Putting the RPG figuratively into Kung-Fu Heroes.

It comes in all wiggly!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 4/7/20 – 5/9/20
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 8/10
My Video: Little Ninja Brothers Longplay (Part 1) (Part 2)

I was really looking forward to playing Little Ninja Brothers.  It was a game that I knew nothing about when I started collecting NES.  To find an action RPG I had never heard of was very intriguing, since no one talks about this game in various discussions on NES titles.  It wasn’t until I dug a little deeper that I discovered that this was the sequel to Kung-Fu Heroes.  All of these things made my interest grow more and more.  That to me is the real beauty of a long project like this.  Finding interesting, largely undiscussed games and playing through them to find out what they are really like.  On paper this seems like my kind of game, and in the end, I enjoyed my playthrough as I expected.

If you want a little more background on this game, check out my review of Kung-Fu Heroes.  Little Ninja Brothers is the second game in the Super Chinese series.  Super Chinese 2 was developed and published by Culture Brain in all regions.  It was first released in Japan on the Famicom in May 1989.  The North American version, localized as Little Ninja Brothers, came out in December 1990.  The European version released in 1991.  The game also saw a Virtual Console release on Wii U in PAL regions in 2015 and in North America in 2017.

This game has a simplistic story line.  An emergency TV broadcast goes out across Chinaland.  It is from Blu Boltar, lord of the Yoma Clan, who has captured the emperor.  The Little Ninja Brothers themselves, Jack and Ryu, set off on their quest to defeat Blu Boltar.  This adventure will take you all across Chinaland.  Simply follow the events of the story and conquer the Yoma Clan to beat the game.

Oh, his name is Blue because he is blue.

There are several options to choose from when starting the game from the RPG option on the title screen.  You can start from a new game or continue a previous game with your password.  Next, choose either a single player or a two player game.  Player 1 goes as the red-clad Jack, and Player 2 gets to play as the blue-dressed Ryu.  Then you can choose the text speed from either Fast, Normal, or Slow.  Finally, select the difficulty level between Hard, Normal, and Easy.  The neat thing is that you decide from all of these options every time you play the game.  For example, if you want a second player to join your saved game or switch the difficulty level around, you can do that as you see fit.  For all of my play sessions, I did single-player, fast message speed, and hard difficulty.  Finally, if you chose Password, you will enter that in here before play begins.  The passwords themselves are long and variable, usually ranging from 30-40 characters long, with the character set of capital letters, numbers, and some symbols.  Taking photos of the passwords was really helpful for a game like this.

At first, the game looks and feels like a turn-based RPG.  The game begins with an introductory cutscene explaining the base story.  Your adventure starts out on the map where you can walk around and explore.  You emerge out of a temple and there’s a town nearby.  You can go in the town and talk to people to figure out what you are supposed to do next, as well as buy items and equipment there to aid you.  All seems standard until you get into the battle scenes and the real fun begins.

Battles begin with images of the enemies you will be fighting as well as their relative experience level.  You can choose to Fight or Run away.  Should you end up in battle, now you are in a single-screen action arena with enemies emerging from the sides of the screen.  These battles are identical to the fighting in Kung-Fu Heroes.  You can walk in four directions with the D-pad.  The A button punches, causing you to lunge forward.  Holding a direction with the B button performs a moon sault kick.  For this move you leap into the air and hurt enemies by landing on them.  These are the basic moves you have at the beginning and they are more than enough to deal with the enemies at hand.  More enemies will spawn as you defeat them, but once you beat enough enemies the rest will run away and you will collect your experience points and money.

Battles are plentiful and dangers are high.

You can collect some items from your journey within the battle scenes.  Most of the arenas contain rocks that you can bash with your punches.  It is common for some of the rocks to generate items that float around the screen until you collect them with a punch.  Question balls are the most common item you’ll find.  They either give you an M adding to your M count at the top of the screen or a skull which depletes your M count back to 0.  When you have 6 M marks, you can use the Mighty Ball which makes you temporarily invincible.  Rocks may also hide treasure chests that contain various items shown as you collect them.  K marks add 5 Dragon Kicks to your stash.  These are performed by pressing B without any D-pad direction held to start.  Hearts restore some of your HP.  You can also collect throwing stars.  You can hold up to 8 in reserve for later use, but sometimes they activate immediately.  Throwing stars are tossed during punching when activated.  Another item collected in battle is a Boo Bomb.  When used, the screen shakes stunning most enemies in place.

