Mr. Gimmick

The Good
Gimmick (or Mr. Gimmick in function of the region of the game) is a platformer game released by Sunsoft in the early '90s. Despite the fact that more modern console were out, the game was developed for the NES and take the system to it's extreme limits, which is always a cool thing to see even nowadays for anyone who played lots of various NES games.

The story is pretty simple, yet quite original. A little girl receive a doll for her birthday, and as he immediately become her favourite, her other toys got jealous, and captured the girl in another world.

You control the little doll which has apparently no other name than "Gimmick" in order to rescue the girl. It's very weird that the hero of a game is a doll, and that is a very cute doll ! I really love him, he's all round and has enormous eyes, it looks like he's always trying to look serious but somewhat completely fails at it and this is very cute (exactly like animals). All enemies are various enemy toys and dolls as well, this make the game have it's own particular look and graphics style.

Unfortunately, the only weapon available to Gimmick seems to be one of the worst I ever seen in any platformer : He has (and only has) the ability to slowly create a star over his head, and throw it in a totally unpractical and unpredictable trajectory. Once a star has been created it's impossible to re-create another before the first vanishes. This makes the game very hard because it's hard to hit enemies, and this method of attacking is slow and weak. You can ride a star as well to reach places you can't just reach by jumping, but this is very risky as it moves weirdly. You can also collect 3 types of items, bombs, fireballs and potions, and all of them have a one-time use, and you can't get more than 3 items altogether. Those additional types of attacks are also slow and unpredictable, and you can only use them once so it's really hard relying on those.

As previously mentioned, the graphics of Gimmick seems really good compared to other NES games, it's very cartoonish and childish and very cute. It's quite a lot detailed. The sky with clouds looks almost real, and you even see birds moving in the horizon, something you don't usually see on the NES. Graphics still lacks variation sometimes and they flicker a lot.

The music in Gimmick is really excellent for the most part, and doesn't sound like most NES games does. It mirrors perfectly how the game is, a little childish and a little insane/vicious at the same time. The boss music is really noticeable (if you can survive long enough to hear it). Also the Japanese version of the game has enhanced music as opposed to the PAL version, because the cartridge has special sound hardware.

The Bad
Nothing really, the game is rather short (only 6 levels), but some levels are long, and it's damn damn hard !! The bosses are almost impossible without save states, even the bosses close to the beginning of the game. One particular boss fight requires you to constantly walk to a direction, else you're projected in water and this is instant dead (no, Gimmick can't swim). And add to this that you have to avoid the enemy's attack, and try to shoot him with the slow and sluggish star.

So save states are highly recommended if you don't want your nerves to break, else the game is absolutely perfect. Some people may dislike the childish feel tough, but remember it's only a way from programmers to hide the insane challenge of this game.

The Bottom Line
Although the game is old and probably not very popular (if at all), and I guess cartridges aren't common (the game weren't even released in all countries), but yet it's still one of those classics that could rival with any game of their time. Everyone is talking about SMB3 even today, but nobody talks about other NES games that are at least as good if not much more better. Why ?

Bah if you're still reading this you should probably download the game into an emulator and play it, you are almost guaranteed to like it (unless you hate platformer genre, or cute graphics for some reason). If you do that be sure to pick the Japanese version (don't worry there's no text in Japanese thanks god), so that you can get the best version of the music. And yes, the music is that good.