Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage
System: NES
Release Date: February 1988
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: LJN
Genre: Sports
Ugh… T&C Surf Designs… this game is terrible. Let’s talk about it. You have two game types, a skateboarding game and a surfing game. Both of them are bad, but the surfing is unplayable. I see there are people online who claim to know how to control the surfing, but they are liars.
For the Street Skate Session, you can choose to control either Joe Cool or Tiki Man. They are the same. You have to get from one end of the stage to the finish in one minute. You have to avoid obstacles and can pick up coins littered through the stage for bonus points. Press the A Button to jump. You will either leave the board if you aren’t pressing left, or you will bring the board with you if you are pressing left. More often than not, you want to be holding left when you jump to stay alive. As you go through each round, you get different variations on the level layout.
Big Wave Encounter tasks either Thrilla Gorilla or Kool Kat with doing tricks in the ocean and making it to shore. This is basically unplayable. The instruction manual talks about using the A and B Buttons to move the character’s balance. This actually does nothing. I’m pretty sure you need to press the B Button if you get lucky enough to maneuver yourself up to jump off the wave. Otherwise, you’ll be wondering why the hell you aren’t moving forward and instead are being sucked backward. I was able to make it to the beach for the first time in my life, but I don’t claim to know how I did it.
Graphics: 1.5
If you said, “Hey Georg, what’s the best part of this game?” I’d say the graphics. I didn’t notice any sprite flickering, which is amazing for Atlus at this point.
Sound: 1.0
You get one song and wave sounds. Not good ones.
Gameplay: 1.0
The skateboarding works, I guess. The surfing is unplayable.
Difficulty: 0.5
There’s no learning curve, because surfing doesn’t work.
Fun Factor: 0.5
I was pleased twice while playing this. When I got through a skateboarding level without wiping out and when I actually made it to the beach, somehow.
Overall Grade: 0.9
T&C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage earns a D. I don’t know how it lucked itself into the D, but it did. Don’t play it. Not recommended.