As with many '80s kids, The Goonies was my absolute favorite movie as a kid. It was the ultimate explosion of the idea of going out with your friends through your town on a Kids on Bikes backyard adventure. I made a point of catching it on broadcast TV (in the long-forgotten days when the major networks would air theatrical movies in prime time and they were a more reliable method of catching movies after their theatrical runs than VHS tapes, which were at the time expensive & extensively-delayed) whenever it was aired.
The Goonies isn't remembered as fondly nowadays, and - after catching a revival showing at my old high school, where some enterprising band members were projecting it on the side of a tractor trailer - I think it's because the kids yell a whole lot. It's a group of kids together, and to kids, yelling communicates excitement (and The Goonies sure was exciting to this kid!), but when you're an adult, a bunch of kids yelling can be just nails on a chalkboard. That aside, though I didn't come away as besotted with The Goonies as I was as a kid, and though much of the appeal of the movie has to be colored by the lens of childhood, I think it holds up sufficiently, the typical various '80s insensitivities notwithstanding.
Anyhow: given my love of the movie, my mother got me The Goonies II NES game by Konami. (In the U.S., the title billed it as a sequel to the movie, though it's actually a sequel to a previous Goonies game never released stateside.) I predictably played the hell out of it, and the title's garnered a bit of modern prestige by being one of the first Metroidvanias. I have to say, though, that while I recall enjoying the thing after some fashion - I cared enough to beat it, eventually - the overriding memory I had of the title was one of frustration: being stuck in an endless series of rooms, that maddening music looping over and over, hitting and otherwise poking tediously at every surface (as you did to uncover hidden entryways), or otherwise going over and over old territory in a usually-futile attempt to unstick myself and make some progress. The phrase ad nauseam was applicable in every sense. My experience was also colored by an inexplicable and utterly undeduceable bit where you have to, er, hit an old woman five times (and no less than five) with your fist or a hammer in order to obtain a necessary item. This was as much of a roadblock to me as the "kneel by this cliff for several seconds until a whirlwind appears" part of Simon's Quest, and it doesn't come attached to a title with Castlevania ambience or music chops. It's completely unexplained, and it deserves to be every bit as infamous as the Simon's Quest bit.
I recently decided to replay it, though, inspired in part by Jeff Gerstmann's NES ranking project, where it enjoys an in-my-opinion unwarranted ranking of #16 out of 478 games as of this writing. Given my own extensive memories of the title, and the existence in the game of an outright unsolvable puzzle, I'd chalked this up to nostalgia bias on Gerstmann's part. Did the reply change my mind? Well...somewhat, but not really, not fundamentally.
The game's better-designed than I initially realized. Or...well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that it has better design intentions than I initially realized. The game's geography makes "sense," in a way, in that the starting building is built over the cave system, the icy, colder caves are lower, and the ocean sections, which require use of a diving suit, are at the very bottom of the map - all this in theory should help you get around. (Forget that the Fratellis evidently have a tribe of murderous Inuit in their basement.) The game will reliably give you items right before it requires you to use them, leading, in theory, to strong cause and effect in opening up the map. It'll also attempt to give you hints if the way forward is obscured, though these clues are almost always ineffective thanks to a combination of stilted writing and poor design. For example, it'll position an old woman saying "I CAN'T SEE WITHOUT MY GLASSES. DO YOU HAVE ANY?" near doorways that require the Glasses tool to see.
I say "in a way," "in theory," and "attempt" because these attempts at help were for various reasons lost on me as a child, the audience that would really need those clues. One such reason was poor writing: as a child, the "I CAN'T SEE" old women seemed to be signaling that you needed to return their Glasses to them to progress (which you can't). The game also attempts to signal the inscrutable bit of how to get the Glasses by a note in a safe saying: "YOU FOUND A TESTY OLD LADY WHO MIGHT HELP YOU?," but while the woman is indeed initially testy, the note does not mention that the way you compel her to help is to batter her beyond reason or Miyamoto's Rule of 3 with hardware implements.
Another reason is the map's heavy reliance on "warp zones" where you go into a door and, usually after a bit of fiddling in the room therein to discover hidden doorways, pop out somewhere on the other map (the game's world is divided into two completely separate maps, unhelpfully labeled "FRONT" and "BACK"). There are about 20 warp zones in all, and the added complications that you usually have to fiddle with something to trigger the way forward, making the transition between FRONT and BACK laborious, and that you usually have to double back in some way to make progress in a given direction - you can't, say, just head as east as possible on a given map if you want to reach a point east; you'll have to transition from one map to another several times, typically heading south or north or maybe even west at points to get to the right warp - makes navigating the two maps frustrating and unintuitive. Zelda, say, for all its mysteriousness, even in situations where parts of the map were blocked off by knowledge checks or items, didn't make moving in basic cardinal directions unintuitive or laborious. The Goonies II's insistence on doing so so elaborately makes basic movement and map traversal just exhausting. I recall being endlessly lost and going through the same territory over and over as a child.
Also: If you did not have to a) go through the "hit every wall, ceiling, and floor with both hammer and fist" kabuki in every single room in the game and b) hunt for keys to unlock safes and jails, since keys are lost when you continue (which you will do, as enemy spawns are constant and not the fairest - scorpions spawning right on top of you, or camping the tops of vines or cliffs - and health refills nearly nonexistent), this game would be about 30% shorter. All these inconveniences and obtusities add up to a patience-trying, exhausting game, despite its good points.
