NES Game Reviews #29 – Paperboy
The Daily Sun needs delivering. The job demands a brave lad to tackle this treacherous paper round. This street is so dangerous, it makes headline news when you successfully finish a weeks paper round!
Launching papers from your bike, you’ll need carefully timed precision to land them on either the doormat or in the mailbox. If the paper lands anywhere else the subscriber will consider it undelivered and if you’ll lose their subscription for the following day. If you successfully deliver to all your subscribers, you’ll be rewarded with more subscribers for the following day. Lose them all and you’re fired!
The game takes place over the course of one week. If you can successfully complete your paper round 7 times in a row, you’ll beat the game. You will need to have at least one subscriber for everyday of your round! You have 3 lives, I dont believe more can be earned.
Paperboy’s biggest concern is.. well just about everything! This truly is the street from hell, Literally Death himself owns a number of the houses! Besides the Reaper, you’ll have to avoid devil dogs, insane old ladies, bikers, possessed tires, RC cars driven by no-one and more. This is no Ramsay Street put it that way!
Each level (or day) ends with an assault course, complete with jumps, moving platforms and targets to knock down. Thankfully this section is purely there for point gathering. Since points award fuck-all in this game, and lives aren’t lost in this section, I opt to crash instantly and simply get on with the next level.
Calculating your hitbox with the isometric angle is a challenge. With practice you’ll begin to learn how individual hazards behave and where you need to be to avoid them but as the week progresses, new hazards emerge demanding more trial and error!
It pays to recognize patterns. For example If there’s a breakdancer followed by a workman drilling, it’s fair to assume a dog will follow. Knowing to be in the road gives a head-start to outrun the hound. Same with the Old Lady who chases you, you’ll start to recognize her house. Until you really start to preempt these kind of events the game can feel quite unfair. Faults aside, this is a lot of fun!
