The Blues Brothers (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthough of Titus's 1992 license-based platformer for the NES, The Blues Brothers.
Based on the widely-loved 1980 film classic starring Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi, The Blues Brothers for the NES is an action-platformer that was developed and published by Titus.
If you stopped there and said, "Oh," to yourself, I assume you've had some prior experience with their licensed works. You have my sympathies.
While The Blues Brothers never plumbs the depths ruled by the infamous Superman 64, it never really manages to succeed much, in any way, either. You have to get Jake and/or Elwood to a concert, and so off we go, hopping and bopping through several set pieces that take a few ahem liberties with the film.
It's all fairly conventional stuff that has potential, but in following the grand tradition on 8-bit games based on movies, it doesn't quite live up to expectations. Most of the stages are huge, fairly linear maze-style areas that you run through at breakneck pace, making precise jumps and avoiding all sorts of original and imposing enemies, such as "amorphous goo that floats" and "ill-tempered dog."
Those are standard things in many NES games, but the controls are a bit wonky and your character moves waaaaay to quickly to be able to avoid most of the hazards unless you take the stages at a snail's pace. They're accurate and the hit detection is generally good, but they're a mismatch for the level designs, making The Blues Brothers way harder than it should've been. It also doesn't help that you can't kill most of your enemies and that there are tonnes of blind jumps, making the majority of the game feeling like an obstacle course.
And speaking of design, how does The Blues Brothers not include a car chase scene? The one part of the movie that would've been perfectly suited to a video game is, for whatever reason, completely absent in the video game.
The graphics and sound aren't bad, but they are pretty underwhelming by 1992 standards. The backgrounds are fairly flat and lifeless - the PC game that the NES version was ported from was no work of art, but it was still a reasonably attractive game. Here, the stages' near-monochromatic color schemes really underwhelm - I hope you like grey and blue! - as do the tiny sprites. They attempt to channel some of the movie's humor in their animation, but they are too small to show any real detail, and oftentimes you'll be left scratching your head, wondering what it is that you're meant to be fighting.
The music is an unexpected mixture of yay and nay. The tunes are all chiptune renditions of famous blues oldies: it includes the Peter Gunn tune (the one everybody knows from Spy Hunter), Everybody Needs Somebody, Shotgun Blues, and Almost. The problem is that none of them sound very good. Of course, we're talking about the NES here, but a lot of the music is reduced to some plinky, high-pitched chirps accompanied by a loud, DPCM-based drum track. The soundtrack isn't terrible, but it's a sad that such iconic tracks weren't adapted to the NES's hardware with a bit more care, and that they're such a mismatch for ther on-screen action. The DOS Adlib music sounded great, but the NES ones sound like someone merely converted the original PC game's music data and called it good enough. Apparently the importance of the music on something called "The Blues Brothers" was lost on whoever handled it here.
It's odd then, that with all of these issues, I can't say that I hated The Blues Brothers on NES. Maybe it's because I wanted to like it as much as I did, or maybe it's just because NES movie adaptations tend to be so dire, but The Blues Brothers is a game I managed to have some fun with. Not a ton, mind you: it's too hard, the controls are frustrating, and it pointedly ignores most of the things from the film than it might have benefitted from, but it isn't totally devoid of merit.
It's wholly mediocre and relies on its license for any sort of appeal, and while that's hardly a noble legacy, it doesn't relegate The Blues Brothers to the bottom of the pile. It just means that the game is easily (and deservedly) lost in a vast sea of other equally mediocre NES titles.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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[@amel2091]

my dad buy me this game when i was a kid...i just remember that he was drunk and come to home late night

[@NintendoComplete]

I'm not sure why anyone thought that the NES needed a port of a PC game based on a twelve-year-old, R-rated movie, but that is exactly what we got with The Blues Brothers. It's not as bad as you might've imagined - it's just not as good as you had probably hoped.

[@MFields2178]

To be fair, the sequel was coming out so I'm guessing Titus was testing the waters with the originals on NES and SNES before Blues Brothers 2000 on N64. I'm not sure how the N64 game is, but I always wanted to play it. For some reason, that game intrigues me. I'm sure I'll regret it probably if I ever play it.

[@knuclear200x]

My favorite scene in the movie is when Super Blues rode that shark

[@NintendoComplete]

@@MFields2178 That sounds about right :) I mean, Titus on the N64.... what could possibly go wrong?

[@WeskerSega]

@@MFields2178 Doesn't make much sense to me. Blues Brothers 2000 was still a long way to go at this point. In fact, the SNES game is not "the originals", it's a sequel to this. When it was brought to the PC and Game Boy, they titled it "The Blues Brothers: Jukebox Adventure" to disambiguate it from the presence of this game on both platforms, something that wasn't necessary on the SNES because of this game not being present on it, but despite its odd ambigouos name it's a follow up. Titus was just wanting to capitalize on the growing console market, that's all. I'm surprised they didn't release any of these on Sega consoles though.

[@Peter_Morris]

Wow this is certainly a video game. The biggest takeaway for me is that when you're jumping on those elevator platforms in level one, it sounds exactly like when Samus drops a bomb in Metroid.

[@Piledriver86]

Wow, nothing says quality game more than a 15-minute play time

[@The_Bad_Guy.]

