44. Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode

(NES, Vic Tokai, 1988, JPN title: Kamigami No Tasogare)
Duke Togo AKA Golgo 13 is an assassin for hire and the world's greatest sniper. Appearing in many Manga books, anime and live action films since 1969, The brainchild of Takao Saito has travelled across the globe silently executing targets in the unlikeliest of situations with paranormal precision whilst still finding time to bang every hot girl he comes across. A silent, unmoving and emotionally blank man. Golgo 13 has a perfect record. If you're on his list, you're already dead.

He can't flying kick to save his life though.

As one of two NES games featuring our boy Togo, Top Secret Episode features side scrolling fighting, helicopter schmupping, scuba diving action, third-person dialogue exchanges and first-person sniping and tunnel sections, a lot for our humble NES to comprehend. Golgo has been hired to investigate the disappearance of a biological weapon known as "Cassandra" which has fallen into the wrong hands. The adventure takes Golgo around the world as the player controls our lanky hitman in one of his deadliest adventures yet (Oh, and into a fight with HITLER'S BRAIN).
Golgo 13:TSE is REALLY difficult, both in its design and in its unresponsive control system, Golgo's sprite trundles along with a small variety of attacks that have a habit of "ghosting" through the enemies, along with a super high flying kick that's fairly useless. Occasionally someone will take a shot at Golgo and the game switches to an Operation: Wolf style shoot-out. Once Golgo makes it to his contact there is a long dialogue cut-scene before he's sent back to his clunky war. Occasionally, Golgo will enter a building and the game will switch to a very basic first person section as Golgo negotiates a maze of corridors, trying to avoid booby traps with the aid of the provided map. As mentioned above, there are also scuba diving sections and very occasionally, a sniping situation which proves very unlucky for any man on the business end of Golgo's rifle scope.

So the game is quite sluggish and gets incredibly unfair once gun turrets and robots come into play against our ambling hero, but in the game's favour there is some great music, an intelligent storyline and an attempt to squeeze a whole host of genres into the NES's tiny memory. Top Secret Episode is more a victim of biting off a little more than it can chew and whilst it handles the shootouts and first person sections bravely, the side scrolling levels leave a lot to be desired.

Then again, tell me another game where smoking cigarettes and working the chicks gives you EXTRA HEALTH.

Now that's how you level up, Square.