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NES
1 Player
R.O.B.I recently received ROB the robot on eBay, and it came with all the parts necessary for Gyromite. I had never seen it work before or played it, so I thought I would give it a try. At first, I was like a little kid. I got my new toy, and it could do no wrong. Well, that got old pretty fast. Granted, the ROB is an okay idea, and is kinda neat at first, but it just does not deliver in the fun department. And you wondered why they only made 2 games for ROB!?!?!? Well, if you can get past Phase 13 without resorting to cheating, I commend you, because you are a better man than I.
The gameplay is pretty simple. You are a professor in a lab, and you have to defuse all the dynamite that the monsters set up in your lab to blow it up. But, there are blue and red columns in the way, and this is where ROB comes in. Rob is set up in a way that you can move the gyros onto the blue and red buttons that come with the ROB, and then the corresponding columns move out of the way. In some cases, you need to press both buttons at once, so you need to get a gyro spinning on the attached spinner, so it will stay spinning while you hit the other button. Pretty simple premise, but most people couldn't understand this back in the day, so ROB was widely ignored as a result.
Graphics: The graphics in this game are your standard fare, original NES game blockiness. They aren't bad, actually, because the sprites are not too small, and they are easily recognizable. However, it IS an original NES game, so the graphics are going to be well below that of which the NES is capable. But all in all, they arent bad, and they aren't a major annoyance, so they aren't my problem.
Sound: THE sound in Gyromite is pretty simple. It only has one song, and it isn't that annoying actually. The only problem is that IT HAS ONE FRIGGIN SONG. They could have at least switched music on even and odd level or something. But no, they had to play that same one over and over and over and over and you get the point. It isn't that bad, it just gets old after a while. It has a very nice melody and is quite catchy. Kinda like the Macarena. It got in your head the first few time you heard it, then after about 10 million consecutive times hearing on the radio or MTV, you want to kill yourself. Gyromite's muzak is quite similar.
Control: First off, ROB is really really really really slow. He takes forever just to move a couple gyros around. I think that RTOB actually might have been a success, had he been a little quicker moving things around. But then again, we are talkin' 80's technology here. Anyway, your character, Dr. Hector needs to defuse a whole bunch of bombs set by these little green lizards. Conveniently, there are radishes stashed all around, so you can feed them to the lizards and get around them. But all in all, the buttons usually do what you tell them to do. However, if you spin a gyro while you are playing, the vibration gets ROB all screwed up, so then you have to restart the whole thing. At least they have a feature where you can skip to any phase you like.
Frustration: This game is pretty simple, so there is not a whole lot of inherent frustration. However, since ROB is so slow and doesn't work sometimes, that can be VERY frustrating. The slowness of ROB definitely sinks the fun factor on this one folks. So, overall, not a whole lot of frustration, but there are glitches.
......BOTTOM LINE: I liked this game a lot at first, probably just from the sheer excitement of actually using ROB the way he was meant to. However, my interest soon waned when the giant gaping holes in this game's programming and gameplay reared their heads. I would rate this as an average game, because it is kinda fun, but has a few annoying features. Sorry ROB. I tried my best. *raises glass to ROB*
-gimmethebaaawl
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