Athena (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
486A playthrough of SNK's 1987 NES game, Athena.
I somehow survived it without dying. I still can't believe I managed it. This video is the product of about 3 months of steady practice, notetaking, irregular heartbeat, and swear words of the most profane sort. Was it worth it?
In short, no.
It was developed by Micronics.
No, not enough of a reason? Well, then, please allow me the privelige of enlightening you:
I really do my best to see the good in all of these old games, whatever my initial impression may be. I played this one (very little) as a kid and I hated it with utter passion. Many years later the game came to mind, and the feelings of fury and anxiety I apparently harbored for it surprised me. Sure that it wasn't as bad as I believed as a kid, I decided to pop it in the NES. Well, it turns out that I should have more faith in my judgment as a six-year-old. It's f'ing awful.
So why did I go to the effort of beating it? Well, I really do have a hard time letting a game that's stupidly hard in the worst ways get the best of me. I always think, if it was this poorly done, there's got to be a way to slog through it, even if it means exploiting the hell out of shoddy programming. But Athena? There really isn't, save for the couple safe spots in boss battles. The hit detection is all over the place, and sometimes it can be used to your advantage. More times than not, though, the attacks don't really line up properly, meaning that sometimes you can hit something while standing visibly too far from it. Other times, you can slash away and the baddie will just float through the weapon totally unphased and hit you anyway. The best example of this weird phenomenon is perhaps that of the final boss. The battle seems impossible until you understand where the weirdly positioned hit boxes sit and the timing for when your attack animation will allow you to dodge getting hit: that's why it looks like I'm getting wailed on nonstop at that part while my life bar doesn't drain.
And can anyone tell me why the fire sword looks like a broken violin?
In other words, the game is broken. It was so absurdly hard to beat because of the need to understanding some janky and messed up programming in an abstract way totally unrelated to the content of the game. Way to break any sense of fun for a kid - force them to understand the quirks resulting from shoddy programming, but focus it at the last boss fight of an already impossibly hard game. That way, they can do it over and over, upping both: 1. Replay value, and 2. The number of soulless husks of human beings that now wander the planet after seeing it through.
Anyways, I beat it. Big middle finger to Micronics, the only people that could make video games less fun than cancer.
On a positive note - anyone else notice the characters and sprites that Crystalis borrowed from this game? Athena is Asina in the old NES classic, and those slime things look just as they always did! She's also the heroine in Psycho Soldier, and shows up in about a bazillion King of Fighters installments.
And, did you know that the Famicom version of Athena came with a bright pink casette tape that had music from the arcade game Psycho Soldier on it? Included on that tape was a full-on 80s anime-style theme song about Athena's adventure. It was amazing. I might have bought the original Japanese release for that tape, and pointedly left the cartridge on the counter as I left the store.
Oh, finally, be sure to check out 31:43. In the "World of Hell" stage (maybe Nintendo's review board never got this far?), that demon in the ground grabs Athena, clones her, and shows her on the ground bound and gagged, all in hot magenta/neon blood color. What an unexpectedly cool little touch!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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