Greetings everyone. As it's become a new custom on here, I'm going to start posting reviews twice a week, once on a game of old (NES days to PS1/GBA) and once on a newer-ish title (PS2 days to present). I'd like to start off with two old favorites of mine, if I may. These were one of my first video games that I played, along with Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt, Goonies, and a few others.
Before the days of the Lord of the Rings Video games, Resident Evil, and Harry Potter and the 5000 video game adaptions,there was Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and Little Nemo: Dream Master. This was back in the day where game-adaptions of movies/cartoons/comics followed very loosely with the source material, and were their own despite the attachment they still had. Gremlins 2 and Little Nemo were no exception to this.
When it comes to the basics, the games still follow the same plot: In Gremlins 2, your objective is to defeat all of the Gremlins and save the corporation. In Little Nemo, you still have to fight your way through Dream Land and save it from the Nightmare King. However, achieving that objective in both games is uniquely different.
In Little Nemo, you toss candy and gain the obedience of certain animals, using their various unique skills to get you through the levels. In order to progress, you have to obtain 6 keys to open the door at the end of each level. This may sound simple enough, but each level is riddled with enemies, pitfalls, traps, and other things that will slow you down and make you start over. But when you die, you'll keep the keys you've already gotten.
Those who have played Little Nemo and seen the movie will recognize some of the levels such as the House of Toys, Nemo's House, and the Nightmare World, while others are expanded upon or added (that may have been mentioned in the comics) such as the Dream Forest, Flower Garden, and Cloud Ruins.
Typical of the NES days, there are very few levels, with 8 being the grand total. But with difficulty of some of them (it borders around the same difficulty of the Addams Family NES/SNES game), you'll be trudging through moments of frustration and game overs before getting to the end. Story wise, there isn't much except some before-level character interactions along with end-level Nemo-in-bed moments to see, though it does have a pretty decent ending as well. For people wanting a nice feeling NES game that isn't insanely easy, I'd definitely recommend looking at this one.
Moving onto Gremlins 2, this is another mildly difficult game, about a bit more difficult than Little Nemo is. Though unlike Little Nemo, Gremlins 2 is also a bit larger stage-wise, as well as offers a little more in a different way.
Gremlins 2, for those who haven't seen the movie, centers around a small creature known as a Mogwai, named Gizmo. Gizmo is brought by his owner to work, and his owner is told things that he must never do: Keep him away from bright light (it hurts him), never get him wet (it causes him to reproduce more Mogwais), and never feed him after Midnight (it turns them into evil Gremlins). None of this is mentioned in the game, however, and like Little Nemo, it doesn't tell you much (though unlike LN, you are treated with various movie clips at certain points rather than just the beginning and end).
So as Gizmo, you get to walk around in 5 different stages (3 split in to three parts, 2 split into only two). Your weapon will "upgrade" with each new stage, some causing more damage directly, others causing more damage in an area-of-effect type of way. As you progress through an area, you'll run, attack, jump over holes, and avoid traps in an effort to make it to the end. Fell in a hole? Well Gizmo will come out holding a balloon, allowing you to move him ahead a bit, providing you have any balloons handy. Short on lives? Not to worry! With each enemy you kill, you'll get crystal balls/orbs. If you spot a small wooden door along your journey, take a journey inside. The shopkeeper will sell you things such as an Extra hit point, life replenishment, a temporary weapon boost (which will disappear if you die), extra lives, or extra balloons.
The stages themselves are what one would expect in a decent video game: They start off easy, and get progressively more and more difficult. By the ending stages, it's almost TMNT difficulty to where the stage will feel nearly unbeatable. But when you hear that end-of-level music, it feels like a challenge that was definitely worth it.
At last part of every stage beyond the first, you're granted with a boss fight. Some of the fights are insanely easy, others mildly difficult. Unlike the progressive difficulty of the levels, the bosses never feel like a huge challenge. The only exception is the Striped Gremlin since he can shoot you, and the area is riddled with spikes...but even he isn't incredibly difficult at all.
After beating the last boss, you're granted with an ending clip that was taken from the movie (not directly, but mimics it), and taken back to the beginning title.
Overall, it was an exceptional game in its own right, as was Little Nemo. Like a lot of NES games, there isn't an insane amount of replayability aside from, using G2 as an example, seeing if you can power through it without buying ANYTHING from the shopkeeper. But that's really the only replayability happening outside of nostalgia purposes. That doesn't mean anything against the games, though, since as I said: they're both exceptional games that I'd recommend to anyone looking for a good classic video game adaption of a movie (and maybe Friday the 13th, if I ever beat it). They're leagues better than Back to the Future on the NES, that's for sure.
Yes, that's really the BTTF game right there. I don't think it even exists past the first level.
