoons AND the TMNT 2 movie (the ones during the Vanilla Ice song), and a satisfying final boss fight with Super Shredder. Grappling enemies and throwing them directly INTO the fucking screen was always great. I remember on one TMNT4 playthrough I tried to kill as many enemies as I could by using the kick move, which you can only do after a successful dash attack. So the entire game I would just dash kick repeat forever. To think being able to play a TMNT game without using my actual weapons would be such a novelty. OKAY HM.
Contra 1, Super C, Contra 3: Classics, except Super C which was just a semi classic. Millions memorized the Konami code for this game. Great coop game. Plenty of blasting enemies, with great boss fights. This was one of those platform shooting coop games where jumping up platforms in an upward scrolling zone meant if the other player was at the bottom of the screen, they were dead. When one player ran out of lives, they could steal the other player's lives to continue, which may have started fights, but let's face it, whoever is going around stealing lives without caring is probably a sociopath.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors: Actually pretty plain. You go around with squirt guns squirting zombies in giant hedge mazes or something, the end. Pretty inventive......... for 1989! WOAO! The fact that Konami made this and the next game means they had two SNES coop games where they only needed one, because one was better. I don't see this game being anything remotely like River City Ransom, so fuck it. I fapped to the female bitch character from a picture in a Nintendo Paowur (lavol) when I was 11 or something, she had nice figgudy fayut cans. That was more fun than playing this.
Legend of the Mystical Ninja: A really high quality SNES game that eventually went from super fucking sweet coop fun to being motherfucking bullshit impossible instadeath jump puzzles (but you could piggyback ^_^). There were cute cats, and you could buy armor and shoes that let you walk faster. Unfortunately there was some bullshit game mechanic where you'd lose a level of shoes every single time you got hit, anywhere. So if you were trying to save your shoes for a boss fight or a side scrolling level, you were fucked. This was made up for by the fact that they put all sorts of crazy ass mini games (the whole first level of Gradius) in with the fun normal game where you were bashing people's faces in with pipes and shit. There were towns where you could take a break and play the minigames in for helpful game items and shit. This was basically the real sequel to River City Ransom. Except impossible.
Rock n Roll Racing: More competitive gaming with slight cooping against comp, but there can still only be one winner. They licensed a total of four classic rock songs ("Born to be Wild" and such), and then let you fire weapons from your vehicle. This game was sorta ok as a shooter, but F-Zero was a better racing game.
Smash TV: Not very fun for a coop game WUT THE FUCK. The appeal of this game doesn't last a very long time. Hey, they actually use all the buttons on the SNES controller for once, that's nice. This wasn't really a bad game, but it didn't have as much depth as the more classic coop games such as RCR, TMNT 4, or Kirby Superstar.
Final Fantasy 2 and 3: Very very manual coop, the second controller would do the same shit as controller 1, you have to decide with player 2 when they get to control a character, didn't work very well and not worth the effort and amount of time you'd have to spend playing through trash battles. An example of how to fuck up coop play in an otherwise enjoyable 1 player game :(
Final Fight 2 or 3 or whatever what's the difference: Dated, just jump and punch, life drain special attack sucks ass, plain, still was okay to coop on a really bored day when you're waiting for the new Star Trek Deep Space 9 episode to come on.
Secret of Mana: Joh hates this game but I still think its the most fun I ever had cooping on the SNES, an action rpg with 3 players! Bland overly large area design with the occasional doorway and stairway that just leads to a pointless empty room for no reason whatsoever, but not as bad as the unreleased sequel which was 90% stairs and doorways that go to gigantic maze like empty rooms. Secret of Mana had less of that but still had its share of aimless wandering where you really would need a walkthrough unless you want to spend 100 more hours than you intended. But still, the coop was real coop, with 3 players. We're going back to potatoes to get my fucking power wrist. ASSHOLE.
Bomberman: There were a million of these games, and they had the depth of an Atari game. Boring. Fuck your nostalgia, this game sucked.
