Back in the days before Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct, or Banjo-Kazooie, Rareware made a heck of a lot of crap. You can play Rare Replay and see all sorts of this early crap that people pretend is OK, if you want, but "shrugs shoulders". There was one game that was so persistent in its mediocrity, though, that it wasn't even considered for Rare Replay. That game is Anticipation for the NES, and it is our featured game for Day 97 of Eric Vs. 365. Click to read more and watch.
Anticipation is a pictionary-like board game where the game draws images and players have to buzz in when they know what the drawing is. It starts out pretty easy by giving you the category and connect-the-dots to follow, but gets harder as the dots disappear in the second round and you don't even know the category in the third round. The third round is also more difficult because the pink squares feature logic puzzles that are 1. obtuse and hard to figure out, and 2. take so long to draw they don't even get finished sometimes so they're even harder to guess. Anticipation isn't horrible or anything, and the music is ridiculously catchy, but it isn't exactly good, either.
Anticipation came into my life in somewhere like '92 or '93 or so due to well intentioned parents and a shopping cart full of NES games available for sale for ridiculously low prices. That holiday season our local grocery store suddenly had a cart full of games for sale for cheap so my Mom wisely and wonderfully scooped up a bunch for me. I ended up with Darkwing Duck, Mega Man 3, Mega Man 4, and Anticipation. Imagine my surprise, and confusion about that last one, when I woke up Christmas morning that year. It was great.
It turns out that a grocery store or video rental place somewhere got rid of their NES games in bulk for whatever reason and our local store bought them all up and sold them for $10 each. They were complete in box and in great condition. That seriously was the most surprising and great Christmas I ever had and it was all because of cheap second hand used games.
I would have never even known Anticipation existed were it not for that. And you probably didn't know it existed before today so, you're welcome.
