Dr. Chaos

     If there's one thing I remember best about the NES, was the sheer volume of games that just weren't any good. Granted, it was an important step for the gaming industry. If not for the NES, the onslaught of bigger, better (very subjective term there) game consoles probably wouldn't have kicked off. But even the advances in technology produce a lot of misses for every hit. Usually they came from Sega. But anyway, I'm not talking about Sega or broad, sweeping summaries of the evolution of electronic gaming into the polygon-juggling, FMV-enriched barely playable action games of tommorrow.

     The NES had a handful of first-person exploration games. As a rule, they weren't particularly entertaining to anyone outside a cult following. Princess Tomato was a good example, as not everyone could cope with the complex "THIS BABY PERSIMMON LOOKS THIRSTY. THE LAKE IS OVER THERE. WHAT DO YOU DO?" quandry at the beginning. Shadowgate was pretty popular. But then, there were the games that decided to break the mold by including crappy side view action sequences here and there. I.e; Goonies II, Friday the 13th. Dr. Chaos is one such game.

     In some respects, Dr. Chaos might count as an early survival horror game. You wander around an old house. You find handguns and grenades in almost every cabinet. I can buy that. And sometimes bizarre thingamabobs come out of nowhere to kill you. As you begin the game, your little man in his polo shirt apparently jumps through a missing side wall in the ground floor. I can accept this since I already accepted the presence of hand grenades in the rumpus room. I had my sense of disbelief suspended. On stilts, baby. With a name like Dr. CHAOS, I could already picture all sorts of crazy crap jumping out of the walls.

     The utter lack of chaos in this game is appalling. Outside of the 'monster events' (more on that later), your enemies are pretty much rats and bats. You know. Typical game vermin. The catch: You are in command of a spectacularly incompetent little commando or something. For some reason, he enters the house with only a knife, which is about the size and shape of one of Link's broadswords. Possibly as a device to heighten aggravation tension, enemies can't be killed, just taken off the screen for a few fractions of a second. Say you shoot a rat. This is a pretty common occurance since the knife sucks and the grenades do as much damage to you as they do to the enemy. Even if you duck behind a wall or run offscreen, the blast still knocks off a chunk of health. I get the impression your character is one of those Ordinary Joe Forced Into Extraordinary Action types, and his inability to effectively use explosives is the game's way of simulating that as taking away his ability to leap disproportionately high would make the game impossible. Ahem.

     Upon entering the exploration mode, you're given a limited number of commands with which to well, explore. You can OPEN things, GET items, HIT windows, or GO through doors opened with the- you guessed it OPEN command. The game makes no effort to distinguish between regular doors and closets, though, so a lot of the times you tell your character to GO through a door, he retorts "NO WAY!" I love a game with a sense of humor.

     I really have no clue what it is you punch for items, honestly. I get the impression they're supposed to be windows. Opaque, featureless windows really close to the ceiling. Or why Dr. Chaos hides grenades on the windowsill. But there's no time to ponder that, as when you dawdle too long or go through certain doors, a bizarre monster attacks from nowhere! Uh-oh, HORROR! MUST... SURVIVE!

     The 'Monster Events' are supposed to create a sort of tension or something. You never know when the Ape With Exposed Ribcage will strike, or when the Giant Duck with Downs Syndrome will burst from the shadows of the closet. In any case, they're not really much to be scared of. All they do is kick you into the crappy hallway stage and wander around until they get shot twice. Oh wait, some shoot fire.

     So, let's recap: I get to wander around practically identical rooms, punching windows and getting kicked around by freaks and vermin.

-MANNA

The first time you'll ever see the words chaos and pony on the same screen.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that Dr. Chaos didn't have kids.

A fire breathing, cross dressing duck. Whee.