Little Nemo: The Dream Master is another awesome licensed game by Capcom for the NES. At the time of its release, this was a winning combination (DuckTales, Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck...). This is of course not an exception.
The game play is fun. You feed candy to animals, then use them (in a very Kirby like fashion) to find keys all around the level and continue on. Each animal naturally does something different: fly, climb walls, jump impossible heights... Only a few animals can kill enemies, which is still an improvement since Nemo can only stun them using his candy. Some animals also temporarily increase your health bar, so you’ll want to have one most of the game. They’re always found at the same spots and regenerate if that spot leaves your screen.
This game seems to embody childhood. First off, you're a kid running around a fantasy dream land. Even with everything trying to kill you, it's still a joy simply to be there. The magic of it all sort of stems from the locations you’re in: a giant mushroom forest, a toy land, a cloud city, etc. 8 levels of wonder. The music also supplies a great deal of the mood; its fun and light hearted. It makes it so that no matter how frustrating a moment might be, you can’t really get angry for long. Another area that captures the mood is the colors of the games; it has a lot of purple and aquamarine neon type colors. It gives the feeling for the surreal nature of what a dream land should be.
The levels can be challenging, since you do need to cover most of the map to find the keys to move on. You have possibilities of non-liniality, but generally, there seems to be an order in which most of the levels can be figured out: i.e. you need the bee to get to the end, you need the lizard to get to the bee, you need the gorilla to get to the lizard... It's kind of like a puzzle, figuring out the order of things. This kind of reminds me of DuckTales, in the way you can adventure around, but there’s still really only one path to the end.
As for figuring out the path, it can be a little challenge, but once you start getting into it, it starts getting simple. This brings me to the challenge rating of this game. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about how difficult this game is. For a game staring a little boy, its harder then would be expected. But is this horribly out of reason? No, this is far from being one of the most difficult games on the consol. Sure, it’s not as easy as other “child” oriented games, like Felix the Cat or DuckTales, but it’s defiantly not as hard as StarTropics, Batman or even Mario. It still offers a challenge, without it being a cakewalk to anybody.
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