Action 52

"I'd rather drink gasoline and whiz into a campfire..."

Back in the day, there weren’t any compilation games that offered you more than one game on a particular cart other than what you could find with the old Atari systems. Enter in from stage left the more than ambitious title of Action 52, which toted 52 different games rolled into one cart. What the game did was create a different sort of gaming by piling 52 different games filled with visual glitches, sound effect problems, poor control and little or no imaginative game play! For those of you who remember this game, it was a nightmare of a cart that boasted an extremely high price tag at the time of its release, and for all intents and purposes, had nothing that you couldn’t find in better quality in other titles. Featuring action games spanning across 52 different ‘themes’, you have little or nothing in the game that would impress you, and there are plenty of blatant rip-offs of other more successful titles. For those of you who have never really seen or heard of the game, here is a little run down of what the game features overall.

The game play allows you to select from 52 different action games that really have nothing going for them. With most of the games, you’ll find that there is little or nothing new or original, and with most of the titles that you find in Action 52, there are references to other action games that we’ve already played on the NES! Something that will catch most gamers is the fact that there are so many different games in one little cart. However, once you’ve come down to the sole conclusion that the game has nothing new to play, and with the games that are featured, there is nothing that plays or keeps your interest, you’ll find that the title itself is a rip-off even at the two dollar tag {which is what I found it for}. If you can get into the games, you have different options such as Cheetah Man, which is something of a clone of the old TMNT games in which you select one of three cheetah men and beat up on the bosses from all the other games on the cart! While this may seem like something that is challenging, the real challenge is getting around the poor quality of the game play and the monotonous themes that the games in the cart feature.

The control in all of the games suffers from what I call Ghost Control. In saying that, it means that most of the games that you play, mainly the shooters that are featured in abundance, have little or no movement to them and require patience and practice to use! Moving your character in any of the games requires precision in some points, and you’ll find that actually getting through the different games takes more effort than what its worth. Most of the games don’t require too much in the way of advanced controls or special directional movements, but you’ll find that the lack of variety in the controls is enough to turn some action gamers off. The control overall is perfect for siblings who are just getting into video games, because once you’ve gotten the control down in this cart, then there isn’t another action game out there that you can’t pick up and play!

The visuals of the game are where the game fails big time. While the game has 52 different ‘titles’ in it, you’ll find that all of the games have this feeling of the old Atari games! Some of the titles such as the ghost action game have some interesting visuals tacked to them, but there is too little here that really takes effect and will make you remember anything other than the poor quality. Something else that this title does, is with the NES hardware, it still seems to carry over some of the visual problems that you would expect to find in the old NES games. These problems include slow down and image break up when the game action becomes too intense {this is a rarity of course}. If you add into this that most of the games really don’t have any animation variety to them, then you’ll see that the game is little or nothing compared to other, more recognized and better played action games on the market.

Falling into the audio of the game, you’ll find that somewhere along the way, they forgot to really add anything to the game that brings any feeling of action and adventure in any of the games featured. Through most of the games, you’ll listen to recycled music that doesn’t leave anything to be remembered, and with that being said, if you’ve got a CD player handy, use it to have something to listen to! The sound effects in the game are also recycled throughout the entire cart, so don’t look for anything too impressive or original. Other than that, you’ll find that the standard NES MIDI music is of such poor quality, that anyone who has played action games might find it too bland and too sparse to really give the audio any credit.

Action 52 is a strange game that was way too ambitious for its own good. Featuring 52 different games packed into one cart is something that was unheard of at the time of its release, and even today, it’s hard to find a game quite like this. However, with the poor control and overall quality of the audio and visual featured in the game, there is nothing here that impresses me and more than likely, will impress anyone else! If you tack on the fact that the game has very little in terms of originality, and features an over abundance of shooter type games that really have nothing going for them, then you’ll find that the two dollar price tag is just a buck fifty too much. For extreme collectors only, this is a game that is better left to collect dust instead of playtime!

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/01, Updated 12/18/01