To further enhance your fighting capabilities, you need to go to the towns and buy items and equipment to build yourself up.  There are several recurring stores throughout the villages of Chinaland.  The convenience store lets your perform configurations during your journey, such as changing the number of players, reviving your second player, viewing experience points to the next level, and viewing your password.  The tool shop lets you buy consumable items, such as sweet buns to restore HP, skateboards to allow you to escape during difficult battles, whirlybirds to teleport between towns you’ve visited, and batteries for the Dragstar allowing you to drive across the map quickly without any random battles.  There is also a weapon shop where you can buy equipable weapons and other items.  You can buy things such as throwing stars, punch power increases, robes, shields, amulets, and talismans.  These increase your battle capabilities, give you defense boosts, or debuff your enemies in various ways.  You can pick up a sword that you can swap with your punch attack in battle at any time.  The sword is more powerful and can defeat some enemies unharmed by punches, though you do not gain as many experience points from enemies when using the sword.  Finally, you can buy a few kinds of candles to light up darkened caves.

If you want to use some of your new items or equipment in battle, you can select them from the menu during battle.  Press either Start or A+B to bring up the menu.  You have two choices of Equipment or Items.  The Equipment menu is mainly used for switching between your punch and sword.  You also use this sub menu to summon the Mighty Ball if you have 6 M marks.  The item menu is where you use your consumable items, such as healing buns and throwing stars.  Another technique you have access to through the Item menu is the Surger.  The technique is gained whenever you purchase a new type of throwing star and it requires using a throwing star to activate.  The Surgers have different names throughout the adventure, usually named as some kind of wave.  Activate the Surger through the menu, then punch anywhere in the air to deal damage to all enemies on screen.  I believe you can use it throughout the entire battle multiple times, but I barely used it during my play so I’m not the expert on it.

It’s not a race … slow and steady!

There is also a menu that you can access from the world map screen or within towns and dungeons.  Just press A.  Here you can talk to someone in front of you, call an ally to help in a handful of specific situations, or access the subscreen which contains several options.  You can browse your items and use some consumables like your healing items.  Status displays your experience point, experience level, max HP, base attack power, and your current stash of money.  Equip lists out your equipment, simply enough.  The Treasure option shows some special items you’ve collected.  Finally, you can access the password at any time to continue play later on.

In a few places during the game, you may be asked to participate in some field training.  This takes places in a split screen view with some different controls.  In a two-player game, each player takes one half of the screen, while in single player you take the top half and the computer plays the bottom half.  This is a timed event where you have to run all the way to the right, sometimes collecting items or popping balloons along the way.  The controls are a little different here.  You run by mashing the A button.  You use the D-pad Up and Down to steer a little bit or Left to turn around if needed.  Kicks and dragon kicks are performed as normal.  While it appears you are racing against the other player, you are really just aiming to complete before the timer runs out.  These field events typically give you some kind of special item needed on your journey.  It is just a fun little diversion and I thought they were fairly easy to clear.  (Dragon kicks are your friend!)

As if all the RPG trappings of this game weren’t enough, this game takes it all the way there with the occasional turn-based battle.  Primarily these are boss battles but in some situations you’ll go up against normal strength enemies.  You have pretty much the full complement of moves that you have in the action scenes at your disposal in the turn-based combat.  You can punch, kick, dragon kick, and use items like your sword, throwing stars, surgers, and even the mighty ball.  With two players, both of our heroes get a turn, but in single player you can call your partner to join the battle, which you absolutely should do right away.  This computer-controlled partner mimics many of your choices and will default to an attack otherwise.  The fights are shown animated so you can see which attacks land and which ones miss.

Occasional turn-based battles turn this into a classic RPG.