Ha that's a flawless run. Most of these NES games are notorious for being hard and taking multiple tries to be able to beat it. A 15 minute flawless run probably would be a 3-4 hour multiple try play time. If you were even able to beat it.

[@RagingRowen]

The levels just don't know when to end, with Level 5 being the more notable one, which just ends at a dead end in a spike maze.

[@jumbogrouper9300]

I would've been severely pissed if I on Christmas I found this game under the tree. Imagine paying full price for this back in 1992 and this is what you got?

[@Fingdiabolical]

Still a better experience than Blues Brothers 2000.😅

[@jameshudman403]

I think I may have rented this game for a short time. Never could figure it out.

[@YukaTakeuchiFan]

"You will be the victim of mad hounds and of ferocious frozen pees determined to package you in the warehouse." So what they're saying is I need to fight largely for myself and look out for number one?

[@NintendoComplete]

And that urine, once frozen and weaponized, becomes plural.

[@ExtremeWreck]

At least it ain't as bad as the SNES, & N64 ones.

[@jamesl.anderson1384]

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd The Blues Brothers

[@russellj.s.257]

Belushi would be proud

[@ari-dynamicarchive]

I owned this as a kid and always thought it was a pain in the butt to get through, which is weird considering the movie is anything but that. I pointed this out to another youtube longplay but it seemed like in the PC/Amiga port you can walk inside stores. Wonder why they cut that out of this game.

[@chelocheliniXD]

As always I'm here for you review in the comments, and you gameplay too.

[@Bozzdawg1]

The title screen instantly made me think I was watching Spy Hunter, ha ha!!

[@robintst]

Not a bad 8-bit rendition of Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.

[@MFields2178]

I take it you will be playing through the SNES and the N64 Blues Brothers games, too?

[@NintendoComplete]

I had planned on the SNES one. But there was a N64 game? Goddammit. After what they did to Superman, I dread to think what lies in store there.

[@bluelblock]

@@NintendoComplete Not only that, it was Blues Brothers 2000. Remember that? Remember...?

[@mariusamber3237]

I rented this game once... I didn't manage to beat it back then, in spite of how short it was if you know what to do. The PC ports seem to play more like Chip & Dale IIRC...

[@MegaBg1982]

Just got a nice copy for my collection. Hard game to find.

[@fahrizaandi5099]

This is classic!!

[@supershadic530]

This seems like something Dan Aykroyd would’ve wrote, yeah.

[@russellj.s.257]

I actually enjoyed this game

[@bigduke5902]

"Those are standard things in many NES games, but the controls are a bit wonky and your character moves waaaaay to quickly to be able to avoid most of the hazards unless you take the stages at a snail's pace. They're accurate and the hit detection is generally good, but they're a mismatch for the level designs, making The Blues Brothers way harder than it should've been." Change "NES" to "Genesis" and "The Blues Brothers" to "Sonic the Hedgehog" and you've got another accurate statement.

[@SilentwulfAV]

"Wear-House"

[@jonathanfactersan4091]

Does this game have 2 player co op? Let me know as soon as possible, thank you :)

[@raccoonmoustache]

I think it did, I remember playing with my brother and maybe if you went too far, the second player would lose health if I remember correctly

[@luciebureau6815]

I didn’t know The Blues Brothers had a NES version. I feel what i felt when i saw a video gameplay of the NES version of Dick Tracy : nothing special. You should see the n64 version....or not kzbin.info/www/bejne/nmPXfqOMic6hZ6M

[@giovannygallego3636]

this game is really hard, not like another ones who people think its hard like tmnt 1

[@elwoodjacobs4353]

I rather enjoy this game & the SNES one too.

[@julienmartin4908]

Super Mario Bros, sorti en 1985 me semble dix fois mieux que The Blues Brothers sorti en 1992. La durée de vie de ce jeu est vraiment faiblarde, les musiques très moyennes, et le côté amusant me paraît presque inexistant.

[@MrCridle]

странная игра. в России довольно редко попадалась. никогда ее не встречал.

[@AreekDee]

Nightmare game for me. So much nerves

[@bwilliams463]

Good grief; even the SNES ending was more satisfying than this one.

[@spoonshiro]

Bad game, decent music. Then again if you can't even get decent music for a Blues Brothers game, you shouldn't bother at all!

[@NathanGatten]

Wow this is one empty game.

[@optiorespb]

I'm suprised AVGN didn't review this crap.

[@Seiko180]

Nostalgia Critic does

[@misteuraxe691]

cause it's not a terrible game (not great either)

[@oscarramos5681]

​@@Seiko180 The Nostalgia Critic reviewed the SNES version of the game.

[@billolert4058]

This is so obviously just a generic game creation that they lazily themed as "The Blues Brothers". It has absolutely nothing to with the characters or the movie at all really. Could easily be rethemed to anything.

[@neo_toraiji]

1:00 coronavirus

[@jonathanbourque7559]

Whyyy?!! Why did someone feel inclined to make this?! This wasn’t even relevant at the time!

[@eliasknaak5107]

Bah....que jogo horrivel....kkk

[@Jjjjjay37]

PC version was better.

[@mikeyfn-a6684]

Dude..real talk..this run made me genuinely nauseous. 🤢👍

[@funsimpledrawings8233]

Pure garbage