Nemoide wrote:I'm planning on playing Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa put out by Konami, originally for Famicom Disk System!
I was planning to play Somer Assault, buuut I haven't played this, and I thought it would be fun to play it alongside someone else. So play it, I did! I did two playthroughs: my first on the FDS version, and my second on the FC cartridge version.
It's definitely one of Konami's easiest platformers. Lots of health pickups, scarce enemies, and not-too-tricky platforming. It's made a little tougher due to having no checkpoints, but the levels are short, so it's manageable. I only found that 5-3's underwater pencil tunnel and 7-3's tiny platforms gave me trouble. Were there any parts that tripped you up?
The ability to make balloon platforms out of your enemies together with the baby's high and floaty jumps is a great mix. It's super satisfying to ride up into the air and make risky leaps over pits or hazards that would be impossible in most other NES platformers. But these moments were rare and most of the time, enemies were just used to get up to higher platforms or climb walls, a not-so-satisfying mechanic. It's fun enough as is, but I wish there was more varied level design. A thought I had while playing is that I could see myself having a lot of fun with these mechanics if the levels were more mazelike like in Ufouria or Rainbow Bell Adventures.
The game deserves kudos for its bosses, too. Normally, I have zero tolerance for recycled bosses (especially to the degree this game does it), but fighting that pig over and over didn't feel as repetitive as it really should've. That's impressive to me! I think it's because of the way you attack: you have to take the time to hit and launch enemies in the right direction, in the short period before they fly away, while dodging the boss and having slow movement. It's not really
challenging, but it's engaging enough for me.
If anyone ever makes a hard mode hack of this game, I'll for sure be the first person to play it.
Maybe I should make it...
Also, I wanted to particularly mention that the flickering tomato platform in 2-1 caught me
completely off-guard. The lack of a proper disappearing animation made me think I did something to despawn them! And to my knowledge, there's only one flickering tomato platform in the whole game, so I could have never guessed that this one particular platform, looking no different from the rest, would vanish right under my feet! I honestly love when games pull that kind of stuff. I'd prefer to be surprised by something unpredictable and laugh at it than breeze by something overly telegraphed.
Let me know what you thought of the game!
