Might Makes Right (Might And Magic, Mighty Bomb Jack, Mighty Final Fight)

As we've said before, the grey box was powerful. Mighty, if you will. We've got three games with similar names here, let's run with the thing. Nintendo, the makers of the box... now they were mighty. They still are mighty, with their black box and tablet picking up steam. The tiny red rectangle I bought from them 16 months ago is equally as mighty. Our three games today, in a sense, are almost Dickensian ghosts of sheer might. Let's start with Might and Magic on NES, itself an adaptation of a computer RPG. It's younger than I thought; the original version only came out in 1986. This console port is post-dated 1990. The end of the Wall and the end of the War, but you wouldn't know it. I've played the original PC version of Might and Magic. Well, attempted to play. It is brutal and unforgiving, a throwback to the old days. I talked about this in one of the off day posts a while back, but it has a computer DM who doesn't have a care about anything besides beating you down. Might and Magic fits like a glove when it comes to that. I never got out of the first town in my PC attempts. There was a lot of trying to survive one fight without half the party dying. To the NES version's credit, it only took two fights before someone kicked the bucket. Then we checked a leather satchel and spikes jutted out. TPK. There's might here, alright... a might that's too strong for any atrophied RPG fan in 2014 to survive. I'm sure it lit up the world in the days when we shook our fists at the Soviet Union, but not today. Not now.


Mighty Bomb Jack is the "present" of the Famicom, then. It's a very unique sort of game with lots of hidden mechanics and secrets and things buried deep within. Bombs are a sort of might, when you think about it. An explosion created by alchemical might. Our hero, Bomb Jack... is he a master of them? He collects them like a wild hoarder, and some bonus or good thing happens if you collect lit bombs in a specific order. Look, I didn't get very far in Mighty Bomb Jack. It's decent, but what I really remember it for are the Game Center CX episodes about it. Shinya Arino, the tenacious hero of lands that now exist, facing down some of the toughest dread beasts that video games could come up with in the name of alchemy and Lady Capitalism. It was a struggle that lasted several episodes, and culminated with a final battle in front of a captivated audience of fans. Like a Spirit Bomb feeding positive energy to a Hard Game Beater. Japan. You gotta love it. You gotta love Arino. Mighty Bomb Jack is okay and it's even on the Virtual Console. I think you can even download it on your red rectangle.

Mighty Final Fight. 1993 now. So everything's dying. Capcom actually cared to publish this one here instead of handing it off to Nintendo, so there's that! We also face the problem we had with Mario Is Missing. A Super Nintendo game has bled into the world of our little grey box, and filled it with more power than it can handle. Mind, it is the best game we're looking at today. I've beaten it. Short, but a lot of fun and not obnoxious like most other beat-em-ups. Even when it's dying, especially when it's dying, in fact... the NES has more power than we can comprehend. Enough to exorcise the dread beast GREED, whose arcade hooks gave birth to Final Fight in the first place. The hyper-realistic supersprites of quarter insertion are smoothed out, giving way to cute and colorful graphics. This is the age of Kirby and his Adventure, and the grace of the Goddess Valya brightens everything up. Here, then, we learn the secret of the NES. No matter how much bad was made for it, there's still good in there. Still power. Even to its last breaths in a year of dynamite heads, lock-on technology, and final fantasies, the little grey box fights back with everything it's got.

Now that's what might is.