How to Live that Hurricanes Life, 8-Bit Style

How to Live that Hurricanes Life, 8-Bit Style

This is what you call a red alert.

Did you hear? Our guys, the Carolina Hurricanes, won the Stanley Cup over the weekend. They’re the best gosh-darned hockey players in the world, at least for the moment. They could probably even trounce the Knicks. So, we feel the need to celebrate here. Instead of talking about hockey video games—which we’ve already done—we recommend you take a more nostalgic approach and dabble in some hurricane-themed retro games. Which... actually turns out to be a pretty rare thing. Lots of tornadoes and blizzards in video games, but there are very few hurricanes in games. Weird, right? Luckily, you have this handy guide to point you to the best of them.

The Karate Kid

NES, 1987

Technically, this is not a hurricane but rather a typhoon. What’s the difference? Hurricanes happen in the Atlantic Ocean, typhoons happen in the Pacific. That’s it! And part of The Karate Kid game for NES takes place in Okinawa, where Daniel has to slug thugs while he weathers the weather. That’s hurricane enough to count here—one of the rare instances of a hurricane-and-or-typhoon in gaming.

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

Famicom Disk System, 1986

Americans didn’t get to play the first true sequel to Super Mario Bros. until many years after its shipped in Japan. Fun fact! You probably don’t know this, but the game we got in the U.S. as Super Mario Bros. 2 was actually called Doki Do—

[Editor’s note: Sorry, we have a strict policy against reciting tired, well-known video game trivia as a “fun fact.” The parties responsible have been sacked. Anyway, there are a few stages in Super Mario Bros. 2 for Disk System where you have to time your jumps against wind gusts. It wasn’t the first to do that, but since the game was a best-seller in Japan, it popularized the feature in many games that followed.]

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos

NES, 1990

Taking Mario’s lead, the second Ninja Gaiden game also featured a stage that required players to deal with massive gusts of wind (though they could easily be harnessed to give protagonist Ryu a boost for his jumps). Does this represent a hurricane? Well... probably not. Most of the names and imagery in that stage seem to reflect a South Asian influence, so it’s probably another typhoon. Or maybe it’s just random wind. But, again, real hurricanes are few and far between in video games. So we’re going to count it as one.

Disney’s DuckTales

NES, 1989

Admittedly, DuckTales contains nothing that even slightly resembles a hurricane. However, the Amazon stage is accompanied by a 30-second musical loop that turns the cartoon theme song into a chiptune earworm. Every time it loops, you can’t help but sing along: “Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckberg.” So in that sense, it’s the most hurricane video game of all.