Hey there Confusionauts. Sorry we haven’t had an NRF in a couple weeks. Turns out that SOMEBODY thought it would be funny to unleash the NES game that I like to call “THE MADDENER” and it completely put the Nintendo out of operation for a couple weeks while we were de-sanguinating it. We’ve got it mostly fixed now, except that the only game that it’ll run is this Flintstones game called “The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy”. So… I guess that’s what today’s NES ROM Friday is going to be, then. Great.

If you’re like me, you LOVE the Flintstones! Also, if you’re like me, you apparently have nothing in common with me. Funny how that works out. Anyway, I started this game being totally confused as to just who the fuck “Hoppy” was supposed to be. It’s just like that stupid “Tom & Jerry & Tuffy” game all over again. I’ve taken the liberty of singling out this “Hoppy” in the diagram to the left. Do any of you recognize a weird little dinosaur with anime hair buns for a head that apparently lived on top of the Flintstone’s house? I don’t. Not at all do I remember that.

Anyway, the long backstory to this game is way cooler than the seven minutes I spent playing it (isn’t it always?). Apparently the main cast of the Flintstones was standing around outside when a Super Nintendo graphic attacked their pets! And their “friend” the Great Gazoo, who’s supposed to be so fucking fancy just floats there looking disgusted at the whole affair. In fact, just about everybody’s face here is great. Wilma and Betty are surprised, Barney is terribly confused, and Fred is PISSED THE FUCK OFF. “NO FUCKING SPACE SKULL THING IS GOING TO ADD COLOR TO MY WORLD SLASH ZAP MY ANNOYING PET I HATE YOU MOTHER FUCKING REJECT FROM CHRONO CROSS!!!”

It turns out that the guy inside the completely out-of-place graphic is the craft of “Dr. Butler” who is from the 30th century. I think that’s even farther in the future than the Jetsons, man, that’s crazy. His terrible mastermind plan involves stealing prehistoric pets so he can… make them pets in the future. Not to put them in a zoo because they’re extinct or anything, just to change ownership of the pets. And they’re not even the same species or anything (are they? Oh god, is that a lady Dino?)… I guess my point is that this plan just has all sorts of holes in it. Dr. Butler destroys the Great Gazoo’s time machine before he leaves, of course, and now Fred has to go collect all the pieces of it so he can save his pet.

And that weird sequence is what gets us to the nice sidescrollin’ standard of collect all the X’s in my Y. Sigh. The gameplay is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. You’re Fred Flintstone and you can jump and hit things with a club and there are a bunch of birds and dinosaurs and other cavemen you have to ruthlessly slaughter in order to get back some parts for this omnipotent guy’s time car. Why can’t Gazoo do this himself? Is it because he’s just THAT much of an asshole? Yeah, probably. I got through the first level, up until the boss who was a big dinosaur that breathed fire and killed me. I didn’t really care enough to “continue”, so… yeah, that’s all you get for today. You’re welcome.