Anticipation
System: NES
Release Date: November 1988
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Board Game
Wow, Rare just came off releasing America’s favorite game shows and follows it up with this, Nintendo’s first video board game, Anticipation. I didn’t want to play the computer, so I enlisted my wife to help me play this one. She was not pleased with me when we were done, making a lot of inappropriate anticipation jokes at my expense…
You choose number of players, computer opponents, and skill level. Then you’re thrust onto a colorful board and a puzzle screen comes up. To begin with, there are a bunch of dots and the game begins to connect them in order to create a picture of some sort. Your task is to guess what the picture is. At first you’re shown blanks to help you solve the puzzle.
Each color has pictures from different categories. We saw categories like tools, man-made, office, and whatchamacallit. The manual shows 16 different categories and claims hundreds of puzzles for countless hours of fun, but I counted… You have to solve a puzzle from each category to move to the next level of play. It becomes harder, as the dots go away and the spaces for the answer disappear as the levels increase.
In the corner of the puzzle screen, a lone dice counts down from six. When you buzz in, you’re given twenty five seconds to scroll through letters and spell out what the drawing is supposed to be. You only get one mistake before losing your turn, so you had better be fast and accurate with the letters. If you’re right, you move forward on the game board the number of spaces were on the dice when you buzzed in. I won the game, but felt I lost in life.
Graphics: 1.0
The puzzle pictures are decently done. Everything else is not good.
Sound: 1.0
The music is annoyingly bad and constantly looping.
Gameplay: 1.0
There’s so little to be able to do in this game. And if you accidentally buzz in with the A or B Buttons, you’re going to waste your one mistake.
Difficulty: 1.0
Some of the puzzles are real questionable. Losing the dots and the blanks can make solving a puzzle in time very challenging.
Fun Factor: 0.0
How many hours of fun are in Anticipation, you ask? Zero. Zero fun.
Overall Grade: 0.8
Anticipation earns a D. I didn’t anticipate this game to be so unfun, but here we are.