Developer: CityConnection
Publisher: Bitwave Games
Price: Roughly £13/$15, different platforms and regions may vary on exact price.
Filesize: 204MB
The story is fairly straight forward, a girl gets a new present which is mistakenly looks like a toy. This green yokai creature called Yumetaro was given a lot of attention that made the other toys very jealous so they took her to a different dimension. It's up to Yumetaro to save her.
Its initial release was a mixed reception, for starters it was given praise over clean visuals/presentation for an 8-bit game and complex audio tracks by Masashi Kageyama thanks to the addition of the Yamaha YM2149 PSG audio chip which added 3 more music channels (along with the base console's 5 making a total of 8 channels). These new channels were used for Sunsoft's signature bass sound which was later used for Inti Create's Blaster Master Zero trilogy from 2017-2021.
On the other side of the coin, it received criticism for being released a year after the juggernaut Super Famicom over in Japan, to simply put there was less interest towards the 8-bit console than say the majority of the 1980s and brutal difficulty for both in game design and not supporting password/battery saves.
Jump over to mid-2000s and beyond where the internet became more accessible to research hidden gems and it seems to have gathered a much more positive response. This is mainly thanks to the star projectile which can be used as either a weapon to harm enemies or a mobile platform to get to hard-to-reach places. In a way this is one of the earliest physic platformers before the domination of the indie market decades later.
The star is a wild mechanic, best described as a bouncing ball. The higher the height it has to fall down, the higher the launch after bouncing on the floor. The most common example is using it against the side of a platform from the peak of Yumetaro's jump to make the star bounce towards the player and use it as a mid-air stepping stone to reach higher ground.
You have bombs, a pink energy ball and a potion. The potion is straight forward, being able to heal up a few HP depending on max available HP at the time, next is the pink energy ball which goes at a pure horizontal direction, making it easier than a frantic star. Lastly, the bomb is the hardest item to use as it is tossed in an arc like a grenade and can explode directly or overtime.
There's another type of item known as a hidden treasure which can be found in stages 1-6. They are worth a lot of points, usually enough to give the player a few extra lives but the real incentive is finding these treasures in all 6 levels to unlock the bonus 7th level and reveal the true ending.
But the journey won't be an easy one, even if you don't go for all treasures for the true ending, for starters you usually have 2 HP most of the time and it will take a couple of tries to take out the mid-bosses/end of level boss as you need to pull off some precise star tossing.
Fortunately, in 2023, the official re-release is probably the most accessible way to beat the game, with save states, load states and rewind, it's easier than ever before to redo past mistakes. There are only 3 save state slots which is okay and better than just having 1 but for diehard players, 20 should have been the minimum, it does sound a lot but having 20 enables you to have a save state at the start of levels 2-7 and right before the boss battle of levels 1-7, the remaining 7 can be used for practising tougher platforming rooms.
The rewind only covers the last ~25 seconds which is okay for single screen adjustments but if you wanted to go back 2-3 screens earlier, you're out of luck. Comparing it to Nintendo Switch Online method, while that method is a bit slower, it does allow more precise rewinding, heck you could go back or go forward in the rewind timeline, for this game when you go back you can't undo the rewind.
If you want to play the game as if it was 1992 without the quality of life features, there's SERIOUS Mode which disables these tools but in return allows the player to unlock achievements for bragging rights, most of them are either obtaining a high score milestone, clearing a level, finding the hidden treasure and reaching both normal & true endings, because it lacks savestates/rewind tools, you have to beat the game at least twice to get all achievements.
If you want to play the game at a high level, there is a speedrun mode which has its own livesplit-like timer, showing all of the stages, current time, level splits. It starts when you visit the map screen which does mean a bit of mashing is required to get an optimised run before you even start the main gameplay, ideally it should have started after the map screen but I cannot say whether or not that affects RNG in any way, it's probably done like that to make it comparable to Famicom speedruns that were done before this release.
Screen resolution is an upscale of a pixel perfect resolution so it does make the game look a bit skinny than say most standard 4:3 resolutions from that era.
Chances of having a standard resolution are slim as one or both sides depending on the game mode are covered with info, for example speedrun mode shows both current splits on the left side and the personal best splits on the right side.
There's extra gallery related content where you can read through both Japanese and Scandinavian manuals (spoiler alert, neither of them are using the English language), a front and rear shot of the carts. There is a sound test mode that is in-game unlockable by holding SELECT and pressing START.
Overall, Gimmick finally gets a first proper worldwide release and the new tools does lessen the frustration of the experience, it doesn't mean it will be a cakewalk to beat it. The craziest thing is how tough levels can be solved with a creative and/or precise star toss to navigate some of the toughest platforming with ease.
The skill gap is very extreme like comparing it to a novice and a grandmaster playing Tetris The Grandmaster series, as the novice probably knows how to fast drop and clear 4 bars. whereas the other can clear rows with max falling speed and with invisibility curse on the blocks that were already stacked. For Gimmick, it's a game that will require a lot of practice to pull off every nook and cranny, don't be fooled by the very fast times such as normal ending in under 6 minutes as they are probably the most challenging 6 minutes in 8-bit gaming history.
One big saving grace for an official release is that it's not locked to an online only subscription service, and just to be clear this is not the 16/32-bit ex-Arcadia release that was out in the late 2020s, that one is only out in the arcades and doesn't look like that version will be ported to home consoles/PC anytime soon.
Sunsoft finest:
It's simple to understand but very hard to master gameplay
Visually clean besides the occasional 8-bit flicker and very catchy melodies thanks to the additional audio chip.
It's not £400 expensive, take that filthy eBay scalpers.
Sunharsh:
As it is an 8-bit game from the early 90s, expect it to be unfair hard at times.
No individual level speedruns support for the hardcore players
No new content aka M2's Sega AGES style input such as a boss rush or a single button press to use/charge up a secondary item.
Limited screen settings and no scanlines
No input replay support to download and watch the best runs.
Rewinding needs a bit of polish, it's only good for very quick undos but nothing else.
Rewinding needs a bit of polish, it's only good for very quick undos but nothing else.
Rating: B
Disclaimer:
Key provided by Bitwave games.
Platform: PC Steam
#AD added to the title to follow the UK rules by the ASA.
Disclaimer:
Key provided by Bitwave games.
Platform: PC Steam
#AD added to the title to follow the UK rules by the ASA.
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