It’s time for another really retro NES title. This one actually didn’t get translated but it’s a platformer so it’s not like there is really a lot of dialogue anyway. It’s a pretty fun title, they did a good job of emulating that classic Mario style. At the end of the day the fact that it isn’t sequential does hold it back a little and I prefer always having a straight forward level vs the puzzles but it lands way more wins than you would expect.

So I can’t really say much about the story but you play as a guy who looks like Indiana Jones and you’re wandering your way through a maze of 100 levels. Each level will have you running and jumping over obstacles. The only weapon at your disposal is the pocket grenades. The cool thing about them though is that they damage anyone on screen. So if you throw it and miss, the enemy will still take damage in most cases. Some enemies take 3 hits to take down but most go down in one hit or two. It can be tough to angle the weapon just right so this helps to alleviate that pressure a little bit.

There is a really fast timer that is going on the whole time so you need to keep that in mind though. If you forget about it for even a moment then you might be in trouble here. The time is just as deadly as any enemy you will face and in some levels I barely had any time left at all. When you jump, the momentum will keep you going the whole time so it is hard to change directions in mid air. This means one fall can set you back a whole lot or even when you bump into any of the walls. You need perfect control of your character in order to make it through these levels and it takes a whole lot of skills.

This game can be deceptively hard in that way. Then you also have the fact that levels have more than one exit. So this can launch you far into the future or it can even send you back at times. Imagine picking the wrong door and having to go through a level again? That would be rough and a lot of the levels are so relentless that one mistake will cause you to be completely defeated. There are also several “dark” levels where you can’t see anything. These levels were incredibly difficult for me to navigate. The trick in the end was to keep blowing up your grenades which causes the level to appear for a split second.

Of course this doesn’t make it easy in the end either though. You still have to time your jumps perfectly so one wrong step and you will end up falling to your doom. This is definitely a game for platforming vets. So why is this game good when it’s so difficult? Well, it feels difficult in a way that is generally fair the whole time. Additionally the levels being colorful and fast paced helps out a lot as well. You will never be just totally stuck waiting for something to happen.

So the graphics are above average for a NES game which is good and the music wasn’t bad. It’s no Mario though but it was good enough. The game feels very well balanced. It is not without faults of course but easily stands above most of its peers. If you are looking for a fun time then you should definitely play this while you have the Switch Online. Of course it would probably not be as fun without the rewind feature but that’s just how a lot of these classic games go. Each level is around 1-2 minutes so even with 100 levels it goes by quickly. I would even say some levels are under a minute because I knocked them all out in around 90 minutes. Of course, skipping levels helps quite a bit with this.

Overall, The Mystery of Atlantis is a good game. It gets a little too clever for its own good by the end with some of the gimmicks but it was certainly creative. I would say it pushed the NES hardware pretty far. Especially with 100 levels. Yes, they have a lot of levels that are pretty similar and reuse assets but this is still really impressive. I’ve played several games that basically just had one level after all so it’s not particularly easy or anything like that.

Overall 6/10