Super Adventures in Gaming: Spirou (SNES)

The adventures of a bellboy and his squirrel in the big city.

Oh he's a reporter! But which one's Fantasio, the squirrel or the guy in the bow tie? Either way that's cool looking city art outside those windows.

Suddenly an evil robot woman called Cyanida appears and kidnaps the Count, intending to use his devices to achieve her ambition of a world dominated by robots where humans are slaves. Spirou takes off after her in pursuit.

That's nice artwork. Why is it suddenly night though?

Spirou catches a pizza while his squirrel fights off a dog. Little does he know that pizza is POISONED! Or maybe it's just really sharp, either way he takes damage from it.

Huh? I can't get past this parked taxi. Damn invisible walls.

What the hell am I supposed to do then? I can't reach any of the fire escapes, even if I jump off a bin. There doesn't seem to be any way to just walk around the car.

Ah! You can go into the doorways in the background.

Now I'm getting somewhere. This game really does have a nice art style, these graphics look great and the animation is very fluid. The music is nice and dramatic too.

Oh shit, electricity! JUMP SPIROU, JUMP!

We've been shot with a shrink ray? Well fuck, that's it then. The world will fall to the robots, humanity will be enslaved, and Spirou and his squirrel will spend the rest of their short lives trying to survive amongst the rats in the gutters of what was once New York.

Or maybe there's an unshrink ray in this toy shop. You never know.

Hey, I can climb up ledges! I didn't seem to be able to manage that in the first level but whatever.

Now I can't climb ledges? Oh, these boxes have angled edges. I guess I have to be careful about what I try to grab onto then. It's annoying when games are inconsistent like this.

Hey, I can push these face blocks! A little anyway, now it won't budge any further. Lets see what's down on the other side.

The FUCK? Oh, I see, that slightly darker patch of ground obscured by that block in the foreground is actually an instant kill bottomless pit.

Ugh, I died at this bit like ten times. You've got to land on the teddy bear dead on to bounce off it, otherwise you fall and die. And when you bounce off, you need to get the jump right to make it on top of the blocks without going too far and falling down the pit on the other side. If you're a little short you can't grab the side to save yourself because they have the angled edges.

Wow, a helpful clown? He even keeps sending balloons up so you can jump all the way across this section by jumping from balloon to balloon.

These teeth can be used to jump over obstacles, though if you hit them at the wrong angle you're gonna get bit. When you get hit in this you don't fly back thankfully, but his reaction is so subtle it might be difficult to notice if you've been hit at all.

Come on you damn teeth! Get over here so I can jump on you. Just a little closer... DAMMIT! Okay, there must be another way past this, something I didn't think of.

OH! The squirrel's figured it out. That guy is actually surprisingly helpful. He often sits on objects you need to interact with, and here he's actually pointing at the thing I need to jump on.

See, here he is eating nuts on a box I can push. Unlike that other box I was pushing, this one can be pushed right off the edge. Another inconsistency to annoy me.