Kirby Superstar: Awesome. It was like a sort of normal Kirby game, but your special powwas from eating enemies could be used to summon the second player which would be like the absorbed power personified, and then Kirby can go get some other power. You could summon the computer to coop with the second player slot, but it was retarded. Along with perfectly fine fun coop gaming, there were a few competitive mini games, including one of the awesomest, which was one of those power slam things where you have to hit a meter in the sweet spot to sort of ring the bell, except instead of a bell it was Kirby or player 2 punching through a fuckin solid iron weight. When you got inside the sweet spot, it would cut to you punching a giant crack in the fucking PLANET. If you did a perfect perfect punch, you'd basically split the entire planet in half and everyone would DIE. This mini game is known to solve all manner of disputes, even deciding if infinity is really a number or not (it is because I won, now infinity is a number). No need to get moom involved in that one, the game has already determined the true answer. t('-'t)
Metal Slug: Awesome. Arcade only. It's like Contra, but you can give yourself infinite continues BECAUSE YOU ARE SURELY PLAYING OFF AN EMULATOR, YOU BETTER BE ASSHOLE. They throw all sorts of extra vehicles and crazy novelty areas where you swim through places or suddenly you're fuckin flying a UFO and then in the next mission you're in the giant alien UFO space station base fighting a hundred blood spraying zombie clones of your previous player selection. Giant giant fucking boss fights and huge fucking gargantuan well-animated explosions. The best thing about this is that while a lot of the other coop games will require more concentration and shit, this one you could just jump right into and start blasting away instantly, and it doesn't matter if you forget who's who on the screen and die because you can just hit the "insert coin" key to give yourself more free continues.
Doom and/or Doom 2: Never played it coop, is it possible in these modern days? Sounds like it would've been fun. Let's just assume it was.
Diablo 1 and 2: Good. You can upgrade armor and skills and shit. I sort of wish every coopling coopa coop game had that feature. Diablo 2 eventually reaches a point where all the armor drops are shit but the enemies are doing one shot kills, so that sucks. It almost doesn't fail (fail to fail) because even two players as the same class can compliment each others skills by going down different skill trees. In Diablo 1, there were 3 classes that you could basically reform to do the exact same shit, you could make the wizard a warrior, you could take the warrior and make him just cast spells. Just make sure you get yourself a nice duped Godly Plate of the Whale while you're at it.
Sven Coop: Exactly how FPS coop games should be. The real quality scales depending on maps, some sucked ass and made the game worse, but all the map really needs is a handful of enemies to blast with some friends to blast them. Needs to be ported to Source ASAP.
Starcraft: Comp stomps. A pretty cheap way to inflate your win/loss ratio really. We didnt get a lot of coop life out of it, but still its Starcraft. Not exactly a traditional coop game but still.
Freelancer: Travel times are more geared for single player, unless you and your pal split up through the universe which would make it not really coop, couldn't play story mode, we simply cooped an hour of trading diamonds and trade goods to get the ultra ships right away, did like 2 combat missions and quit.
World of Warcraft: It was nice it was nice it was nice, and then suddenly I'm bored. Giant pointlessly overlong timesink. Night elves are gay. Blizzard is incompetent.
Doom 3: You are probably saying "it doesn't have coop." Or maybe you are saying it does have coop, because it might actually have coop and I have no idea since I couldn't care less about that piece of shit game, so you aren't saying it does have coop because that isn't something you would say while reading an article about a history of coop games. What I had in mind was the little friendly spider bots. After you kill the very first enemy, the only fun parts out of anything in Doom 3 was teaming up with the tiny chirping black military grade sentry robots and running around helping them kill evil demons. It's amazing how much the rest of the game sucks aside from those two parts. The very beginning moments all the way up to the second zombie are actually pretty fun, and then right after that it all turns into a pitch black suckfest. The spider bots come in to break up the pristine untampered monotony on very rare occasions, and they shut down at the end of the same hallway you find them in. Also I think they had flashlights right fuckin on them so you didn't have to switch to the flashlight and back to guns and back and forth. Or am I thinking of the duct tape mod? Sheeeeeit.
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, Dark Alliance 2, and Fallout Bruddahood of Steel (for the PS2): These 3 games are built on the same overhead hack and slash engine which is sort of like a console version of Diablo 2, pick up gold and items and occasionally level up, except this is offline and only 2 player coop. They are sort of okay as a diversion, although if you had to pick just one game you'd probably be best off with Dark Alliance 2, which is the most recent and best designed.
Halo and Halo 2: The bland areas and level design are easier to ignore when you and a pal are chucking grenades everywhere.
Gears of War: Awesome. It's like if someone made Halo and Halo 2, but without the disappointing bland parts (and without vehicles but whatever), and more blood (for the blood god?) and cracking people's heads in half and chainsawing enemies in half and giant enemy bosses, all combined with the easiest to use dynamic cover system where you can dash, run, dive and take cover all by hitting or holding the A button within the right context. The final level is on a moving train and you fight a giant guy who looks like the Nemesis from RE2 or 3. So it's not only like Halo, but it's also like Contra. Except better.
Left 4 Dead: Will be the best fucking coop game ever when it's released, therefore making it the best GAME ever. NUFSED.
Coop Games: 10/10!
Not Coop Games: 0/10 :(
 The Cable Bruddas
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