I'm bored. It's Friday night. I have no friends. 

But I have an emulator and a ROM that has not yet been tested. I have an obsession.

And now I have tears of laughter running down my face.
 

I don't know if any of you are aware of the existence of the NES Transformers game, but you probably should be. Now, the Transformers had a great TV show/movie/toy line.  The only thing missing?  That bastion of pop culture, a video game. The Transformers game should be something to inspire awe, something to make you glad you own an NES.  I'm sure the game is terrific, right? 
Wrong.

If you are a fan of the Transformers (and why the hell else are you here?), there are two advisable courses of action.  The first is to run. Run far, far away from this (don't forget your toys).  The other is to stand and take it on the chin.  Play the game.  I did, and it only cost me a fraction of my rapidly dwindling sanity.

So, what's so great about this game?  The first thing is that it's in Japanese. Sort of.  The title screen is sure as hell not English, but there is an easily readable "1 Player" and "2 Players" option.  Then there's the "Game Over" message.

That's in English, and you better learn to appreciate it--you'll see it a lot.

Now I'm going to analyze the game for you, because I know you're on the edges of your respective seats. 

You are Ultra Magnus, a pretty piss-poor choice for a hero.  This game must have been designed in the 20 minutes that UM led the Autobots after Prime ate blaster fire--and before being made scrap metal himself--because here he is struggling against "Decepticons" to do something or other. It's not real clear.

I put Decepticons in quotes because you're gonna have a hell of a time figuring out your favorite villain in these stunning graphical ranks. 

The scenery is apparently in Colorado or Alaska, for there are all sorts of nice mountains (not all of them necessarily whole).  You can even see something that appears to be Cybertron(!) lurking over the horizon.  That's when it hits you that either the world is the size of a marble or someone didn't bother with actual background design: it repeats, literally, every five seconds.  I have never seen such a thing.

Now, the first thing you do when you fire up the game is die. Almost instantaneously.  A jet will shoot you before you figure out what the buttons do, and Magnus will disintegrate. Then you'll start another life, and that will happen again.  It took me something like 4 games (x3 guys/game) to figure out what the hell I was doing. But figure it out I did, and I will impart my knowledge to you. GameFAQs, eat your fucking heart out.
 

OFFICIAL NES TRANSFORMERS STRATEGY GUIDE

1. Find the B button on whatever control device you are using.  This will make you shoot.
2. Push it. Real fast. Constantly.
3. Run like hell to the right.
 

There it is.  That's as far as I've gotten, to the end of the first stage.

(As an interesting side note here, it seems that the enemies in the game are randomized.  You can't just time your runs and jumps like you can in Mario and play blindfolded. And you thought Diablo was so great for randomized dungeons.  Little did you know that the illustrious Takara corporation reduced Blizzard to cheap knock-off artists.)

Things to look out for:
If you shoot an enemy, it will do the unlikely thing of stopping and blinking.  (If you're REAL lucky, you'll see a jet transform.)  This blinking is essential, for it is exactly like the blinking in Mario or Zelda. Remember what that did?  That's right... you can walk through the enemies.  In playing the first stage 20 times, I think I actually killed about three bad guys, but that was only because some of them only took one shot.

If you took my advice above, you're at this point running like hell to the right.  If your thunb ever leaves the right key, you've messed up. You'll notice something fascinating: the jets fly right past you.  Keen!  They move too fast to do anything about it, and never double back.  But don't get cocky.

If you're running, you should also be shooting to avoid the occasional jet that comes in low.  Also, this way you can ace the egg-things that fly up and down, walking through them while they blink. 

But you've got other things to worry about, and proof that the Decepticons are the most dastardly fiends on the planet.

Now, maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I don't remember little lobsters fighting for the bad guys.  But there you see them in, errr, black and orange.  There are tanks, too, that make you jump, and this is the only time your finger should be off the B button, to rapidly hit the A.  The crustaceans are goofier, because they do a little up-and-down motion while they fly to the left.  They aren't too bad, though--not too difficult to avoid.  And let's face it, all you're doing is avoiding here.

But while the crayfish may be ignored, no one can stop the......

What the FUCK is this?  I've seen some strange things in this game, but this takes the banana.  I'm willing to give the lobsters the benefit of the doubt, but there was never poultry on the show, not even lunch for that fatass Spike.  These guys are nasty, too, because I swear they home in on you.  Think you can get off a shot before they vaporize you?  Think again, punk.  Turkey legs haven't been this threatening since that gap-toothed vendor at the Renaissance Festival.  Note Magnus fleeing in terror.
 

Wait, what's this? I tried to duck and was greeted with something amazing! Magnus can transform!  This game just became a thousand times cooler.  But rest assured, it's ultimately useless.  You can only fire straight up.
 

Well, assuming you survive all these perils, you're in for a real treat: the Boss battle.

Excuse me?  What is this?  You can't shoot him anywhere that I've found. Of course, that could be because I only fought him for about thirty seconds before he killed me.  I'm still reeling, trying to figure out what the hell that thing is. 
 

As I was writing this, I went back to get the screenshots, and something unprecedented happened-- STAGE 2!!  That's right, I finally beat that mechanical eyeball--all I had to do was transform and shoot it three times from below.  What a piece of shit.  There was an epilepsy-inducing explosion, too.  Turns out Pokemon is pretty tame.

So here's the beautiful vista that is the second level--the black has been replaced with an eye-bending blue and there's some weird column action going on.  We've moved from Alaska to Greece--this game is international.

And, upon reaching this profound event, I did the only fitting thing:

Anyway, that's about it; that's enough.  I'll post updates to the saga, and if you feel bold, you can download the game (right-click the link and save the file).  Get yer own emulator.  If you got questions, I'm your man.  I have minutes of experience in this ludicrous game.