Genre: Platform
Developer: Konami
Total time played: 20 Hours over 6 weeks
Short review: Bucky O’Hare is easily the best platformer on the NES that you have never played. I lived and breathed NES as a child and I had never heard of this game, it came out after the SNES and slipped under most gamers radars. This game is the only NES game I have ever played as an adult that I never played as a child that is actually fun to play. This is a very difficult game, good luck.
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Mike (from the Mega Man 2 review) and I went to Lexington Comic-Con in 2013 and were looking through some NES games when Mike came across Bucky O’Hare and bought it. John (also from the Mega Man 2 review) said it was one of his favorite games as a kid which is why Mike was excited to buy the game. For several weeks after buying the game Mike kept telling me it was one of the best NES games he has ever played. I didn’t take him seriously simply because if it was so good one of us should have played it before 2013.
For my 31st birthday my wife contacted Mike for suggestions on games that I wanted and he told her Bucky O’Hare. I was very excited when I opened the package as I was not expecting the game at all. 2 years earlier I went into a comic book store looking for NES games and the clerk told me they just had one, Bucky O’Hare. I didn’t buy it because I didn’t want to pay $15.00 for the game since I had never played it and knew nothing about it ($15.00 was a steal, I’m sure my wife paid closer to $50.00).
When I finally got to try the game out I found that it was very similar in gameplay to Mega Man. You choose which level to play (represented by planets) and when you beat the level you earn the ability to play as a new character who each have a unique power. The characters are switched on the fly, unlike Mega Man you don’t need to pause to use a different power. The game has your typical ice world, fire world, earth world. Each world has pretty inventive gameplay mechanics, my favorite being the level where you have to jump between passing asteroids in space. I would guess I died 0ver 500 times playing through the game (thank goodness for unlimited continues and a password system). It is on the same difficulty level as Ninja Gaiden or Ghost n Goblins (I have never beaten either of those games). I highly recommend anyone who loves NES try out this game, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, if I had grown up playing this game it may be my favorite NES game ever.
Hoz's 8-bit NES Quest 
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