RETRO REBOOT | Mystery Quest (NES)
Embark on a magical journey of bland
RETRO REBOOT
"ColonelFancy" Mike Lind
7/14/20265 min read
Developed by: Carry Lab
Publisher: Taxan
Release Date: April 1989
I played a lot of horrible games growing up. The third and fourth games in our NES library (I swear on my grandmother’s grave) after Super Mario Brothers/Duckhunt and Jackal were Bugs Bunny’s Crazy Castle and TOP GUN. NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was pretty cool, though. Then there are cartridges like Mystery Quest, which we picked up during one of our random excursions to our local book/media store. It seems like it would be promising enough, but this ended up being one of the more boring games I've ever played all the way through in the Nintendo collection.
If the NES did anything relatively well, and results may vary, is be adequate at side scrollers. Mystery Quest is a quasi-open world adventure game, but it doesn't hang in the stratosphere of software like Rygar or Faxanadu. You play as Hao, a young boy who goes on an excursion to become a wizard. Meander about for minutes on end, searching the terrain, solving puzzles to proceed through various castles, which usually involves a ton of backtracking, locating tons of keys, battle the occasional boss. It doesn't seem bad, but oh boy, it gets monotonous.
Mystery Quest does itself zero favors by having some of the most nauseatingly dull presentation. The layouts, stage design, enemies, even your attacks are do the absolute minimum of meeting the standard. The only other Carry Lab game I'm familiar with is Hydlide. Huh. I'm sensing a trend. At least Hydlide is interesting...
The NES has a limited palette and only so many sprites can be on a screen at one time, but Mystery Quest is not a particularly handsome game. Mostly because it’s too damn bright and there is very little hue variation, gradients, or drop shadows, so the game is searing the images into my retinas. The outer world’s blue sky is just that; one I would like to know just what exactly that tree grew from, since sod doesn’t exist in this game, even underground! There is one solid color with no clouds and the ground is a pretty light gray stone pattern. Were it not for the occasional vegetation (trees and bushes and lazily placed green platforms here and there, it look like you got lost at an empty Circuit City parking lot.
Hao is so pale in an attempt to get a flesh color tone, he winds up blending in with some of the background buildings. So you would think that at the very least, the interiors of some of these dungeons would offer a little bit of variety. They do, but not it’s not really an improvement. The floor tiles are bricks, but the exact same color as the ground outside, but at least the background walls are colors that make the game sprites stand out a little more. Except for Castle 4, which chose white, ensuring that I go blind while playing.
The enemies are pretty stock. Again, with a title like Mystery Quest, you would think that the odds of encountering mythical creatures like venomous spitting plants, skeleton foot soldiers, or animated suits of armor would be pretty high. Well, Mystery Quest didn’t even look in the Discontinued bin at Essential Henchmen’s Emporium (your one stop for platform game baddies!!) for threats to your journey because your most common enemies in this game can be found in your backyard!
Bees, scorpions, snakes, dragonflies, groundhogs, and bats will stop at nothing to slightly, sort of, kind of be in your way. They can be easily dispatched, but why? It’s not like they drop power-ups or health items, and they seem to be minding your own business. Only the boss monsters in each of the four castles are legit threats that have to be defeated in order to proceed, and honestly they aren't all that hard either. Just mindlessly throw projectiles at them and they die fairly fast.
Quest just lacks any kind of visual flair to keep you interested and your eyes will start begging for something interesting to loom at . Even lame NES games like Dynowarz had some appeal to it, despite having sprites way too small to make out. Until I recall otherwise, Mystery Quest might be the most boring-looking NES game I have ever played.
It’s a little hard to fathom that when doing a bit of research on this game’s origins, I learned that the legendary Nobuo Uematsu composed the music that routinely got stuck in my head during those endless nights when I couldn’t find my way out of Castle 2. To its credit, the music is probably the most memorable thing I found, and that was before my bias affected my score. There are only two main themes throughout the game anyway, so I doubt Mr. Uematsu felt horrible for never giving it his all for a game that features a pale boy shooting bubbles at a hedgehog and bouncing off squares of lasagna.
The controls. Hao moves fairly sluggish and has a problem maintaining momentum. You have to constantly press the B button in order for him gain speed, which is annoying. Why can’t you just hold the button down? Jumping sucks, as previously implied. Unless you’re running at top speed, Hao’s first jump is just terrible, barely clearing roughly three blocks, but if you immediately jump right after landing, the second jump will get you to where you want to go. Learning to get a hang of these awkward jump controls is key because with some jumping puzzles, you need a moderate running start to hit your mark. The gameplay is something that should be so basic, but even if you're trying to be different, at least make it intuitive!
Mystery Quest was something I really tried to put closure on as a bad game I at least wanted to complete 100%. I just figured I would try to beat a game that haunted my childhood, but it wants to be a jackass I gave this more attention than it deserves. Lame controls, a lack of visual appeal, repetitive music, stock enemies, and generic puzzles.
Somehow, it still isn't in the basement of 8-bit refuse. It's playable, but goddamn, Carry Labs produced a game that's as dull as day-old dishwater. It merely asks of your ability to utilize your motor skills to navigate a character in an interactive video game. Even beating the game truly doesn't net any real sense of satisfaction for me. You can clear it and become a wizard, but why? I can invest that energy more productively staring at a bowl of cereal and witnessing it growing more soggy. Mystery Quest is an easy pass.