The progression in this game is straightforward but your journey doesn’t have to be.  The primary objective is to collect seven bells that are used to open up the way to the final boss in order to save Chinaland.  You will most likely go about this in order.  The map is somewhat linear but you do have some freedom to explore.  You can skip towns and caves that are required and save them for later, but you probably won’t want to.  The enemy levels out in the field jump up pretty high if you travel too far, guiding you back to something easier.  Make sure to use all the hints from the townspeople to take the easiest way through by hitting all the major landmarks roughly in order.  This is a pretty tough game as it is, so you don’t want to make it harder on yourself.  There was one place in particular, a dark cave, that I explored way too early and spent a lot of extra time figuring out early.  The only penalty for death is losing half of your money, so if that’s not a big deal to you, feel free to explore as you like.

This was my first time playing Little Ninja Brothers.  As previously mentioned, this was one I was looking forward to trying after not knowing about it before collecting.  This is an uncommon game that has risen in price.  Cart copies sell now for around $50.  I bought mine on eBay for $20 shipped along with Bart Vs. The Space Mutants and Ninja Gaiden, which really was a nice deal looking back on it.

I would say my playthrough of the game was a little rocky.  The first thing I noticed is that gaining levels goes slowly in the game.  You need a lot of experience, the battles can be lengthy, and the reward for winning isn’t that high.  There are other things that slow the game down.  Many battle scenes have water which drains half your health should you fall in.  Losing money on death was a little annoying early on, particularly early in the game when I was grinding for equipment.  It took several failures and losses to earn enough to get what I wanted.  The screen scrolling is a little annoying in the game.  You have to get pretty near the edge to scroll, and there are graphical artifacts on the sides as you scroll before the game engine begins drawing the proper tiles.  You have to go out of your way to reach some dungeon areas that contain items you need.  A few hours in I reached my first turn-based battle and it was a huge upturn in difficulty.  Some bosses have a stun attack that block you from taking turns, and if you have bad luck you can get stuck for a long time.  Once or twice, I got stunned for what felt like a dozen turns, enough to put me in the grave without being able to fight back.  This game is out to get you for sure.

Plenty of sights to see in Chinaland!

With all that said, there were some good things about this playthrough that I am happy about.  The first is minor, but the entire game took me 16 hours to complete, which was fewer hours than I would have expected.  The game has a quirky sense of humor that caused me to legit laugh out loud at least once during my playthrough.  It isn’t common for games of this vintage to not take themselves too seriously.  The best part was at the very end when I beat the final boss.  The last section leading up to the final encounter is a real slog.  Small spoilers ahead.  First you go through a long, winding, dark maze with plenty of tough fights.  Past that you have to go up a mountain path with all new enemy encounters as well as doorways that can send you backward.  Finally, you reach the end, probably depleted of health and items, and have to go up against the hardest boss.  I had to repeat the lead up to this fight a few times, but luck saved me and I only needed one try at the boss.  The start of the fight was rough as both I and my partner got stunned and I took some hits early on.  I didn’t have any healing items left either.  Good thing for me the stunlocks were very short and I put him away when I was one hit away from death.  When I looked up the final boss in an FAQ after I beat him, I saw that he has a healing move that he didn’t use.  He would have beaten me for sure had he healed, so I really got away with one there.

Little Ninja Brothers takes the base game of Kung-Fu Heroes and turns it into an RPG-style adventure, one that I really had a fun time with.  I would say the graphics are average or a bit above.  I like the character portraits during important conversations and some of the enemy designs are cool, some only appearing one time in the game.  The music is upbeat and cheery for the most part, even in the caves.  The controls feel tighter than in the original game and don’t have any touchy controls like unsheathing the sword in Kung-Fu Heroes.  Gameplay has a lot of variety from the field training stages, RPG battles, and top-down action.  The one major knock on this game is that the base fighting gets repetitive and you need to grind out lots of battles to level up.  The difficulty is up there even when you level up a lot, and that may also be a turn-off.  I thought this game was fun and definitely worth playing, living up to the hype I had for it.

#154 – Little Ninja Brothers

Just your everyday police officer.

Street Cop is a good cop.

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 2/27/19 – 3/2/19
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
My Video: Street Cop Longplay

We are dipping back into the world of Power Pad games for this one. Street Cop by name alone would not provide any indication that this is meant for the Power Pad. It seems to me like it would be some kind of action or adventure game instead. It turns out that’s exactly what it is! There is nothing else like this game on the NES and I’m excited to share it with you today.

