There is no doubt about it that the 1985 movie “The Goonies” is one of the most loved and revered movies by those of us who grew up in the 80’s.  The fantastic tale of kids on the poor side of town looking to save their neighborhood by uncovering lost pirate treasure while being chased by a ruthless criminal family was an instant classic that didn’t need years of aging to become a cult phenomenon.  It was the kind of cinematic masterpiece that would naturally inspire one of the most fucked up 8-bit Nintendo games ever created…

Oh good! They made a video game based on… wait a minute! When did they make a sequel to The Goonies!?!?

The Goonies video game did what no other video game based on a movie had ever done before, and maybe hasn’t done since…. it declared itself the sequel to the movie!  The Goonies II never came to a theater near you, it only appeared on your NES if you were lucky enough to own this awesome game from the early days of the greatest video game system ever built.

As you might expect in a sequel, a few of the plot elements have been altered from the original.  In the video game, you play Mikey on a mission to rescue the other six Goonies from the clutches of The Fratellis, who have now gone into the lucrative child abduction business. They have hidden your friends in such remote places like underground caverns, frigid polar regions, and even in lava covered pits guarded by dragons…

Fire breathing and unbreathing dragons!!! Credit to the awesome C.K. Hope

If you thought a call to Child protective Services was in order, just hold on a minute because I haven’t even told you about the most dastardly thing the Fratellis have done yet!  They have kidnapped Annie the Mermaid!!!  Go ahead and rack your brain… there was no Annie in the movie, nor was there a mermaid, unless that scene got left on the cutting room floor along with the octopus that made Data wet his pants.  No, Annie is purely the product of the imagination of a group of Japanese game designers… and if you don’t believe me, take a look at her…

Look Mikey! No bra!!!

She couldn’t be more like a Japanese cartoon character if she were wearing Hello Kitty water wings and dressed like a schoolgirl with hair ribbons.  Well, OK, she’s pretty flat chested, a no-no in any good anime girl worth her fox ears.  But rescuing Annie is the ultimate goal of this game, and you’ve got to wonder what in the hell Mikey was thinking when he decided to go through with this quest.  Sure, you can rationalize that maybe he wants to save his friends, even his prick of a big brother.  But what does Annie hold over him?  Did One-Eyed Willy curse him to guard her for the rest of his life?  Is her cute pink hair that much of a turn on?  Does Mikey have a thing for mermaids that makes him lose all control?

WHEEEEZE!!! WHEEEEEZE!!!

So you start off your journey to save Goonies and mermaids at the Fratelli’s restaurant.  Alas, Mikey isn’t old enough yet to be playing with swords or guns or lightsabres.  So Konami gave him a weapon  more appropriate for a child his age… a yo-yo.  Good luck slaying dragons and those fucking hopping skeleton things with a goddamn toy!

A well placed yo-yo shot can stop anything!

Along with collecting items in the various rooms by banging your knuckles against the wall or beating them down with a hammer, you’ll also run into an interesting assortment of people who apparently got lost a long time ago and just decided to just live deep under the earth rather than wander back out into the light…

That’s the same line he used on kids to lure them into his van before he had to hide from the police.

This old man will magically take you from place to place on the map.  Unlike in most other video games with optional warp zones that just took you to later levels, traveling through the warp zones on Goonies II was required to progress to otherwise unreachable areas of the game.

Well, you bitch! I’m armed with a yo-yo, you know…

This crabby old lady wearing a too-short kimono would pop up several times over the course of the game.  The one pictured above is a real piece of work… and the programmers know how much fun it is to try to assault the non-enemy characters in video games, and they actually allowed you to hit and hammer away at the dumbasses who dared to slow down your progress…

You’ve been bitchslapped!!!

Hit this particular lady five times, and she gives you a candle which lights up the darkened rooms.  Maybe next time she’ll learn to help me out before I have to put five hammer dents in her skull…

Put some pants on before you say something like that, prevert!

Konami Man was more than just a walking advertisement for the company that made the game… he would appear in random rooms, often accessible only by hidden doors, and refill your energy.  Unless you hit him, that is.  See, Konami Man’s a jerk and knows how to hold a grudge, and all of his identical twins that appear throughout the game stick up for their wounded brother… you won’t get a single bar of life from any Konami Man the rest of the game if you so much as lay a hand on one… no matter how fun it may be to punch him in his spandex drawers…

Au contraire! I see one douchebag in a fur coat.

