Famicom World

Intro (Storyline) 3.0

Ever play Battleship, where you have to guess the position of your opponent's battleships based on a lettered and numbered grid? Well then, you pretty much already know how to play Navy Blue. It's the Famicom version of Battleship, and quite good.

I'm taking a wild guess here and saying that you're in some kind of naval warfare with some kind of naval enemy; I'd bet the farm on the enemy being the German's in World War II.

So destroy your Nazi foes! Take down those bastards and all of their sea craft, whether big or small, using missiles which explode their ships into balls of violent fire. Roar!

Graphics 2.0

The ocean battlefield is a little confusing at first. It took me 10 minutes of shuffling around to figure out what I was doing, because all you have in front of you is a water-blue grid ready for you to select any square on the grid to shoot your first missile.

I love the graphics for when you nail a ship (or a part of it) and it lights on fire, showing "HIT" in bold letters. You better get used to the symbol that means that you missed: a black circle. Boring. And the graphic for your ships being missed: It's sort of this awkward looking splash of water. A hit is designated by a fireball.

Audio 3.0

The sounds are OK. I mean nothing is catchy, but they do their job of not annoying my ears. The sound effect for when a ship is nailed is a loud explosion, but I feel like I've heard it before...same old boring explosion.

Gameplay 3.0

You control where on the map you want to fire a missile, to see if it hits any of the enemy's ships. When you hit them, a gigantic "HIT" message comes up on the screen, and the missile flies into a part of the ship, which catches on fire. If only a part of it is on fire, the screen where you make your move will show that. If it misses, a gigantic "MISS" will appear, and some weird, um, thing, will show up on the screen. These images are simple and effective, since many Japanese games aren't playable because they're in Japanese.

So, you shoot missiles back and forth with your enemy for a while until one of the two of you has sunk all of the battleships. Then, you do it all over again, and again, and again, until you get bored.

Controls 4.5

There are no problems with the controls in Navy Blue, as would be expected from such a simple game. I just feel like movement of your cursor, if you will, takes forever, when it really shouldn't.

Frustrations 4.0

The CPU. is. allowed. multiple. hits. I'm not kidding when I say this. You're basically screwed if you miss your first shot, because then the computer's somehow going to get two or three hits before it's even your damn turn again. I have no idea on why it's done this way, but whatever. It's highly annoying and discouraging.

Fun Factor 2.0

You know what's more fun than this? Actually playing Battleship, and not spending money on a video game copy of it. Even the NES version of Battleship game should take note of this. It's cool for a play, but because of the limitations on gaming at the time -- no linking systems -- they had to make this game for one player when it's really a two-player game. That's the charm of the real Battleship.

Overall 2.5

You know that friend who you used to always play games with, but he'd always win and you'd get so pissed about it that you'd vow to never play again, but you'd always invite him back to your home a few days later to play games? That's pretty much how this game is.

I'm a sucker for Battleship, so I like to pop this in every now and then to see if I can get anywhere. Your time is better spent elsewhere, like with the real Battleship game.