Predator (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Activision's 1989 license-based action-platformer for the NES, Predator. In this video, I played through the game twice to show different routes through the game. The second playthrough begins at 33:55. Based on the 1987 Schwarzenegger film of the same name, Predator puts you in the shoes of Dutch, a major whose unit of commandos finds itself being hunted down by an alien predator during a rescue mission in the jungles of Central America. It's up to you to confront the threats of the jungle, give chase to the monster that destroyed your men, and kill it. The NES game was developed by Pack-in-Video, and it's a revamp of the MSX2 Predator game they published in 1988. It features a total of thirty-six stages (thirty platformer and six "Big Mode" areas), and a single playthrough takes you through twenty-four of them. In the platforming stages, you collect weapons, solve occasional navigation puzzles, and blast at things as you make your way toward the exit. Some areas have multiple exits that feed into alternate routes, and several others end with a miniboss fight against the Predator. The Big Mode stages are auto-scrolling run-and-gun affairs that always end in a boss fight. The unconventional ways in which Predator mixes gameplay concepts gives the game that signature Pack-in-Video feel. It has a lot of good ideas, but the sloppy execution undermines a lot of their potential. I like how you have to use grenades to carve out access to blocked off areas and swap out weapons to deal with different situations, but the controls are fidgety and stiff (like you'd expect from an MSX game), the enemies placements and behaviors are often annoying unfair, and the backdrops make it difficult to tell what you can and can't walk through, so you end up falling into pits you didn't know were there. The notionally free-form stage layouts do little to encourage exploration, and the dodgy hit detection makes navigating them a chore. The Big Mode is a neat gimmick to change things up, but the controls and hit detection feel even worse when everything is scaled up in size. But on a more positive note, the graphics are decent, the cutscenes make some neat callbacks to scenes in the movie, and the soundtrack stands out as the high point of the entire package. The music is consistently tense, moody, and memorable, and it left me wishing that the rest of the game had been made with half as much care and talent. Overall, Predator is playable, but the compounding impact of its flaws siphons away too much of the fun. It doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel, but it's a sub-par action cart that lacks any semblance of polish. But hey, at the very least, it's far from being the worst way to get your Schwarzenegger fix on the NES. (Ever notice how much the title screen resembles Contra's box art?) ____ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!