![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
COMPLETE: Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Dec. 31st, 2019 01:09 pmWhat started out as modifying a spare NES Classic console for the sake of my corporeal sister & brother-in-law's Christmas present turned into re-flashing ours while we had the game list up like that, and poking at various games to make sure they worked turned into trying once more to tackle this old gem that has eluded me for so long.
Little Nemo: The Dream Master is an NES Capcom game based on an anime film (which, due to Development Hell reasons, never actually hit western shores until long after the game) which itself came from the classic Winsor McCay newspaper comic. That's why the game is set in 1905, you see.
You are the titular Little Nemo, a kid plagued with really weird dreams and difficulty sleeping through the night. Whisked off to Slumberland at the invitation of Princess Camille, you go through seven mostly unrelated plot-free stages before getting there and "oh by the way I need you to rescue my father King Morpheus from the Nightmare King who kidnapped him, here's a weapon, good luck" and there's your finale. For most of the game, your only "weapon" is an infinite supply of candy that can be lobbed about a foot in front of you, and even that can never defeat enemies but it does stun them for about one second for jumping-over-them purposes. There is exactly one screen in the entire game where this is useful; otherwise it's typically trouble than it's worth to add the extra step to the dodging process.
Your saving grace comes from a wide variety of friendly animal helpers that, after being fed some candy, allow you to ride/transform into/merge with them, granting you access to different movement and offensive options. The frog has a painfully slow walking speed but incredible leaps, can defeat enemies by Mario stomping them, and is one of the very few helpers in the game that can swim. The lizard has literally no attack or action button at all and a pretty terrible jump, so God help you if you have to take it through a section with enemies, but it has a great walking speed, can climb walls, is small enough to fit through narrow passages, and has an extra hit point. Etc.
For the most part, the formula is that Nemo and his various helpers must scour each map to find enough keys to unlock the door at the end that leads to the next stage. There are certain exceptions--House of Toys, for example, has no helpers at all and is just a long brutal auto-scrolling enemy and obstacle gantlet with all the keys you need just sitting there before and after the train ride of doom. Once you get to the final level, Nightmare Land, the key mechanic is done away with entirely and you even (finally) get a weapon you can use in your base form.
Being an NES Capcom game, the gameplay and graphics are mostly solid to fine and the music is nothing short of incredible. Everyone has their own personal favorites from this soundtrack (mine are House of Toys and Cloud Ruins) but the soundtrack overall is inarguably outstanding by every measure.
Also being an NES Capcom game, the gameplay starts out pleasant enough but very quickly takes a turn for the impossible. The game allows you to continue from the start menu as many times as you'd like if you run out of lives, but it has no save or password feature and that "Continue" option only persists as long as the play session does--90s kids would have been able to take as many tries as they needed to beat this game, but they would have had to do it all in one sitting. There is a stage select cheat code, but using that to continue where you left off or just to cheat like a cheater kind of gets into a whole big discussion in itself. This is not the first time I've ever beaten the endboss and seen the end credits, but younger me always skipped directly to him. I did make an aborted attempt to get through the entire game a few years ago, and made it all the way to the final stage (where younger me would have skipped to,) but the final stage is heinous (more on that in a bit) and I wasn't able to get all the way through the endbosses at that time. Today's entry marks the first time I've ever started it, played every stage in the middle, and finished it. I played this on an NES Classic, and saved my state between levels. Not to give myself an advantage, but just so I could, you know, go to bed.
Actually, you know what? ( Let's go ahead and tackle that discussion about difficulty and accessibility. )
Little Nemo: The Dream Master is an NES Capcom game based on an anime film (which, due to Development Hell reasons, never actually hit western shores until long after the game) which itself came from the classic Winsor McCay newspaper comic. That's why the game is set in 1905, you see.
You are the titular Little Nemo, a kid plagued with really weird dreams and difficulty sleeping through the night. Whisked off to Slumberland at the invitation of Princess Camille, you go through seven mostly unrelated plot-free stages before getting there and "oh by the way I need you to rescue my father King Morpheus from the Nightmare King who kidnapped him, here's a weapon, good luck" and there's your finale. For most of the game, your only "weapon" is an infinite supply of candy that can be lobbed about a foot in front of you, and even that can never defeat enemies but it does stun them for about one second for jumping-over-them purposes. There is exactly one screen in the entire game where this is useful; otherwise it's typically trouble than it's worth to add the extra step to the dodging process.
Your saving grace comes from a wide variety of friendly animal helpers that, after being fed some candy, allow you to ride/transform into/merge with them, granting you access to different movement and offensive options. The frog has a painfully slow walking speed but incredible leaps, can defeat enemies by Mario stomping them, and is one of the very few helpers in the game that can swim. The lizard has literally no attack or action button at all and a pretty terrible jump, so God help you if you have to take it through a section with enemies, but it has a great walking speed, can climb walls, is small enough to fit through narrow passages, and has an extra hit point. Etc.
For the most part, the formula is that Nemo and his various helpers must scour each map to find enough keys to unlock the door at the end that leads to the next stage. There are certain exceptions--House of Toys, for example, has no helpers at all and is just a long brutal auto-scrolling enemy and obstacle gantlet with all the keys you need just sitting there before and after the train ride of doom. Once you get to the final level, Nightmare Land, the key mechanic is done away with entirely and you even (finally) get a weapon you can use in your base form.
Being an NES Capcom game, the gameplay and graphics are mostly solid to fine and the music is nothing short of incredible. Everyone has their own personal favorites from this soundtrack (mine are House of Toys and Cloud Ruins) but the soundtrack overall is inarguably outstanding by every measure.
Also being an NES Capcom game, the gameplay starts out pleasant enough but very quickly takes a turn for the impossible. The game allows you to continue from the start menu as many times as you'd like if you run out of lives, but it has no save or password feature and that "Continue" option only persists as long as the play session does--90s kids would have been able to take as many tries as they needed to beat this game, but they would have had to do it all in one sitting. There is a stage select cheat code, but using that to continue where you left off or just to cheat like a cheater kind of gets into a whole big discussion in itself. This is not the first time I've ever beaten the endboss and seen the end credits, but younger me always skipped directly to him. I did make an aborted attempt to get through the entire game a few years ago, and made it all the way to the final stage (where younger me would have skipped to,) but the final stage is heinous (more on that in a bit) and I wasn't able to get all the way through the endbosses at that time. Today's entry marks the first time I've ever started it, played every stage in the middle, and finished it. I played this on an NES Classic, and saved my state between levels. Not to give myself an advantage, but just so I could, you know, go to bed.
Actually, you know what? ( Let's go ahead and tackle that discussion about difficulty and accessibility. )