Family Trainer: Manhattan Police is the sixth game in the Family Trainer series of Power Pad games on the Famicom. The game was developed by Sonata (later known as Human Entertainment) and published by Bandai. The Famicom version came out in August 1987. The NES version, renamed Street Cop, was released in June 1989. The NES versions of the Bandai Power Pad games did not appear in the same order of release as Japan. Super Team Games, for instance, was the next game in the Family Trainer series in Japan but appeared on NES several months before Street Cop debuted.

Street Cop is an action/adventure game that uses the Power Pad controller. You play the role of “Little Ben,” a new police officer fresh out of the academy. He always hoped from a young age to be a detective, and you get to help make his dreams come true. In this game, you take to the streets of Manhattan. There are six stages in the game, each one featuring a bad guy on a wanted poster. You beat the game once you arrest all six main criminals.

Gonna take a walk in the park real quick.

Before we get into the game description, let’s recap briefly on the setup for this game. You will plug a standard controller into the first controller port on the NES. Then plug in the Power Pad to the second controller port. This game uses Side B of the Power Pad. In this configuration, there are three rows of four buttons each. All buttons are numbered from 1 to 12. The first row contains buttons 1 to 4, the middle row is 5 through 8, and the last row is 9 to 12.

Here is how you control Little Ben with the Power Pad. The neutral position is standing on buttons 6 and 7, right in the middle of the Power Pad. Alternate presses by either walking or running on those buttons to move forward. There are three different running speeds depending on how quickly you move. If you jump in place, Little Ben will jump, but you need to be standing on both buttons before you jump and sometimes it doesn’t respond like you would expect. You face either left or right and you are locked into that direction. To turn around, step once on either 10 or 11 in the bottom row. To move sideways, step on either 5 or 8 to sidestep one time in that direction. You will move in or out on the screen depending on the direction you are facing. If you need to walk into a building or down an alleyway, turn right by standing on 3 and 7 or turn left by standing on 2 and 6. The idea is you need to turn your body and face in the direction you want Little Ben to turn. The corner buttons are for using items. Thrown items can be tossed by pressing 1. Little Ben wields a baton at the bad guys by stepping on 4. Either 9 or 12 is used for any secondary items you may be holding. You also have the option to use the controller for a couple of options. Press B to use throwing items and press A to swing the baton.

Not sure throwing bombs is legal, but whatever.

All six levels have similar structure. In each stage, you see a wanted poster with the main bad guy you need to arrest. At the bottom of the wanted poster are images of some cohorts of the criminal along with a count. First you need to track down and capture all the cohorts. Then you will be able to track down the primary baddie. Some levels have two different types of cohorts. Each stage has a different layout you must explore.

The bottom of the screen shows information you need. On the left is the stage timer and Little Ben’s health meter. You get ten minutes to clear each stage. In the middle is the map of the level. Your position is represented as a blue dot, while an X appears where a bad guy is located. The right side shows how many cohorts are left to track down, as well as ammo for any items you find.

Capturing criminals can prove to be a little tricky. You can only go after one at a time. If his or her position shows up on the map, you first have to chase them down. When you catch up and see them, then you have to line yourself up with the criminal. The city streets have three running lanes. You can do the sidestep maneuver to change between those lanes at any time. The bad guys also switch lanes frequently. Once you get lined up with them, then you need to draw close enough to use either your throwing items or your baton. While enemies move relatively slowly, it’s tough sometimes to get everything to line up while navigating the controls. An easier way to catch a criminal is to knock them down by running into them at full speed. It doesn’t always trigger, but it works often enough that I found it to be the preferred method of fighting. Many enemies take more than one hit to defeat. Sometimes it works out where I can run into them once, and when they get up they walk right into me so I can baton them.

There is some straight up platforming here.

Each stage has a unique criminal to capture as well as some minor differences in the gameplay. In Stage 1, you capture Snatcher Joe. This is a basic level with only one strip of street to explore. This is a great introduction to the controls with plenty of time to meet your goal and get acquainted with the movement. As you walk through the city, there will be other pedestrians walking around, but you don’t interact with them and just walk right past them. It should be clear enough who is good and who is bad. Along the way you may find soda cans. Just walk into them to collect them, then press 1 to throw them. This simple stage does have one little trick to it. You might meet up with the enemy on the map but don’t see him walking around. In that case, he is hiding in one of the trash cans on the top row. Go up to the trash can and smack it with the baton to lure the bad guy out. He won’t hide again unless he goes off screen. Once all the cohorts are gone, then track down Snatcher Joe. He takes several hits to capture.

