My first three were Keith Courage, R-Type and Bloody Wolf in 1990.
Keith Courage was *alright*, but for a pack-in, at the time, I thought Altered Beast seemed much more impressive and "badass" (not to mention it was a recognizable title virtually every kid knew from the arcades). I still say, to this day, if they would have just completely axed all the overworld stages and used the extra ROM space to add more backgrounds/enemies/frames/power-ups and general variety to the underworld stages, Keith Courage would have been killer. I mean, it controls just fine and the hit detection seems tight... there's just no variety or cohesiveness. It could have been more like the platforming and hack n' slash elements of Rocket Knight, if they'd have done it right. If the first thing kids saw when they fired up the game was some badass looking red, white and blue samurai-ish mech running around hacking and slashing, and the game was good, it would have pushed systems... but it wasn't. And it didn't. f*ckin Hudson...
Bloody Wolf and R-Type blew me away, however. I had no prior knowledge of either game or even what genre they were until the Christmas unwrapping and saw the boxes. I think my immediate mental reaction, after looking at the reverse of the boxes was, "Ohhhh! THOOOOSE kinds of games... awwww yea!"
