Mr. Gimmick (NES)

Mr. Gimmick, also known as Gimmick! I'm pretty certain this is a platformer.

Somewhere, a young girl receives a gift.

It's a... blob with a horn on it's head. The girl is very happy with the gift and puts it on her cupboard.

The other toys are apparently unhappy with this new arrangement however.

And they kidnap the girl in her sleep by teleporting away. Now the green blob has to come to life and open up a portal to save her.

I guess the message this game is trying to send out is 'stuffed toys are evil and don't like you being happy, so ask for video games for your birthday instead. Video games are friendly and will never kidnap you in your sleep.'

Ah, a world map, excellent. Though it seems more like a 'you are here' guide than an actual level select screen.

Okay, I'm a green blob and I have a star attack which takes way too long to charge up, and bounces like a fireball in Super Mario Bros. I can only have one on screen at a time too.

Son of a bitch, I've been killed by the first enemy in the game. It turns out that the star disappears if you fire it while jumping under a block, leaving you completely open to be killed by cannonball monsters.

That's weird, he can land on enemies without killing them or taking damage. Also I just grabbed an extra hit point by drinking an orange potion, which is nice.

Crap, sloped walls speed you up! That was close, even if I'd slid under the falling bomb, hitting that spikewater probably wouldn't have been good for me.

Crap, sloped walls slow you down! I thought I was going to make it up by walking up, but then he suddenly started to slip back down.

Come on, just get through that door!

A nice relaxing fishy interlude.

And then the game is back to being a bastard. It kindly provides you with a ride across the spikewater, then stops and opens the floor halfway across.

Damn, I can't fire the star, it'll just disappear because the ceiling's too low. Uh, fuck... run away! Back down the pipe.

Okay, I made it past that room and onto the one above, which has a nice orange extra hit point potion to grab. This cannonball creature keeps jumping across, then returning and chasing me back down the pipe though, so I need to time this right.

Well, fuck. It turns out that if you jump too high you hit your head on the ceiling and fall down to the level below. Which has insta-kill spikewater.

Okay, I'm not done with this that easily. I'll choose 'continue' on the main menu and see where that puts me.

It puts me right at the very start of the game. Not completely unexpected really seeing as I died on the first level.



LATER.

Oh crap, I fired my star attack at an enemy and it ricocheted and now I'm bouncing all over the level on top of it. I really wish this guy had Mario fireballs. Or Mega Man's gun, that'd be nice right now. Anything but this damn star attack.



MUCH LATER.

Okay, I've made it this far on these platforms. I can do this. All I have to do is make two more jumps without colliding with the cannonball thing, or falling off into the insta-kill bottomless pit.

Son of a BITCH! He bounced one way, then turned around and hit me mid jump.

Okay, that's really annoying. Now I have to replay it all from the start. Again.


MUCH MUCH LATER.

Okay, first I lure out the star attack-proof cannonball enemies into the pipe...

Then I just make a few jumps and DAMMIT! I was right there this time.

YES! I've finally done it! Onto the next room, and then I never have to jump those damn bricks again.

What?

And when I'm immediately killed by a ledge full of cannonballs, the game puts me all the way back to the place that looks like a castle. So I can jump those bricks again.

Fuck. That.


You know, the difficulty in this game isn't actually that bad. By the time I made it up to that boss, I'd replayed the level enough times to be able to make it through with barely any mistakes. But if I want to learn how to defeat the boss I've got to replay the whole stretch of level after that last checkpoint, and I've already done that more times that I'd ever want to.

So I'm playing something else instead. Nice music though.