Stage 2 has you looking for Speedy Louis. This stage is more expansive than the first one, with a larger map connected with various alleyways. You will need to learn the turning controls to proceed down those paths. Another thing you need to learn is watching yourself on the map to make sure you are going the way you expect. When on the top row of the map, if you run to the right for example, your position on the map moves left instead. Just something to be aware of. This stage introduces a couple of new elements. There are some sewer entrances as holes on the street. Avoid them. Falling into one is always a setback and there is nothing down there for you to find at all. If you get stuck there, you need to move all the way to the right, jump onto the rightmost step, and then jump again to get out of the sewer. This level also introduces some other powerups. A clock adds one minute to the stage timer, up to the initial ten minutes. Picking up a can with a heart on it refills a portion of your health meter. Specific to this stage, you will find throwable bombs used as projectile weapons. One guy also holds a V-Max Turbo Drink. Just having this in your possession lets you run fast enough to chase down Speedy Louis.

You can just walk in and take the mustard.

In Stage 3, you must locate and capture Animal S. This stage consists of two long streets connected by a warehouse. If the enemy shows up on the other side of the street, then you need to cross through the warehouse. That section is a pure side-scrolling area with a single lane through to the other side. You’ll have to jump over boxes to get across. This stage has oranges you can pick up for throwing weapons. You also find a hyper drink useful for capturing Animal S. Animal S is one tough character. He has a charge attack that knocks you down on contact. He is very tough in a straight up fight. Here you will want to press 9 or 12 to use the hyper drink. You will turn red for a short time and Animal S can’t hurt you. Throwing items are also effective, especially when the drink effects wear off.

In Stage 4, you go after Big Burger. He can be found at the top of a skyscraper under construction and you will need to climb up after him one floor at a time. This level features stores that you can enter. Go inside and look for useful items. Mustard is the throwing item of choice in this stage. You can also find dog whistles in pet stores. Pressing one of the rear corner buttons blows the dog whistle, calling a dog on screen that attacks any bad guy in sight.

Stage 5 features Bloody Betty. She likes to shop so you will find her in one of the stores. You’ll need to explore all the doors here looking for items and her cohorts. The special items in this stage are throwing bombs and dog whistles. This level also features the subway. If you find Bloody Betty but let her get away, she will escape to another town. In that case, you will use the subway to travel over there, but you’ll have to search for her and defeat more cohorts all over again.

Bosses can be hard to find and tricky to beat.

The final stage squares you off against Don Mayonecheese. This level is a tricky one. There are three separate towns in this stage connected by the subway. Each town has a hideout where you might find the final boss. First you need to defeat the baddie that holds the key to the hideout. Then you can enter the hideout and search for Don. Of course, you have to defeat all the cohorts first per usual, both on the streets and in the hideout. You’ll be able to find bullets for your gun in case of a shootout as well as dog whistles in the stores. However, neither of those are effective against Don Mayonecheese. You’ll have to use all of your skills plus a little luck to finish the game.

There are no passwords, saving, or lives in this game. You can run out of health or run out of time, and then it’s Game Over. The good news is that you have unlimited continues. The bad news is that, if you are like me, you will need a rest break in between attempts. This is a more cerebral game than the other Power Pad games I’ve played so far, but it can still wear you out with all the footwork needed.

This was my first time playing through Street Cop. I didn’t bother testing out any of the Power Pad games beyond making sure they booted to the title screen. I remember watching TheMexicanRunner play this game so I already had an idea of how it works. This is an uncommon game that sells for around $20-$25. The only copy I’ve ever seen in person was the one I bought. I think I snagged it for around $8. This was at a game store where the owner didn’t yet understand how to value games using the Internet, so I ended up buying several uncommon games there for great prices before he caught on.

This is why he really wanted to be a cop.

