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As I've mentioned several times in the past few months, my taste on old video games has shifted a little over time. And nowhere is this more evident than the game at the top of my "buy on sight" list. It's definitely a middling game, a game I sold years ago thinking I'd never want to play it again...but lately I've wanted to give it another shot.

So, in that spirit, and as we enter the final month of 2015, I've found a bunch of other games that I once sold, but recently bought again. I'll be talking about my original and new impressions of these games, just in case old games would be forgot, and never brought to mind, cuz For Sold Games (I've)

On the positive side, I remembered it was a pretty easy-to-beat game.

Well, aside from the very-much remembered "you have to know to speed-up to jump road-spanning obstacles", there were three things that stood out after playing BreakThru again:

1. Heat-Seeking Rocks...and a little while later, heat-seeking missiles. But mostly rocks. Also, in discussing these, we'll address the game's BAD DIFFICULTY CURVE:

It turns out the overall game isn't too difficult, but it almost has an "upside-down difficulty curve". The last two levels are incredibly easy. There's a really really hard jump in the middle level which may be the hardest part of the game, but the most challenging enemy type appears in the 1st level:

Unless you slow down to the slowest pace, there's no way to "fake out" these "heat-seeking rocks". Their trajectory is entirely determined by you; in video games, dangerous projectiles often lock on-target the moment they enter the screen, and you can fool them by changing course after you've seen them.

Not so, here: if you're traveling at all quickly, the rocks are designed to hit the ground at about the same time as you reach them, landing directly on/in front of your jeep. You either have to jump, shoot them enough that they disintegrate, or slow waaaay down (making it hard to get back up to reasonable jumping-speed)...all because these hunks of dirt somehow have the tracking sense of a bloodhound crossed with a carrier pidgeon.

So, as you've seen above, the backgrounds are rinky-dink, the rocks are squigglies. But also the people are tiny and most of the enemy tanks have no animation:

But I think the most cost-cutting effect in the whole game is the Bunker thingie: while it looks pretty sharp and sprays bullets at a high rate, let me just show how they represent the Destroyed bunker:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Data East did not make the most high-quality NES games.

Here we see an old game tradition, the Between-Lives Game Map Screen:

The first level, which can probably be completed in under 5 minutes if you played flawlessly, has almost half a dozen invisible checkpoints. It certainly feels like there's a checkpoint beyond every 2-3 obstacles...so if you die, you end up only replaying a screen or two.

As a mediocre game-player but world-class game ENJOYER, I'm usually not one to say "they should make this harder!" But given how short the game is, they might want to up the challenge a little bit.

For example, you get 3 lives and infinite continues. But there's no difference between losing a life and Continue-ing: both of them start you at your most recent checkpoint. The game would force you to play a little better if losing Lives started you at the last checkpoint, but having to Continue started you back at the beginning of your current level...then at least you have to play well enough to beat an entire level in 3 lives.

While it's not quite in the Wizards and Warriors or Guerilla War category of "just keep playing and eventually you pretty much have to win", it certainly feels like each death only sets you back one or two screens.

But I noticed a few other things worth mentioning:

But tune in next week for another game that I've sold, and recently re-bought!