Game: Last Action Hero
Platform: NES
Year Released: 1993



This week’s Throwback game of choice wasn’t inspired by anything current. I simply saw it on a list of NES games and wondered how I had never played it in the past. Before I get too ahead of myself, perhaps I should expand a little on this game’s history. Back in 1993, an awesome action movie was released that would go on to be known (by me) as the greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger film of all time. That movie was Last Action Hero.

If you have never seen Last Action Hero, I suggest you stop reading this article and immediately run to your nearest video store and purchase it. The synopsis is as thus: Danny, a troubled young boy, is a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks, especially the fictional Jack Slater series. He receives a magic ticket from the proprietor of his local New York City movie theater and soon finds himself in a Jack Slater movie, discovering that the characters he has been watching on the screen all this time have actually existed in an alternate movie universe.



In all seriousness, I absolutely love this movie. It is an action movie, but it’s also a clever satire of the action movie genre, specifically Schwarzenegger’s films, and I enjoy watching people make fun of themselves. That being said, I tried out the NES game based on the movie as a joke, expecting it to be god-awful. Since I went in with the lowest expectations possible, I ended up being not disappointed, even though this game is still pretty bad.

To be fair, most of Last Action Hero’s shortcomings derive from the fact that it is an 8-bit game. Trying to recreate one of history’s biggest action stars, as well as many of the scenes and environments from the movie, was something that the NES hardware was incapable of achieving. As a result, every character, from Jack Slater to random enemies to level bosses, look very generic and similar. The soundtrack is also typical 8-bit tripe, annoying noise that you’ll probably want to turn off after one level.



For what it’s worth, Last Action Hero does make a solid attempt to follow the chronology of the movie, which some movie-based games today can’t even do right. Levels are broken up by pixilated images from the movie and accompanying quotes. However, some of the scenes they chose to highlight in the game puzzled me. You probably only vaguely remember the short scene in which Danny dozes off in school and dreams about what Hamlet would be like as a Schwarzenegger movie. For some reason, this is an entire level in the game, even though it’s pretty much irrelevant to the main plot.

Not surprisingly, Last Action Hero is a basic action game. Each level consists of you punching and kicking random bad guys that come at you endlessly until you reach the end. Boss fights are pretty much the same: punch, punch, punch, kill enemy, start new level. It’s completely repetitive. Gameplay is really where this game fails; it’s easy to excuse poor graphics and sound in a fifteen-year-old game, but if there’s no fun factor, there’s no point. That being said, this isn’t the worst game of its era, and is far more playable that most 8-bit adaptations of movies or TV shows. The game isn’t broken, it’s just not exciting enough to make you want to keep playing. Since every level is essentially the same, Last Action Hero gets redundant really fast.



There’s no denying that Last Action Hero for NES is nowhere near the classic that the movie of the same name was. Still, it’s certainly not the worst game I've ever played. There are worse ways you could spend a few hours than playing this. However, I’d recommend watching the movie over again instead. As a film, Last Action Hero never gets old or boring. I just wish the same could be said of the game.

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