Jeremy Parish checks out Predator & Taboo: The Sixth Sense in NES Works 122

A couple of games this episode that both try to do something a little different, but do they really succeed? And, perhaps more importantly, did anyone actually ask for them to forge their own path in the first place? At least they have both a point of view and a legacy.

Predator belongs to the NES’s legacy of overly ambitious media adaptations by very creative Japanese studios with neither the time, the resources, or (if we’re being honest) the design chops to make it all come together into a true classic. Like Jaws, Rambo, and Friday the 13th before it, Predator aims big and fails big. In fact, one might argue that it fails most bigly of all.

And Taboo belongs to the tradition of not-really-games developed by Rare with nice visuals and sound and audio—think Anticipation, but even more so. It also draws on the legacy of fortune-telling software seen fairly often on Japanese consoles of the time. It’s the kind of thing that would make for a fun bonus mode in a more substantial game, but seems kind of empty for a standalone full-price cartridge.