Dirty Harry (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
185A playthrough of Mindscape's 1990 NES game, Dirty Harry.
This game and Mad Max remind me so much of one another. Sure, Mindscape released both the same year, and they're somewhat different genres, but the heavy emphasis on presentation, especially sound, is something they share. Just check out the intro and the ending - that's an impressive amount of digitized speech for an NES game.
I have a real fondness for this game too. Just like Mad Max, it's absolutely maddening until you get your bearings. At first everything looks the same and you get lost and killed again and again. After gaining a bit of familiarity with it though, it all makes sense and fits together. Of course, that only really applies to the first stage, though it takes up about half the game. It also reminds me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, having to search the furniture for items, even if you find cocaine guarded by snakes instead of a rat guarding a piece of the will.
The remaining few stages are much easier. They become pretty linear, left-to-right affairs that are a welcome relief after clearing the city. You mostly platform and shoot at guys, though there is an interesting but underbaked section of cliff scaling. You can't really avoid getting hit oftentimes in these stages, but after the first area's surplus of extra lives, Harry can act as the occasional bullet-sponge in difficult areas without too much of a penalty.
I love how this made it onto the NES being made as graphic as can be. Nintendo doesn't seem to have taken exception to the clear show of drugs in the game or that there's a fully-voiced threat at gunpoint for the final scene. I love it, but damn!
I have read a few spots on the web that mention another ending. I've never found it, does anyone have any ideas if such a thing exists? I've gone through so many times trying different things, and I've never come up with squat - collecting items, opening every container, killing every guy that appears - and nothing. Oh well, I had fun trying, even if the secret ending really turns out to just be a unicorn.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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