If you want to go medieval on one of the bystanders, take it out on someone like Eskimo.  He only appears once, and has absolutely no function in this game other than to show Japanese sensitivity towards native Inuits.

Y.O.L.T.

This strange looking fish creature takes the place of the other strange characters in the underwater rooms.  If I was Mikey’s age and saw that, I’d be running for the exit and forgetting about saving any mermaids or stupid friends.

You hooking me up?

Finally, there is this poor geek who got lost on the way to ComicCon and wound up living in this room for the rest of his so-called life.  This game is great at giving you forehead slapping advice… at least for this tidbit you don’t have to waste a key in one of the many safes that can be found just to facepalm yourself.

So anyway, you trudge through the game rescuing the six trapped Goonies, who are oh so happy that you came along to let them out of their lonely prisons…

Holy shit… fuck you!!! See if I ever rescue your lame ass again!

They are all so happy to be freed, that they don’t even bother to help you out on your mission to save Annie or any of the rest of the gang.  Heck, I’m not even sure how they manage to get back out into the open.  This Goonie above (Who I always figured by the attitude was Brand) was locked up in one of the underwater rooms.  Mikey can’t even get there without the diving suit, which he has to traverse across every colored cavern in the rainbow just to find!  Maybe he got underwater breathing lessons from Annie…

OMG, you talk in hearts. Really? Aren’t you a little before your time to be a damn texter?

I haven’t talked much about the bad guys in this game, because there’s enough insanity that went into creating just the good guys.  But watch out for those Fratellis… especially that bastard Jake, because he’s somehow managed to clone himself….

Will the real Jake Fratelli please stand up? Please stand up? Please stand up?

However, your biggest enemy in this game is one that can’t even kill you.  When you pick it up in the ice cavern, you will quickly discover that the boomerang is far and away the best weapon in the entire game… yet there is one strange creature that looks like a flying hand that will munch your boomerang for breakfast.  They’re only located on the bridge, but you’ll have to cross the bridge several times over the course of the game.

Hand over the boomerang before I latch on to your one-eyed willy!

So anyway, you finally get to the end and it’s time to rescue Annie from her cell so she can go back to updating her Facebook status.  Here’s the room with the mermaid’s prison…

Jesus H. Christ! Isn’t that awful heavy security for a little, harmless mermaid? Charles Manson isn’t even held in a jail cell this strong!

Despite the ultra quadruple steel doors made to keep even a herd of elephants from escaping, the same keys that open the cheesy safes in this game will also open Annie’s cell.  And unlike the moody Goonies who are rather ungrateful that Mikey risked his life to save their pathetic asses, Annie is overly happy to see her red-haired rescuer…

Hmmm…. would this be considered interspecies love, or only halfway? Would it be legal in Russia or any red states?

By the way… ever watched a NASCAR race before and noticed how the drivers always make sure to get plugs in for all of their sponsors whenever they are interviewed?  Konami made sure this game was a lot like watching a NASCAR race…

Hurrah for Konami! Toyota! Dura Lube! And Rice A Roni, the San Francisco Treat!

What you accomplished was so super awesome, that the town of Astoria sends out its crack reporter Clark Kent to do a news story on a mermaid being rescued.  Something tells me this happened during sweeps month…

And that’s all on the great mermaid rescue! Now here’s Chip at the sports desk to tell us about the thrilling curling match between Belize and Bangladesh!

So there you have it… at The Nest, we feel that the NES game The Goonies II is just as much of a classic as the movie itself!  Just trade One Eyed Willy for Annie, Chester Copperpot for the weird room dwellers, and The Fratellis for….. more Fratellis.  And of course, if you made it through this entire post on this awesome game, you are probably asking yourself just how awesome it can be if it doesn’t have this man in it….

Baby Rooooooth!!!

Well, the only logical explanation for why Sloth was left out of the NES game is actually quite simple.  You may remember at the end of the movie how Chunk told Sloth he was coming to live with him.  Chunk never asked his parents if they wanted to spend the rest of their lives living with a seriously deformed, retarded man… no matter how kindhearted he may be.  We can only assume Sloth wound up being taken care of in a room not too unlike what the Fratellis locked Annie up in….

Me…. going…. to…. NUTHOUSE? But… Sloth… love…. Chunk!!!