Wall Street Kid (NES)

Wall Street Kid is horrible. End of story. What’s the first thing you think of when you think of the stock market and investments? For me, it’s the classic red/green scrolling ticker tapes, and historical charts on the values of stocks. This game has neither of these things. You play as “The Wall Street Kid,” some rich fuck with an inheritance. It sounds like you’re a superhero, but the only power you have is sucking ass. This is one of those simulation games, but unlike SimCity, where there are many things to micromanage, all you do here is buy some random stocks and hope for the best. Since you can’t look at historical information, the only thing you have to go off of is the current value of a stock versus the previous day’s, and what is deemed a “hot stock” in the Wall Street Journal (called the Wall Street Times in the game). Occasionally you’ll also get info that says a toy company had a bunch of recalls, so obviously you’ll want to sell that stock.

The game starts off with some bonehead telling the kid that his relative died or some shit and you have to buy a one-million dollar house and then eventually buy your family’s castle back to keep it in the family. Well, why did the douchebag sell it in the first place? Anyways, if you do what the lawyer says, you’ll be eligible to inherit $600 billion from your dead uncle. Why the hell would you have to do all this stuff to get it? What happens if you fail? I guess you have to play the game, but trust me, you definitely don’t want to.

All the stocks have really corny names. They took real company names and added an extra letter, like investing in the Yapple computer company. What a load. Also, you can invest in Bethlehem Steel. Since they are now bankrupt, I guess I should stay away. There don’t seem to be any commission prices on the stocks, either. If the game is nothing but buying stocks, why don’t they teach you basic stuff like that? What were they thinking? You can also do other stupid crap, like woo your girlfriend with money or talk to some asshole investor who charges you $500 just to explain the stock market in a very general way. I don’t understand who this game is targeted to. It certainly doesn’t send a good message to kids. Sometimes your fiancée asks you to buy stuff, like a TV. You can choose from the high-end or medium-end types, as if she’ll love you only if you pick the expensive one. I’d dump that bitch for being so self-centered. But maybe I’m looking into this too much…this game is horrible indeed.

You can exercise your character also, but other than wasting time, it doesn’t seem to do anything. You can just skip the whole damn day if you want. I got a call on Week 2 that a house was selling for exactly $1 million and I had to pay in cash by Saturday if I wanted it. What the hell kind of trade is that? I decided to go for it, hoping my Rattel Toys stock would keep rising. It didn’t and the game was over, as if that was the last house on Earth.

I can’t believe they were still shoveling out crappy games like this in 1990. There’s really no excuse. Sometimes games are so bad they’re bad, and sometimes you just want to close your NES lid down on your ass cheeks.