Video Game Collecting Home Of The Original Video Game Price Guides

Terra Cresta Nintendo NES

Many gaming blogs review the obvious. What can be said about Contra or Super Mario Bros. 2 that hasn't been said already? Unless I have something unique to say about one of those games or if I have a genuine opinion of the boxart those titles will mostly remain unmentioned here.

So with out further ado let's talk about Terra Cresta. Reasonably rare, I got my copy cheap at the expense of the contacts being oxidized. It was an on the whim purchase, an eBay auction minutes away from closing. I never seen heard or played it before.

It's published by Vic Tokai and as of this writing it's 25 years old. Looking at just the title screen I can imagine most people cringing. It really does show it's age. Basically what we have here is a typical shoot-em-up with a couple unique things...

First of all I can't recall a single shoot-em-up where killing an alien resulted in skeletal remains. That's pretty cool. The other thing that's neat is the power up system. Hovering over a numbered orb earns you a new piece of ship which multiplies your firepower. Press a button and the pieces separate allowing your bullets to be more spread out. And now this is where Terra Cresta is really unique... prior to starting the game you can enter a design mode where you can not only decide which ship pieces will hover in relation to your craft, but you can also choose which direction the bullets fly from that piece!

Today very few people know or even care about this game. And with each passing year so many games, including this one and others disappear from the face of the earth. A thousand years from now -long after the death of all humans if in the odd chance the plastic hasn't deterioted, and the circuit board hasn't oxidized into dust an alien species might find it and emulate it and perhaps the aliens will take Terra Cresta as a historical record of what happened to humans on Earth. Or then again maybe they'll take it for what it is... a neat little shooter in a sea of forgotten games.