Cancelled forever.
PLAYERS: 1-4 simultaneous
PUBLISHER: Data East
DEVELOPER: Data East
GENRE: Minigame
RELEASE DATE: October 1990
So it’s come to this… a series of Olympic-style events featuring cavemen. It’s a little hard to come down from the glory that was two-thirds of the Castlevania series to, well, dreck. As far as I know, nobody asked for Caveman Games, nobody wanted it when it was released, and no one outside of NES aficionados even remember the game. Despite its relative anonymity, does Caveman Games still exist? Unfortunately, yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t be reviewing it.
Well, I’m bored. Let’s review the individual events, shall we?
Clubbing – Drawing heavily from the early NES “masterpiece” Urban Champion, Clubbing makes no promises it can’t keep. With only your trusty club to guide you, you must bash your opponent’s head in, square and true. Since you’re fighting atop a precariously placed large stone, you can also lightly nudge your opponent towards the edge and wait for one of the edges to break off. Highly recommended.
Mate Toss – Mate Toss happens to be the most amusing and interesting game of the whole bunch. Don’t get me wrong: the event’s still only amusing for about five minutes, but those five minutes are a doozy. Watch as a large neanderthal woman goes flying across the screen! Gasp as she looks like she might break her back upon landing, only to land and bounce gracefully on her buttocks! If you do good, she’ll give you a thumbs-up. If not, she’ll shrug her shoulders. If only all the games were this amusing for even a brief span of time.
Dino Vault – I’m not sure who thought this would be fun. Furiously tap ‘A’ to run across a screen, hold up and ‘B’ to begin to vault, then let go of ‘B’ to fly over a very patient T-Rex. It doesn’t matter how fast you run, what kind of shape your dumpy caveman is in this game, you’ll never fly over the T-Rex.
Saber Race – Outside of Mate Toss, you’ll find no greater event than the Saber Race in Caveman Games. You and an opponent are running away from a saber-toothed tiger, but instead of working together, only one caveman can outrun the tiger. If you get close to your opponent, feel free to beat him, and he will go flying back towards the tiger. This will enhance your sense of self-esteem and increase your ability to mate with several mannish women.
Fire Start – Remember when you were a kid and your dad took you camping? Remember how he tried for hours and hours to show you how to start a fire, only to have you mess up time and time again, and then he stormed off, furious, saying you weren’t really his son? That is the kind of fun Data East was going for with this section. Click rocks together and try to make a fire. Once you succeed, you win both a large caveman smile and your dad’s nodding approval.
Dino Race – I challenge anyone to even want to play this section. I know I didn’t.
The concept of playing as a neanderthal is a poor one for video games. Whose dream is it to inhabit a club-wielding imbecile? Remember Chuck Rock? Prehistorik Man? Of course not because those games were terrible. Caveman Games can join the pantheon – and indeed, take the lead – as the worst game to ever feature cavemen, despite the inclusion of a Mate Toss game, which should by all rights and means, redeem it.
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7 replies on “#125 – Caveman Games”
And my session on your site tonight ends now — ’cause I love Caveman Games. :/ Haha. I recognize some of my love for it is purely sentimental, but it pulls off the multi-sport genre better than, say, Winter Games… and, I admit, is a lot better in two-player mode. But to grade it worse than Cheetahmen II, Castlevania II, and your other D games?! :p
Yeah, I agree with this guy. I was really enjoying your reviews when I was reading scattered ones of my favorites, but reading them from the beginning, I’m starting to think you just hate every game you play.
I would disagree. I don’t go into a game I’ve never played hoping to hate it. The majority of the NES library is average-to-horrible. Let’s say two-thirds? If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to start playing through them yourselves. You’d be surprised.
Don’t get me wrong, the NES was a fantastic system with a lot of good-to-great-to-classic stuff. But when elevating the NES in our memories, we tend to remember and emphasize the classics and forget the other stuff.
Thanks for the reply. I definitely know what you mean, as I’ve been collecting for quite some time. There is no doubt oodles of crap for the system but there are a few “terrible games” that (I personally think) deserve another visit from you. You def have another regular reader, but just try to always keep in mind that before the mind blowing innovations we’ve adapted to over the years, SOME of these weren’t sooo bad
Some days I just feel vindictive against games. Today must have been one of these days. I do also have a personal problem with games that offer several different modes of play. Most of the time there’s one decent game and the rest are awful. So it goes, I suppose
i feel I must chime in because I have fond memories of this game… you have to see it for what it is… it is purely multiplayer, one of the first “party games” ala mario party which is a complete bore played alone. me and my sister would duel at this for hours, I was always better at the rapid button type events, and she always won the others. play it with a friend and get competitive
I actually just played this over the weekend, with my brother and our friend, for the first time since childhood. Somehow, I agree with Dylan, yet I also have to say we were laughing out loud and smiling the whole time. And we did actually get over the dinosaur. Well, I didn’t personally, but I saw it happen. No idea how it happened, though. I think it’s a kind of bad game, but I also kind of want to play it again with the guys. Not sure what that says about me or this game. However, for the life of me, I can not figure out how to do the fire game. All 3 of us had sore fingers after trying for like FOREVER, and we just quit out of sheer and utter desire for mercy. DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW START THE WRETCHED FIRE?!
-Trevor, with broken fingers