Xenophobe for the Nintendo Entertainment System… I walked right… I got stuck…I walked left… I got stuck… I died. That is pretty much the complete review of the game as I was able to experience it.

When Nintendo Legend took to twitter declaring that August 8th, 2012 would be review a bad game day I knew that it would an easy choice. The internet is full of stories of kids in the 90s having their weekends ruined as a kid by a poor choice at the local movie rental place, Xenophobe was my first taste.

If you are not familiar with this turd from the NES library, I’ll explain my thought process in selecting it so many years ago. Network Video was our go-to video rental store, and now that I think about it they had an awesome NES selection. Unfortunately, not all of the can’t-miss titles were in stock which left me to the mercy of cover art. Xenophobe’s cover appeared to have the alien from Alien on it, how could this not be awesome?

As far as I can tell, you have the option to move east or west to a new room are trying to stay alive by jumping over and shooting enemies. The player is not provided any guidance on what to do, so naturally I started walking to the right. The jumping is clunky and firing feels delayed.

After making my way through several rooms I hit a dead end. With only the options to move east or west, I made the logical step to backtrack and proceed to the west. On my way west I run into the alien from the cover… ok? I haven’t accomplished anything, why am I seeing what I imagine to be the final boss? I kill it, nothing happens. I continue on until I hit a dead end and die while trying to backtrack again. This is when I knew my weekend was going to be spent recycling my old carts, this one is definitely a dud.

About a year ago I bought this game for my collection when I found it for $1. There is some nostalgia tied to this crappy title and I thought to myself that surely I’d be able to progress a little further. I was wrong, I still cannot figure out what to do, where to go or what the object of the game is. During a quick look at Wikipedia I found that this is an Arcade port, maybe it makes more sense throwing quarters at it.

A special thank you to Eric "Nintendo Legend" Bailey, Andrew Carreiro and everyone at 1morecastle. Being included in such a fun community driven event has be an absolute blast!