Also also, important: When you get the location of the fourth (possibly fifth; see below) Goonie, you'll see they're imprisoned waaaay on the other side of the map from where you're currently located. You then have the option of pressing forward to explore new territory (perhaps new & necessary items await?) or doubling back for the Goonie. Do not forge ahead; double back immediately. If you continue into the new territory, like I did in my replay and as I recall doing as a kid, you'll make it to the final destination of the game, Annie the mermaid's holding cell, without any way to progress and without getting any new items. This'll force you to double back through about ten warps, and one wrong move (as I made, and I'd recorded one of the warps incorrectly on my map) will doom you to a whole bunch of tedious, time-wasting wandering while you reorient yourself. If you see Ma Fratelli before getting six Goonies, you are going in the wrong direction. Go back. Or just don't go in that direction in the first place.
I've been so wrapped up in traversal and puzzle issues that I haven't mentioned combat. It's alright, with the degree of alrightness that misspelling connotes. I will say that Mikey's movement feels good and smooth (which might account for a good deal of Gerstmann's affection; he's big on how a game "feels"). There is, though, a mismatch between the slow spooling & withdrawing of his basic yo-yo weapon and the speed and agility of the enemies; the game loves spawning enemies in on top of you, and there were a number of times where I was caught in a pattern with Mikey swinging his yo-yo to one side while the enemy just nimbly hopped to the other, and I'd be too caught in attack animations to avoid eating several hits. It'd help if enemies gave up health refills more frequently (it's like a 1/100 chance), or if they recharged more than a silver of your bar; KONAMIMAN gives you a complete health refill, but only a few rooms are capable of holding his might. The unlimited continues do paper over a lot of sins, and I did enjoy the Castlevania holy water-ish Molotov cocktails (though the game can't decide if they damage enemies while being actively thrown or while burning on the floor).
Some sightseeing:
I think it's good that it starts, presumably, in the restaurant where the Fratellis were hiding out in the movie. They understood the assignment.
I did not recall, however, that some of the final levels were set in the Fratellis' attic.
Also not remembered, unforgivably: this Creature from the Black Lagoon who gives you a pair of jumping shoes. Look at this friendly fellow!
On the other hand, who on Earth is this? This deely-bopper marionette-alien with a praying mantis face and pasta for hair?
More small touches: Konami remembered the Moai heads.
Unwelcome touches: Way too much of the game's sparse text is spent on branding.
Particularly when it's a) promoting the game you already bought and are playing and b) forcing you to spend precious keys for BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE messages.
This game is how I learned what a "Molotov cocktail" is, not that I would have had the opportunity to come by that information organically as an American elementary school student. (Reminds me of the time I was reading the Castlevania chapter of How to Win at Nintendo Games at the dentist's office and asked my mother what sanguinary meant. She didn't know, or pretended not to know, but a helpful fellow patient, a classy older gentleman, filled me in, to what I'm sure was my mother's delight.)
By the way, you might note that the in-game Goonies don't look much like their cinematic inspirations. You might chalk this up to the limitations of an 8-bit format. A look at the instruction manual, though:
...reveals that, uh, no; the art team just apparently didn't have any idea what the actual Goonies looked like and just interpreted them as a bunch of ragtag elementary school ragamuffins. Odd, when they gave us such a good Anne Ramsey likeness. The box art is pretty damn spectacular:
Lookit that! Ma Fratelli pondering the orb and the mermaid within! The Goonies swinging into action! All right, these Goonies aren't exactly on-model, either, but still: Man.
My playthrough, guided by old and noncomprehensive memories and the map I made, lasted just short of six hours. A couple hours of that was spent on the doubling back after the post-third Goonie detour mentioned above, as well as a segment after I'd rescued five Goonies where I had seemingly explored the whole map and was lost as to where to go next or what I'd missed. Turns out, there's this door (in the chamber in the caverns that can be accessed only atop a moving platform) that is not-really but kind-of hidden: you have to move one or two chambers laterally from your starting point, then back out of the room as if you'd just entered it. The door's behind you; you just can't see it. It's not exactly hidden or unfair - I mean, the unseen fourth wall is part of the chamber - but the game doesn't usually place new exits there, because you just don't think of that surface when exploring new rooms. But it does here, and I initially overlooked it. Thankfully, I'd noted this door on my map as worthy of reexamination for an unrelated reason and therefore made it a priority in my search (though not before a lot of wasted time in the Fratellis' westside attic). I think, based on the door's location, that the Goonie to which it leads was originally intended to be the third rescue, so my Goonie count in the warning several paragraphs above might be off by one. "Goonie" no longer looks like a real word, which I suppose it really isn't.
Anyhow: I'm sure my faffing about would have been even longer had I not mapped. Had I done it over, I would have also noted what the rooms on the empty map grid the in-game map gives you I had not yet visited. That would've saved me some backtracking.
(I also missed the Transceiver, which lets you receive hints in the forms of messages from still-captured Goonies and serves as perhaps the game's sole vehicle of Goonie differentiation and characterization, even, given the spartan text limitations, if it's just messages like "THIS IS CHUNK. I'M FREEZING TO DEATH." I don't think I've ever actually gotten the late-game messages, dang it, and they don't seem compiled online. A look online reveals you have to punch a door to get the Transceiver, which, oh, my God, fuck you.)
There's a reason why so many people have memories of playing The Goonies II as a kid and it's not derided as garbage as so many other tie-in games. The emphasis on uncovering hidden secrets, the frequently-sneaky/spooky music, the locales of hidden caves and abandoned mobster hideouts - they all help create a feel that's of a piece with the movie, demonstrating that this wasn't a cheap cash-in and that the devs were committed to delivering an experience that gave kids more of what they got out of the film. And you can't say the game doesn't have ideas or ambition. It also has, however, a lot of bad design decisions, and the mood is eventually overriden by tedium and frustration - which are the opposite of exhilarating adventure.
It's actually a neighborhood of Astoria, Washington, not the town.
