Silver Surfer

The Good
Silver Surfer features some incredible 8-bit intermission sequences, detailed backgrounds, funky music and a story line that is actually plausible within the Silver Surfer's cosmic cannon.

The cosmic surfer is easy to control, and the game allows you to choose the order that yo complete the initial levels.

The game developers even added in a password feature to help less seasoned players.

The Bad
The Silver Surfer is an incredibly powerful being, in the comic books. Here he will instantly die whenever he gets hit by anything, even if he happens to bump into the pretty scenery.

Granted, the death scenes feature some nice animation, but it is bizarre for such a powerful superhero to be a frail, cosmic wimp.

The levels tend to be VERY fast paced, with lots of enemies, projectiles and scenery. So, suffice to say this is probably one of the hardest NES games on the market.

Adding insult to injury (on a cosmic scale, mind you) it is often very difficult to tell what scenery you can fly over and what scenery you will touch and die.

Granted, I suspect that this may have been due to the technical limitations of the NES hardware, but it underscores just how frustrating the game can be, when your not always sure what will kill you.

True their are weapons upgrades and, yes, passwords to make you totally invincible. However, if you plan on beating the game without any passwords or Easter eggs,you may also want to reserve a room for yourself at the madhouse.

The Bottom Line
Silver Surfer (1990) looks and sounds great, but has reduced the great, and powerful cosmic hero into a frail and fragile wimp. Only a few gamers will dare to take on this challenging game without any passwords. Everyone else, myself included, will just enter the games' power up and invincibility passwords, and enjoy blasting away at the forces of evil.