I am glad that this ended up being a Power Pad game that I didn’t have to completely exhaust myself to play. I can’t help but break a sweat playing these games, but Street Cop took longer for me to get to that point. I even played it while I was a little bit sick and that seemed to have no effect on me. Once you get a handle on the controls, this game isn’t too difficult. You are free to pause with Start at any time to take a quick break. The enemies move slower to compensate for your lack of reaction time. The only real danger was running out of time, which happened a few times. I only had to continue at most twice per level before I cleared it. When I recorded my video longplay, I didn’t need to use any continues and only took small pause breaks in between levels. The only blemish on the run was skipping a cohort in the fourth stage. I was able to find the final boss in the second building I tried. Quite a solid run overall. I noticed I have the best completion time for this game (I can’t imagine that many people would try speedrunning it) so I have submitted it to speedrun.com as a new world record! I wonder how many more accidental speedruns I am going to get out of this project.

Street Cop is a basic action game. The graphics are simplistic but carry the idea well. The music is fine, nothing special. The controls work well and are more responsive than I would have guessed. The only tricky move is jumping which doesn’t always trigger. The gameplay is simplistic, but that’s what you want when playing a game with your feet. This is a notable game because this is the only game on the NES, and maybe one of the only games ever, with this kind of control scheme and gameplay merged together. There is strategy and exploration in what amounts to a fitness game. I think the developers did a great job of varying your goals and designing the stages. Sure, combat is usually the same, repetitive action, but there’s just enough variance and some clever boss encounters to make this game worthwhile. Good on the developers to try something different while getting it to work well. While it is tough to recommend any of the Power Pad games today, if you happen to own one and are looking for something that’s a little bit different, I think you might have fun with this game.

#115 – Street Cop

What dreams are made of!

I usually listen to the good music for awhile here!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 11/27/16
Difficulty: 7/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
Video: Little Nemo Longplay

There are quite a few games I have discovered in the NES library where I play it and immediately realize that I have been missing out for years. Little Nemo: The Dream Master is one of those games for me. I had most of the popular games growing up and many other good games, but there are so many games on the console that some end up being skipped. I am sure I had my opportunities to play the game much earlier since I was definitely aware of Little Nemo long before I played it. Either way, it’s better late than never! Little Nemo is a game that I really like and I am excited to tell you more about it today!

Little Nemo in Slumberland is a comic strip created in 1905 by an American cartoonist named Winsor McCay. It follows the story of Nemo and his adventurous dreams where each strip ends with Nemo waking up out of bed. The comic was published in the New York Herald until 1911 when McCay moved to the New York American. McCay was able to retain the rights to the characters and he brought Nemo to the American under the name In the Land of Wonderful Dreams from 1911 to 1914. In 1924, McCay returned to the Herald and revived Little Nemo in Slumberland until 1926 when it ended due to lack of popularity.

Little Nemo branched out into other forms of media over the years. A play was created in 1907 and another was created much more recently in 2012. There was a film made about McCay in 1911 that involved him creating animations of Little Nemo characters. There was an original opera performed in 2012. There have also been compilations of McCay’s original work, and McCay’s son even tried to bring back Little Nemo after his father’s death with lackluster results. However, the most notable work was the joint American-Japanese film named Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. This 1989 movie serves as the basis for the NES game.

You know you’re in for a treat when one of the first things you see is a giant mushroom!

Little Nemo: The Dream Master was released on the NES in North America in September 1990. It was both developed and published by Capcom. The Famicom release, titled Pajamas Hero Nemo, was released a little later in December 1990, and the European NES release debuted in December 1991. The story of the game follows closely to the 1989 movie. Curiously, the film was not released in the US until 1992, two years after the NES game. Capcom also released a separate arcade platformer simply named Nemo in 1990.

Little Nemo: The Dream Master is a platformer game. You play Little Nemo as he is tasked by a messenger of the princess to rescue Slumberland and King Morpheus from the Nightmare King. Nemo must work his way through eight areas to beat the game and save Slumberland. True to the source comic strip, each area in the game is a separate dream with Nemo hopping into bed to start the level and being woken up by his mother after the level.

On his own, Nemo is not very powerful. He can move around reasonably well, including jumping and ducking, and he can throw pieces of candy. However, the candy can only temporarily stun enemies without dealing any damage. Nemo can feed certain animals three pieces of candy which causes them to fall asleep. He can then take a ride on the animal or sometimes actually become the animal, which gives Nemo the means to clear obstacles and fight enemies. You can press Select to switch back to regular Nemo and from there take control of a different animal if desired.

