The Nintendo Entertainment System. Excited yet? I am every time I hear those words. I get goosebumps. Then, I go and play it, and quickly realize that a majority of the games were utter garbage. However, there's tons of gold in dem there hills, and Punisher for the NES.... is certainly, undoubtedly, not one of them. And who do we have to blame, well, just like with the article on Wolverine, we have good old LJN to blame... A few of you may be thinking, "Well, the one for Xbox was good, and so was the arcade game," and you'd be right; however, this game is in a league of its own and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the other two, even though I just did.
 
When I recently started up the Punisher game, I had no clue what to expect. This game was released in 1990, one year after the Dolph Lungren film: Punisher: The Golden Blonde Years, and I didn't remember anything about it... That is... until I started playing it. Then the pain set in. The plot of LJN's Punisher game is this "How many minutes can the player last before getting pissed off and turning the game off, then chucking said game out the window." Answer: 5 minutes. Punisher has to shoot bad guys and save someone, or stop a bad guy, I don’t know. I skipped the intro because I really want to play, and does it really matter? It’s not like LJN was making critically acclaimed masterpieces. However, Jigsaw is in it, if you can bare putting up with a few levels of tedium.
== TEASER ==
So, when you think about great shooting games on the NES, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Contra. So, if you take the Punisher and put him into a contra type game, much like LJN’s Wolverine, you’d think to yourself, “hey, this is a great idea.” Sadly, LJN wasn’t known for their great ideas. Punisher is kind of a third person, over-the-shoulder shooter. Where, you have no real control over your character, you just move right as you aim your cross-hairs over blobs of blue, brown, green, and other colors of pukeyness. One of the buttons shots people, and the other lobs the worst grenade of all time. If you hit both buttons at the same time, your frustration meter rises, and if it gets full, you take the game out of the NES and put it on high for 10 minutes in the microwave. You’ll be lucky to ever hit anyone with it.

It definitely sounds like a very bad game.

Looks suspiciously like Operation Wolf which was popular at the time.

No, THIS is the metaphor for christianity: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naRP6vllXc&feature=player_embedded
 

 

" No, THIS is the metaphor for christianity:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naRP6vllXc&feature=player_embedded    "

" No, THIS is the metaphor for christianity:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naRP6vllXc&feature=player_embedded    "

" It definitely sounds like a very bad game. "

The suckiest part was...

You can't even get to see PUNISHER'S trademark SKULL proudly on his chest since his back is turned all the time. 
 
It just looks like some guy in purple tights shooting people with dish washing gloves. 
 
P.S. 
Was that Jim Lee's artwork on the box cover...?

" @ComicMan24 said:

" It definitely sounds like a very bad game. "

It IS a bad game. "

Can we turn these into video content, maybe with a giantbomb crossover. Like "This Ain't No Comic" or something like that? Be kind of cool to get some of this amazing gameplay(ha!) in HD comicvine web video.

LJN

LJN made bad games, which isn't a new revelation.

" @ReverseNegative said:

" @ComicMan24 said:

" It definitely sounds like a very bad game. "

It IS a bad game. "

I assume you have played this game before. "

" @ComicMan24 said:

" @ReverseNegative said:

" @ComicMan24 said:

" It definitely sounds like a very bad game. "

It IS a bad game. "

I assume you have played this game before. "

Unfortunately, yes. "

I remember this game!  I went to a friends house once, party or something, and he had this.  Wow.
I think, I don't remember the graphics being like that or the position Frank was placed in the frame of the camera.  But I think it was this one.
How many Punisher games were there back then.

" Can we turn these into video content, maybe with a giantbomb crossover. Like "This Ain't No Comic" or something like that? Be kind of cool to get some of this amazing gameplay(ha!) in HD comicvine web video. "

You can tell this games a winner because on the cover, at the end of one of his guns, is a rainbow. I know it's part of a logo, but to come on!! 
 
The Punisher: Rated M for violence, blood, and gratuitous rainbows.

The Gameboy game was better... It had Spider-Man in it.... Ok, not that good, but I liked the Gameboy one WAY better then the NES one. 
 

aw man I remember playing this game LOL......."sigh" I didn't know any better

The Punisher, unlike say Superman, always had pretty nice, if not amazing, good game adaptations.
 
My favorite was the Megadrive (Genesis) arcade one. Fun, epic and quite challenging!
It was always pretty well done, andt the 2nd player could play as Nick Fury!^^
The Xbox/PS2 game that came around Thomas Jane's Punisher live movie was also quite epic!

SNES had the best games, NES had ok games and this game looks bad

This was the first video game I ever played to the end. I remember squaring off with the final boss, the Kingpin, & being called away to dinner before I could beat him. Why didn't my parents understand that I was trying to put an end to organized crime once & for all? Some things are more important than lasagna.

" @inferiorego:  i've been gone awhile. have you ever done a Ninja Turtles Arcade game or Robocop Vs Terminator segment like this. If not Catman  would love that, especially the former as I'm programming a dedication to that game.  As for Punisher NES...oy! But, back then anything by LJN was best avoided right after THQ. "

" @inferiorego:  Ha, the Picture in Picture would be awesome. I never got to play the NES punisher game, just wasn't as big of a Punisher fan back then. The Old XBOX one though, surprisingly fun and ridiculously violent, probably the best non-comic offering from that franchise ever. Still no Dolph Lundgren though, so it can only be so good. Why god? Where is justice? "

Are you the Angry Nintendo Nerd...?