When we think of some early Famicom/NES games that come to mind, ones I see frequently pop up in people’s mentions are : Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Balloon Fight, Pinball… which are all well and fine, but one I don’t see too many people talk about or analyze is Wrecking Crew by Nintendo R&D1. It’s received a few re-releases over the years — if you’re subscribed to the Nintendo Switch’s NES online service you can play it! — there’s audio and trophy references to it in Smash Bros,; it was made during Nintendo’s eggplant obsession phase, but never seems to generate the same type of discussion that some of the other earlier Famicom games (the Black Box NES games).

Wrecking Crew was designed by Yoshio Sakamoto of Metroid fame. This was one of the later Famicom releases before the Famicom Disc System came out and attempted to be the Famicom’s successor. It… it wasn’t. And for Americans, this was one of the first generation of NES games. You’d never know it from the title alone, but this is technically a Mario game. This was during the days when Mario was going through all the blue-collar jobs. Luigi is there too, so this is an intermediate Mario Brothers game; it came out after the original Mario Bros. but before Super Mario Bros.

The goal of the game is to clear the concrete blocks on each screen (level). There’s 100 screens/levels in total. Wrecking Crew isn’t quite a puzzle game and it’s not quite a Super Mario Bros-esque 2D action game. It’s more like a puzzle platformer. Even though you can only move up, left and right and strike with your hammer — no jump for you — there are some shades of OG Mario Bros here: the fireballs make an unwanted appearance if you linger too long on any stage.

What starts of simple, eventually becomes a game of calculations. With limited movement options, every little nudge in Wrecking Crew has to be thought out carefully beforehand. One trick that I had to figure out when I first played this game was the left-to-right (or left-to-right) screen warping that so many games of the era employed. It’s entirely possibly to screw and trap yourself in a level by making the puzzle unsolvable/running yourself out of moves. In which case, the only options are death or restarting the game with the Select button.

But if puzzling games are up your alley, Wrecking Crew has a surprising amount of content for an early Famicom game. If you like platforming games that put an emphasis on puzzle solving, check out Wrecking Crew! There’s all kinds of ways to!