The Frog lets you make these tall jumps.

There are several animals in the game and each one provides Nemo a set of additional capabilities. For starters, each type of animal has a certain amount of health points that may vary from Nemo’s own health. Enemy attacks deal one point of damage to Nemo and he loses a life when he runs out of health. More important than health are the different animal abilities needed to properly explore the stages. For instance, in the first level Nemo can become a frog that can jump higher than Nemo to reach tall ledges, and he can defeat enemies by jumping on them. Later you come across a mole that lets Nemo dig underground to explore even more. Some animals can climb walls, some can swim or fly, some have useful attacks, and so on. You have to play around a bit to figure out what you can do with a new animal. If there is an obstacle in the level, then there is an animal nearby capable of tackling it. Therefore, the platformer has some puzzle elements to it where you need to track down different animals and experiment with their capabilities.

There are a few items that will help Nemo out. Small bottles restore a single point of health, and first aid kits restore all of Nemo’s health. There are 1up icons that give Nemo an extra life. Finally, the most important items in the game are keys. At the end of most levels there is a locked door with several keyholes next to it. To finish the level, you need to collect enough keys scattered throughout the stage in order to unlock all the keyholes. Unfortunately, you have to reach the end of the level first to see how many keys are required, and you are forced to backtrack if you come up short. Some of the keys are well hidden in alcoves and branching paths. You will need to master all of the creatures in the game and search high and low to meet the level requirements.

There are many different environments in the stages. The first level is a mushroom forest with giant mushroom mountains as well as caves to explore and waterfalls to climb. There is a jungle level, a sea level, and others. There is also an auto-scrolling train level thrown in there for something really different. There is always something new to explore and there is a lot of variety to keep things interesting.

What kind of toy house has crushers like this?

This is a bit of a spoiler, so jump ahead a paragraph if you don’t want to know. Toward the end of the game Nemo gets an actual weapon that he can use to take out the bad guys when he doesn’t have an animal helper. The difficulty gets significantly bumped up here in part by introducing boss battles. Not only do you have to get more used to controlling Nemo on his own, but you have this new weapon to figure out. It may seem like an unnecessary change in the game, but I find it quite a bit of fun.

Little Nemo is typically regarded as a difficult game, and to an extent I agree. The difficulty curve feels a little bit uneven with some levels more taxing than others, and then the game takes a significant bump up in challenge toward the end like I just mentioned. The game has infinite continues which limits the difficulty, however, the whole game is long and challenging enough where you may not be able to grind through it in a single sitting.

I didn’t own Little Nemo until much later in my NES collection, but I remember reading about the game quite a bit. I probably ended up emulating it first but only just to try it out for a bit. One of my good friends has a very small collection of NES games but Little Nemo is one of them, and he would tell me about how good the game is to play. That sold me on the game enough to seek it out. I don’t remember when or how I ended up getting my copy, but when I did I ended up playing through it shortly thereafter. I have played through it at least a couple of times before covering it now.

You can “bee” deadly if you must!

Despite my experience with the game, I don’t know it well enough to just breeze right through it. I remembered enough to beat the game in a single sitting, but not well enough to look good doing it. I recorded my playthrough but it is definitely not my best effort. I had to continue a few times, and I forgot some of the keys and had to go back and find them. Thankfully this blog is about finishing the games regardless of skill or style, so I’m satisfied with getting to the ending of the game.

I want to take a moment to praise the soundtrack. Capcom games tend to have really memorable music, and Little Nemo follows that trend. The soundtrack is often upbeat and I think it really captures that dreamy feel that should accompany a game like this. Some of my favorite tracks are right at the start, including the prologue, title screen, and Mushroom Forest theme. You can listen to all the songs at the VGMPF website.

Little Nemo: The Dream Master is one of those games that should be in any NES library. The graphics, music, and gameplay are all top-notch. There is quite the variety of animals, level layouts, and obstacles for a game of this length. Despite that fact that each animal behaves differently, the controls feel good and make sense all around. This is a title that is still affordable for any cart collector. The only negative I see is the uneven difficulty and the endgame challenge, but I welcome it so that’s not a problem for me at all. If somehow you missed playing this game like I once did, I would recommend giving it a try!

#39 – Little Nemo: The Dream Master