Find content
Inspired by the recent rad Mystic Quest thread, more or less. The title says it all: write about any game that you like a lot.
It doesn't have to be a game that you like that tends to be reviled, but it's certainly interesting to hear another look at such games. Game redemption, as it were. As an example, I started playing through the South Park FPS recently for a review, and while it's still not like amazing or anything, some of the criticism it got were for things that are now well-developed, refined, and beloved- specifically, the game plays similar to the Horde modes of recent FPS games, and other similar games where it's basically Robotron in 3D with its huge waves of weak enemies mixed with a few stronger ones. There really wasn't much (if anything) like it at the time, so it got judged more as a Goldeneye or Turok game- not an entirely fair comparison.
That's not the game I want to write about, since I already did that on my N64 review project thing. I'm going to start this off with Gremlins 2 for the NES.
Gremlins 2 is a Sunsoft classic, but I'm continuously surprised at how few people seem to have actually played it. Even within this community, where many of us are not exactly inexperienced when it comes to standout titles for systems that have been emulated for years. Is it because it's a licensed game? Is it because it initially appears pretty daunting in challenge? I honestly have no idea.
So what makes it worth your time? Pretty much everything. The music is great, it looks fantastic, it plays fantastic, and even kind of follows the plot of the movie kind of well in the form of absolutely gorgeous cutscenes. It seems to be like Fester's Quest in that it appears to use the same base engine as Blaster Master- however, it's been greatly improved with the addition of jumping and 8-way movement. Not only does it allow the levels to be more complex, it also gives you a clutch way to avoid projectiles and enemies. Play this game, then play Fester's Quest, and you'll wish you had that jumping/diagonal movement pretty much instantly; especially in the sewer levels.
Oh, and the enemies don't respawn anymore either. That's a big one.
The game admittedly starts a bit weird- why does it have you dodging giant tomatoes, while throwing tomatoes at them and bats? You'll also probably be taking a bit of damage as you get oriented to the 8-way directions and the way that the perspective affects your hitbox. It's definitely easy to find yourself in a Game Over loop before you even get your first weapon upgrade- the fire spewing match. It's a huge step up in terms of range and power from the tomatoes, and works pretty much like a beefier version of the guns in Blaster Master/Fester, with the tradeoff being that it's extremely slow by comparison.
From here on out, you receive a new weapon after every boss. Each is a step up in usefulness from the one that came before it- even more so if you get the near-essential weapon powerup from Mr. Wing's shop. This powerup stays with you no matter what... until you lose all your lives- which, by default, you have 0 extra of. They can be bought through the shop, though, and give you an instant respawn with 3 full health bars. Using the shops effectively, and especially making sure that you never run out of lives completely, is a major key to success and limiting the difficulty level. This is made harder by the fact that you can only buy one item per shop visit, but there's one in every level. You just have to play conservatively enough to get to them.
Since the enemies don't respawn and there's no time limit, conservative play is actually pretty doable- and can be another huge key to success. And even if you totally mess up, there's infinite continues to keep things from getting too infuriating Once you've taken it slow through the game a time or two, you can definitely start to get the feel of how to start getting progressively more ballsy, like any good speedrunnable game. Like many good speedrunnable games, it's also very short, with a Game Over-free run taking about 20 minutes whenever I've done it.
In short, Gremlins 2 for the NES is great, and you should probably play it.
