Paperboy (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Mindscape's 1988 action game for the NES, Paperboy. Paperboy is one of the better-known arcade games to come out of the 1980s, and it has seen regular rereleases and ports, along with a handful of sequels, over the years. It's a simple game. As you might expect, you play as the neighborhood's newspaper delivery boy, and your goal is to deliver your papers to subscribers over the course of a week. Pedaling about the neighborhood, you encounter a wild variety of hazards that you'll need to learn to juggle if your going to survive all seven days. Old ladies and dogs give chase, unruly children on skateboards and go-karts careen into your path without warning, ghosts and tornadoes appear out of thin air. Paperboy's version of suburban America is a dangerous, violent place that is not to be taken lightly. Paperboy's only weapon is his stack of papers. A well-aimed shot can stop any hazard's approach, and it's extremely satisfying to hear the smash when you put one through someone's living room window. These papers are limited in supply, but you can gather more by grabbing the glowing bundles you see in people's yards, and there are enough around that you aren't likely to run out unless you make a habit of wasting them. If you miss a delivery (or smash a window as you're attempting to deliver the paper), the customer will cancel their subscription. As I'm sure you can imagine, running out of subscribers is not ideal. You can win them back, though - for every day that you make a perfect run, you'll gain a new subscriber. Like in most arcade-to-NES adaptations, there are some compromises, but it still does its job well enough to keep the Paperboy feeling intact. The graphics are substantially worse than the arcade's, and unlike in the Sega ports, there is only one street to play, but the controls successfully made the transition from analog handlebars to the NES d-pad, the sound effects and music are nicely done, and the difficulty level is balanced just right. It's tough, but no5 impossible. It's nowhere near as impressive as the Genesis version, but Atari did manage to keep the spirit of the game alive in this port. I loved it as a kid, and even now I can still see its appeal. It's a game that is easy to throw in to play for a few minutes, only to look up at the clock and realize that somehow a half-hour has passed. _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!