Welcome to Old Games That Don’t Suck Thursday.  Each week I’ll write about a game that somehow influenced by life as a game developer and which I can totally recommend to you because the game is flippin’ sweet.  It also has to be old or at least forgotten about until recently.

Back in the day when NES was making the big hop over to SNES I was at a local Toys ‘R’ Us store and found a copy of this game in the bargain bin.  Picking it up was a random occurrence but a good one.  It would remain one of the lasting memories of the NES.

Although gameplay was not the major strive of Silius, it definitely had a Megaman shine to it.  The classic run-n-gun style with on-the-fly weapon switching made the game difficult and strategic.  Although the platforming sections fall flat the weapons and graphics for sure outmatch Megaman.

So why is Journey to Silius on the OGTDST then this week?  The music in this game is incredible.  The soundtrack to this game is some of the best ever heard on the NES or possibly even the SNES.  The chip tunes go far beyond the capacity of most NES games for it’s time and left me humming the song all day.  Level 1 gets booted every once in a while at my home just so I can listen.  Better yet is level 2.

So once you beat level 2 you are almost halfway done.  The game only has 5 stages and can probably be beaten in 20-30 minutes.  But the game, like Megaman, requires twitch reflexes to beat and has nuances that need to be learned.  And by the time you learn them, well, game over.  It’s a hard and frustrating battle not worth being taken on by the weak of heart.

If the pain and agony of failing at every enemy encounter doesn’t appeal to you, it’s at least worth listening to.