It’s time for one of those retro NES titles. I definitely hadn’t heard of this one before, but granted, I suppose a lot of these were really before my time. The game is decent, it has a very unique style to it. That being said, I don’t think this would end up being a game that I would seek to replay. It’s not like Mario or Pac-Man where the gameplay is just super solid. The gameplay is original and can be fun but isn’t super great or anything like that.

Basically you are on a checkers board of sorts. You can move across the tiles and flip the ground which sends a little shockwave in the direction that you are facing. You will be faced off with 4 opponents and your goal is to shockwave them into one of the walls. Once your opponents are slammed then you move onto the next level. Each world has 10 levels to it and there are around 8-9 worlds. Each one introduces you to a new enemy until the final world where you fight them all. Now that is definitely a real ambitious final world, I can tell you that.

The levels range from being a few seconds long to several minutes. It really depends on the different tricks that the villains are using and a little RNG sprinkled in as well. The gameplay is simple so you can really just focus on positioning and being in the right place at all times. There are also different kinds of floors which becomes more of a factor as you play through the game. You have star spaces which cause shockwaves in all directions and other tiles that cannot fire shockwaves.

The most annoying kind of tile is definitely the portal which allows enemies to infinitely summon new versions of them. You need to flip these tiles over immediately or the levels will get much more difficult. You have no health bar so if any villain touches you then you lose a life. Additionally if a shockwave hits you, you will lose a life. So there is absolutely no margin for error here. For the most part you can react to any kind of attack, but one exception is when enemies bump into each other and then get sent into a bunch of different directions.

You just have to try and prevent this from happening in the first place because you will really not be able to prevent this from happening. There are simply too many enemies and they are all over the place. One wrong step and that is game over. Each enemy has a different movement style, some are easier to deal with than others. You have the sumo wrestler for example who can resist the shockwaves pretty well. You need to land lots of hits to take him out and he counters after each one. If any counter hits you, you don’t die but you get sent across the field.

There’s the swimmers who…well they swim across the riles which isn’t a problem since you can still hit them with shockwaves. You even have other “players” who move and attack in the same way that you do. For the most part they aren’t a big problem but you definitely don’t want to underestimate them. After all, they only need to land one good hit on you.

The graphics aren’t bad in this game. It’s definitely basic NES stuff but it’s not under average or anything like that. It’s good enough and it’s not like this is a very complicated game either. So as long as you can see what is happening, then you’re good. The game delivers on that front. Then for the soundtrack, well that is more on the forgettable side. There aren’t any tunes that you will be humming to yourself later or anything like that.

In terms of replay value, there isn’t a whole lot here. There was a score display at the top so I suppose you could try to get a higher score. This doesn’t feel like a game that is really made for replay value though. You would need to really enjoy the gameplay style a whole lot for that to be possible. Ideally that is what will happen though. The main game’s length isn’t very long but that’s usually the case for an NES title.

What the game could have done to be more fun would have been to not have the teleport tiles. I feel like those were the cheesiest with how they kept spawning new monsters. If you’re going to add that in, at least don’t make it infinite. I think that would have gone a long way to making the game feel more balanced. The levels would be more on the straight forward side, compact and not too crazy all around. Without rewind this game feels like it can just be a little too unforgiving. Maybe if it took more than one hit to defeat you, that could have been another way to enhance the game a bit. So some good ideas in here, but it’s clear that the title was a bit rough around the edges and that’s why it didn’t end up being the next big thing. Nobody’s really heard of this title which means that it was fully forgotten to history.

Overall, This isn’t the kind of game that I would play a whole lot of but if you have the Switch Online then you should check it out. After all, it’s effectively free at that point so why wouldn’t you want to give it a quick shot right? If they ever made a modern remake of this game, they could probably do some cool things with it. Throw in a fun story and then you’re really off to the races. It does beat the next NES title that I will be reviewing though so prepare yourself for that.

Overall 5/10