Two final middling releases for 1987, one of which is based on a licensed property. Yeah, you can definitely see the future of the NES shaping up here. Neither Top Gun or BreakThru is the worst game we've seen, but neither can quite make up its mind as to what it wants to be. Is Top Gun a flight sim or an aerial combat game? Is BreakThru a side-scrolling platformer or a shooter? Rather than feeling like brilliant hybrids, these both just seem a bit muddled...

Following on from Gotcha!, LJN continues plying the same furrow with two more games based on film properties, developed by Atlus. (Or at least someone pretending to be Atlus, anyway.) Two out of LJN's three 1987 releases are pretty decent, if a bit thin in terms of content, and really only The Karate Kid hints at the kind of crap the company would make its stock in trade over the coming years. Jaws might even be considered genuinely good, if only it had been given a little more time in the oven to allow all its concepts to come together...

Data East (finally) serves up a pretty solid game in the form of Irem's Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, but the real story here is Gotcha!: The Sport. Not only is it the debut release from one of the NES's most questionable publishers, it also very much represents a specific moment in popular and political culture. Gotcha! was based on a movie and a toy line, and its publisher's fortunes were impacted by poor toy sales right as the national conversation began to focus on some unfortunate results from America's gun culture and the early days of the the police's move toward militarization. That's quite a lot to tie to a simple NES Zapper game...

Thanks to Steve Lin for lending the Kid Niki packaging to this endeavor!

While the NES was an improvement over previous console generations in most respects, not everything that showed up on Nintendo's system was a clear winner versus what had come before. Case in point, Super Pitfall: An update of sorts to Pitfall! II, except far, far worse. It's an ambitious reworking of an Atari 2600 classic, but "ambition" doesn't necessarily mean "quality." Another fine mess you've gotten us into, Micronics.

After an amazing summer and autumn for 1987, the NES is well into its year-end doldrums. Don't worry, we've got some bangers (as the kids say) lined up for the grand finale a few episodes from now, but for the moment it's all tepid, dated games that pale in comparison to superior takes on these genres that have been showing up of late. But please don't give up on NES Works just yet. Did I mention Mega Man is on the way? Because it is.