246. Paperboy (Eastridge Technology, Famicom, 1991)

Paperboy is a port of the 1985 Atari arcade game, first released in on the NES in North America in 1988 before making it over to Japan 2 years later. I first encountered Paperboy on the Playstation 2 Midway Arcade Treasures compilation (which I guess included Atari games in addition to Midway games). I love the aesthetic and idea of Paperboy, (because it's a cartoony game about a novel concept) but lord, it is a challenging and punishing game. 

The Famicom version keeps the same basic paper-delivering gameplay, but whittles down the graphics a bit to fit on the system. Nothing looks terrible, but it doesn't look great either, and the animations leave something to be desired. Famicom Paperboy is noticeably less colorful than its arcade counterpart, though. The other real draw of the arcade version is playing on an actual cabinet with the bicycle handlebars. I'm a sucker for gimmicky controllers, so I'll always play a round of Paperboy if there's an arcade machine.  

A problem with Paperboy is that it feels good to go fast, but there are so many obstacles, and speed makes it harder to aim your papers, so it doesn't feel worth it to speed up. Every time you miss a paper it's like a kick in the shin. Maybe it's because you start with a relatively small number of customers, or the precision it takes to nail a delivery, but each time you lose a customer, it feels like so much more of a loss than even dying in other games. It almost makes me want to get good, but I can see the difficulty curve ahead of me, and it doesn't look pretty.

3/5, A decently faithful port of a punishing arcade classic