Year:  1989

Developer:  Rare

Number of Players:  1

​Back in the early 2000's, I came across a video game store called Microplay.  It was in one of the shopping centers that I passed when I was doing my weekly shopping trips to the mall so I made it a point to stop in frequently.  This store sold games from the Nintendo NES era on up to at the time current games.  This is when I started game collecting for the older game systems I had.  I remember getting Taboo The Sixth Sense on one of my first visits to the store.  

Back then there weren't smart phones to get on the internet to look up game videos or reviews.  On top of that, this store sold most of their old cartridge games with no box and manuals so I had no reference material to see what kind of game it was.  I knew nothing about this game when I bought it, my deciding factor on getting it was that it was only a few dollars.  

Taboo The Sixth Sense is a tarot card reading game.  You give the game some basic information like your name, birthdate and a question.  At that point besides hitting the button to advance you are a spectator and the game does the rest.  The game lays out tarot cards in a ten card spread and proceeds to tell you what the cards mean.  At the end you pick what state you live in and it gives you some lucky numbers.  Congratulations, you have gone through the whole game.

​I personally have never had a tarot card reading.  I can't tell you how this game compares to an actual reading.  While things like cards being reversed or not have a meaning within a tarot card reading, when I first played this game I had no idea what any of that meant.  The manual does cover a lot of basic information about tarot card readings, but this was not something that I had when I bought the game.   In my opinion, tarot card readings are left to interpretation of the person getting the reading. 

Even though this game is more of a simulation than an actual game, I like it in small doses.  The graphics are not bad for the NES and really like the music in the game.  About ten years after I initially bought this game I did end up getting a complete boxed version of this game for a pretty cheap price.  The game isn't great by any means, but it is one that I do come back to every so often when I get bored for a few minutes.