Ardy Lightfoot (SNES)

By request. This is going to be a platformer, I would imagine.

I have no clue what either of these creatures are supposed to be, but I'm the guy with the tail and I can throw the blue thing.

Blue thing follows me around everywhere, so I guess he's my sidekick.

If I press jump again in the air I can land on my tail for a charged jump, which is more awkward to do than should be.

Hey, I collected a bit of paper! Or maybe it's a stone tablet, I dunno. Apparently we came all the way down here to get this, and he seems pretty happy about finding it.

I waited for the Indiana Jones style surprise trap to happen, but nothing. Ardy gets away with the treasure.

I brought the paper to an old man, who says that it refers to a great power that was split into 7 pieces. If I collect all the pieces, any wish will come true! So I should probably do that.

It's a little vague on the directions though. 'One returned to the earth, another sunk to the bottom of a cold dark water...' So I should go look in the earth and the water then?


BUT THEN suddenly the town outside burned down!

Lil Ardy runs across the map screen automatically to investigate.

Evil penguins are flying around in fish-head planes, throwing bombs at the townsfolk. This simply will not do.

The town is pretty empty of enemies actually. I threw my blue friend at any I found, and he ate them. Not really what I was expecting him to do, but it works.

It seems that the blue guy counts as a hit point. When I take damage, he takes the first hit for me and disappears. Then the next hit would kill me. Fortunately I found a replacement blue guy in a chest!

It's not all good news though. If I hadn't got him killed there'd probably be a star or maybe even an extra life in the box instead.

I jump on the statue's head and he starts writing. So that's a checkpoint then is it? Cool.

It's the first boss! And, it seems that this guy is immune to my blue thing's bite. He stares at me for a bit before running off as I give chase.

He dived down a well which led down to a mine, full of these rotating bucket wheel contraptions. For some reason the people who built this place covered the floor in spikes, I guess to discourage people from trying to jump from bucket to bucket like this.

It didn't work though, I just hit my head on the bucket above and fell down. Over and over.


LATER.

Turns out I had to kill an enemy sitting inside one of the buckets with a tail jump (oh, I learned that tail jumps can kill enemies). Then when I'm standing on THAT bucket I'm in the correct place to tail jump when the broken bucket I can jump through comes around. Simple.

I think I have infinite continues but for a while there I wasn't sure that'd be enough for me to figure this damn jump out.

Oh great, now I'm in a mine cart. And if I fall out, the screen carries on without me and I go back to the start.


A FEW DEATHS LATER.

Okay that's it. I'm not trying to jump for coins or dodge anything any more. I'm just hiding in this mine cart until the level goes away.

I finally catch up with the boss again, only this time he has nowhere to run. He starts jumping to knock rocks down onto me, but it seems I'm perfectly safe over here on the left.

Hey, that crystal up there... you don't suppose that could be a piece of the great power? How incredibly convenient!

Frustrated that the rocks weren't killing me, the boss throws his hat at me. This was a mistake. I bounce onto his bare head with my tail causing him damage!

And then I accidentally land on his head with a regular jump as I'm falling down and my blue thing disappears.

Well, fuck. I ran out of lives and choosing continue put me right back at the start of the mine cart section. I decided to quit here, and held down on the d pad waiting for him to die. But he just rolled through the entire section unharmed until I reached the boss fight again.

So I defeated the boss and moved on.

It seems that the blue thing doesn't like apples. The little guy's a carnivore.

Oh no, wait, I spoke too soon. He does eat some apples, EVIL apples.

Jumping on enemies hurts me, so at this bit I've got to tail bounce off each enemy in turn to make it across the spikes. I had to replay this a few times and I NEVER made it across without taking damage then bouncing the rest of the way with my temporary post-hit invulnerability. It seems a little bit difficult for something so early in the game to me.

And this is the reason I had to keep replaying it.

I need to make a running jump to make across this pit, leaping from the very edge of the wall.

But I don't make it, I screw it up every time. I even tried tail bouncing across and that didn't work either.

But the thing is, there are so many stars between here and the checkpoint, that I keep getting extra lives! I can't manage to lose, no matter how hard I try. I'm doomed to keep jumping this gap forever.


LATER.

Okay I've lost my patience with this now. I have to jump from tiny circular ledge to circular ledge, and some of them are spinning. It's hard to tail jump from a spinning ledge, because I can move, it just pushes me off.

But I eventually made it all the way up to the checkpoint. and then slipped and fell right the way back down again. If I could figure out a way here to kill Ardy, I could get back to that checkpoint no trouble, but I cleaned the place out on the way up.

So that's it, I can't be bothered to get back up there. I'm done with the game. The gameplay actually isn't that bad, but the level design is plain cruel at times, and I'm just getting angry with it now.


Next game.