Couldn't find a thread so just thought I'd drop some initial thoughts.
I spent a bit of time with the NES game when I was young and a lot of time with the Gameboy version, and recently dipped back into the NES game before playing this.
First and foremost it has to be said it looks lovely. The animation is fantastic, the graphics are charming and the whole game feels, to some extent, like playing a cartoon.
The soundtrack sounds rather lovely too with a re-mixed version of the old NES/cartoon series theme and level music.
Unfortunately the controls and collision detection can't quite match up to the new spit n' polish of the aesthetics. Okay, it was (IMO) a tough game on the NES and quite unforgiving, plonking you back at the level start for an error, and those who have played the original know that sometimes hitting enemies seemed more chance than skill-based, but this seemed, arguably, more acceptable back then and that in itself while irritating isn't necessarily the major flaw here. In this new release some enemies simply cannot be avoided and (perhaps because of the new animations? Although I suspect the less-than-stellar collision detection has something to do with it) attempting to get through the latter parts of levels when enemies are appearing all over the show appears rather haphazard, with some enemies hitting you and flinging you back and others dying only to respawn immediately and batter you again. Annoyingly the remedy to this, it would seem, is rather than take you back to the start of the level as in the original version, the game dumps you roughly where you were killed. That in itself wouldn't be an issue, but this ultimately leads to even less skill-based gameplay, forget painstakingly learning enemy patterns and the like, instead it is a case of carry on through the level randomly jumping and killing what you can, take a few hits, die, then respawn. Ultimately of course what this leads to - as I've already suggested - is that the desire to work at the game or attempt to learn enemy patterns etc. quickly fizzles out and becomes pointless.
While the mechanics should have been refined and it would have been better to build the game from the ground up rather than simply copy the level design of the original, it isn't the only issue. In a word: cut-scenes, or 'cinematics' as the game terms them. That isn't to say they aren't initially charming (as well as being exceptionally well-voiced) it's just that they appear pointless, adding nothing of value to the game and becoming a constant intrusion as you play through the levels. They become so intrusive that I muttered 'come back Snake all is forgiven' more than once.
Overall the game is not terrible it has enough charm to warrant a playthrough, but for me some of it simply felt like playing Dragon's Lair on the Daphne emulator: it was lovely to look at, but you simply set it to Freeplay and just keep pushing left or right until you get through the game.
There are extras which I didn't have time to look through. It's definitely worth a trip down memory lane, but I'd say avoid paying almost ?12 on Steam like I did! It's a ?3 game at best. There is definitely fun to be had, it is incredible polished visually and a shame more work wasn't put into making the core mechanics operate in-sync with this new level of graphically loveliness. Not bad, just not great - would be a 6/10 for me.
I spent a bit of time with the NES game when I was young and a lot of time with the Gameboy version, and recently dipped back into the NES game before playing this.
First and foremost it has to be said it looks lovely. The animation is fantastic, the graphics are charming and the whole game feels, to some extent, like playing a cartoon.
The soundtrack sounds rather lovely too with a re-mixed version of the old NES/cartoon series theme and level music.
Unfortunately the controls and collision detection can't quite match up to the new spit n' polish of the aesthetics. Okay, it was (IMO) a tough game on the NES and quite unforgiving, plonking you back at the level start for an error, and those who have played the original know that sometimes hitting enemies seemed more chance than skill-based, but this seemed, arguably, more acceptable back then and that in itself while irritating isn't necessarily the major flaw here. In this new release some enemies simply cannot be avoided and (perhaps because of the new animations? Although I suspect the less-than-stellar collision detection has something to do with it) attempting to get through the latter parts of levels when enemies are appearing all over the show appears rather haphazard, with some enemies hitting you and flinging you back and others dying only to respawn immediately and batter you again. Annoyingly the remedy to this, it would seem, is rather than take you back to the start of the level as in the original version, the game dumps you roughly where you were killed. That in itself wouldn't be an issue, but this ultimately leads to even less skill-based gameplay, forget painstakingly learning enemy patterns and the like, instead it is a case of carry on through the level randomly jumping and killing what you can, take a few hits, die, then respawn. Ultimately of course what this leads to - as I've already suggested - is that the desire to work at the game or attempt to learn enemy patterns etc. quickly fizzles out and becomes pointless.
While the mechanics should have been refined and it would have been better to build the game from the ground up rather than simply copy the level design of the original, it isn't the only issue. In a word: cut-scenes, or 'cinematics' as the game terms them. That isn't to say they aren't initially charming (as well as being exceptionally well-voiced) it's just that they appear pointless, adding nothing of value to the game and becoming a constant intrusion as you play through the levels. They become so intrusive that I muttered 'come back Snake all is forgiven' more than once.
Overall the game is not terrible it has enough charm to warrant a playthrough, but for me some of it simply felt like playing Dragon's Lair on the Daphne emulator: it was lovely to look at, but you simply set it to Freeplay and just keep pushing left or right until you get through the game.
There are extras which I didn't have time to look through. It's definitely worth a trip down memory lane, but I'd say avoid paying almost ?12 on Steam like I did! It's a ?3 game at best. There is definitely fun to be had, it is incredible polished visually and a shame more work wasn't put into making the core mechanics operate in-sync with this new level of graphically loveliness. Not bad, just not great - would be a 6/10 for me.
The fuzzy platform animals, not the all-male strippers.
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