Welcome to the 94th issue of the GBAtemp Recommends Revival Project! This is a weekly feature where we talk about some of our past favourites. Some may be famous, others have been ignored when released against larger titles but all are a worth your time.
NES platformers by Capcom = win! Well mostly, They sure did some of the best back in the day and not only that also handled licensed titles quite well on a whole and Little Nemo: The Dream Master is one of their best.[prebreak][/prebreak]
Little Nemo: The Dream Master was designed by Tatsuya Minami & Tokuro Fujiwara both of which have produced some of the greatest games of all time (and pretty much made Capcom) and was based on the animated Japanese film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (which was loosely based on a early 20th century American comic strip) and though it was a commercial failure, it has become quite a cult hit over time.
You play a small boy named Nemo and all of the levels revolve around his dreams where he is travelling from Slumberland to Nightmare Land to battle the evil Nightmare King. To aid Nemo in his quest, he has sweeties, which momentarily freeze enemies allowing you to bypass them at times. These sweeties also can be fed to the many helper creatures which, when fed, will let you ride them. Each of these creatures have certain abilities. On the mushroom level you get: Frog - Jumps high & also lets you bop enemies to death, Mole - lets you dig, Lizard - helps your climb to hard to reach places, Gorilla - strong, lets you punch enemies and also helps you climb, Hornet - lets you fly & shoot poisoned darts. Those are just some of the creatures you can control and each controls differently. Once you've reached Nightmare Land you can use The Royal Scepter which is a sort of wand that shoots out beams and is pretty badass.
The games levels are very bright and colourful and are well drawn for a NES title, though when there are many enemies on the screen the sprites do tend to flicker a bit which is pretty much the standard thing for NES titles. The sound effects are very nice and do the trick but the music is extremely memorable and you end up finding yourself whistling its various tunes after playing for a while. This comes as no surprise as the composer is none other than Junko Tamiya who has composed such games as Bionic Commando, Strider, 1943 & Sweet Home.
Though childlike in appearance and theme, some gamers will find this a touch difficult even though you have energy bars I have fount that some levels can be a right bitch to get through, even more so than some other difficult Capcom games...this is one of those "Nintendo Hard" titles. The game still hold well today, despite the flashing sprites when things get busy and really shows that Capcom really did know how to do a licensed game well. Capcom still holds the Nemo video game license so it would be great to see this on Virtual Console one day or even a whole new game.
If you want to submit a game, please let me know first and we'll discuss it.
For a look at all the games we have covered, please visit our Wiki page for a complete list with links.
