Jeremy Parish

NES Works 138: Bad Dudes & Flying Dragon

Added 2024-05-29 12:15:20 +0000 UTC

You may have noticed that NES Works has increasingly engaged with world politics, real-life political figures, and public policy. Well, it's all been leading to this. For some reason, publishers decided that 1989 would be the year of Mad Magazine-level political commentary in their NES games. I kinda feel like this is the peak of this trend! It's a game where you rescue President Ronnie (or Herbert Walker in the NES edition) from Japanese terrorists. There's a lot happening in this one. And by this one I mean Bad Dudes. There's also a lot happening in the other game this episode, Flying Dragon, but not in a political sense. I just mean that it's a wild, ambitious mess of a game. Not a great mess, mind you, but it does some interesting things. I want to like it more than I do, but it's a janky Culture Brain effort and I lose patience with it once I hit the wall of the final elimination round of the first tournament. The game probably deserves better, honestly, but it needs to earn it.