seen from Australia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Uzbekistan
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Germany
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from France
Recent string of Retronauts covers
Favorite Nintendo Character 4: Main Bracket Round 2
Curran vs Tamagon
Curran
Tamagon
User Submitted Propaganda Below:
^ The so-called "Pulse Line" of Nintendo-published Famicom game carts with matching simple label design.
The boxes were still illustrated:
Eventually, Nintendo started putting most* of the carts out with illustrated labels--the so-called "Picture Label" versions:
*I couldn't find pictures of Famicom "Picture Label" carts for four games with "Pulse Line" carts: Gomoku Narabe Renju, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Pinball, and Donkey Kong 3; I don't know if that's because Nintendo never released "Picture Label" versions of those carts, or if they did but Google doesn't know about them.
'The 14 "Pulse Line" titles in order of release are:
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Popeye [green label]
Gomokunarabe ["Gomoku Narabe Renju"]
Mah-Jong
Mario Bros.
Popeye [yellow label]
Baseball
Donkey Kong Jr. Math
Tennis
Pinball
Golf
Donkey Kong 3
Devil World'
Have you played Devil World (1984)?
Yes
No
I watched someone play it
I've never heard of it
Requested by @pluralzalpha
Name: Medaman the Fried-Eggman
Debut: Devil World
No, I did not make up that name! That is really what this thing is called! This is Medaman the Fried-Eggman. Medaman the Fried-Eggman is a devoted follower of Satan!
"Jesus? GET OUTTA HERE!" -Medaman the Fried-Eggman
If you know Devil World, you know it is the most The Devil game Nintendo has ever released. It's in the name! It's his world! This game is so The Devil that it took 39 years for it to become officially playable in the United States. Nintendo of America didn't want to release a game with such blatant religious symbolism, and on one hand, I get it. It is very blatant. But on the other, this is a game where The Devil is clearly the Bad Guy, and the goal is to use crosses and Bibles to help thwart him. Would that really have been so controversial? Any moreso than Bible Adventures (NES)? I don't know!
What I do know is that the Devil oversees some funny little guys, and my favorite is the one shown here about to be killed by a fireball! This is the only official art Medaman the Fried-Eggman has.
So, Medaman is a little cultist-looking guy whose face is nothing but a gigantic eye! A lot like a Satanic Waddle Doo! "Medama" translates directly to Eyeball, and I don't THINK that eyeball is a fried egg, but I could be wrong. When hit by a fireball, Medaman will turn into a fried egg that Tamagon (the little Christian-passing dragon whose name DOES have to do with eggs even without localization) can eat. Maybe the "pupil" is really a strange yolk that's blue when raw, and orange when cooked? I don't know!
Aside from being the most basic enemy, two Medamans (Medamen?) are always in the bottom corners of the screen, turning cranks to move the screen in whatever direction The Devil points. These two would SO be his highest-ranking bumbling minions in a cartoon adaptation!
If you have Nintendo Switch Online, you can play Devil World right now! I played it. It's fine. And even if you don't have Nintendo Switch Online, you can also play it right now for free, using Delightfully Devilish methods!
They could have made so many deviled egg jokes with this game. They just didn't. I'm salty about it. Like a delicious deviled egg!
Top 47K - Pepsiman + Devil World
Join the HG101 gang as they discuss and rank the cult classic PS1 advert-game about the man who spreads awareness of Pepsi. Then stick around, because our SUMMER ARCADE FEATURE continues with Konami’s otherworldly Gauntlet clone!
Devil World (Famicom)
Developed/Published by: Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems / Nintendo Released: 05/10/1984 Completed: 18/01/2024 Completion: Saw all the levels (there’s only three.)
I’m not sure I can think of a company as venerated as Nintendo. A company that’s ultimately considered peerless–a promise of reliability, of quality, but with a mystique that somehow makes it all impossible to duplicate. While it’s made mistakes, they’ve always been mistakes that only Nintendo could have made. We might buy Apple products, or use Google, but even if we liked what they did at one point, we’re by now tired of the greed, the privacy violations, the churn of samey products, the enshittification. It’s hard to tell anyone apart. But not Nintendo. They stand alone.
Which I suppose is why it’s nice to go back and play these old games and see that just like everyone else Nintendo basically has no idea what they’re fucking doing. I mean, this. Devil World. Made with the gay abandon that only Asian developers can have about western religious iconography, it takes Pac-Man (sort of, more on that in a minute) and throws in random auto-scrolling and the need to collect crosses and bibles to survive while the devil dances at the top of the screen like he's in Haxan. It’s textbook weird and I’m sure it’s been in all sorts of Angry Video Game Nerd or Seanbaby-type videos but I’m not looking them up and neither should you.
There’s two things that are crazy about this. One, it’s that it’s apparently the first Famicom game that Shigeru Miyamoto directed. It’s a pretty early original title for the system (outside of sports titles) and it strikes me to what extent that even after Donkey Kong Miyamoto was still finding his feet as a designer. In fact, as I subscribe to the theory that Super Mario Bros. is more heavily based on Pac-Land than Miyamoto might admit (“sky colour” my arse) I wonder how much Donkey Kong was inspired by Space Panic, the proto-platformer, and Miyamoto simply “hit” on the tweaks that would make it eternal as he would do with Pac-Land. Here… he is not successful. In fact, the concept just feels sort of… unfinished. Half-arsed.
To put it in more detail: On the first stage of Devil World, you are navigating a fairly small wrap-around maze (a la Flicky) but one that moves in a random* cardinal direction for a random* amount of time, meaning you can get squished between walls and the edge of the screen. There are monsters that move around the maze (but who don’t seem especially bothered about chasing you, at least to begin with) who kill you on touch, but you can kill those by collecting a cross and firing a fireball at them. The cross, also, is the only way to collect the dots around the maze. It runs out after a set amount of time and then you have to collect another (though there’s a bunch around the level, and they don’t run out.)
*There may be some system to this, but I never worked it out.
On the second stage, you’re still avoiding the monsters and trying not to get squished, but you’re collecting four bibles and taking them back to the central “seal” (think the central ghost box from Pac-Man) to get to the next level.
The third stage is a bonus level with no enemies where you’re trying to collect six bonus boxes before time is up. The level is still scrolling randomly, but there’s some arrows in the level that… allow you to move the direction? Maybe?
Ultimately… none of this works. The random level movement and wall squishes feel, well, random. Having to collect the cross to pick up dots feels arbitrary, and the bible collection is sort of… pointlessly easy? And it’s all rather slow and unresponsive.
It’s possible that these were Miyamoto’s attempts to “level-up” the maze chase game the way adding jumping created the platformer and then when it didn’t work, well… the game had to come out. But maybe it’s also the fault of the second crazy thing about Devil World. Rather absurdly the game’s other designer, Takashi Tezuka, had never heard of Pac-Man. Doesn’t seem like the best foot to get off on when you’re, you know… cloning Pac-Man, to be honest.
Devil World is one of those examples of a game where some people tried something to make something already good better, and everything they did made it significantly worse. Wait… they enshittified Pac-Man… Nintendo aren’t different at all!!!!
Will I ever play it again? It simply isn’t worth the time.
Final Thought: I was honestly very surprised to discover that this was actually released in Europe in mid-1987 despite being not released in the US due to the ol’ religious iconography. Rough for the weans who got a copy of this that late in the game.
Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.
