Little Nemo: The Dream Master

The Good
Little Nemo is the kind of game that reminds me of how easy the younger gamers have it these days. This will probably make me sound like an old gamer, but back in my day, games designed with the kiddies in mind weren’t any easier than the ones made for the big kids. Back in the day, we used to play the same games as the adults. Oh sure, we didn’t play them well, and we certainly died a lot more, but that’s how we learned. Little Nemo: The Dream Master is a shining example of that. This game is extremely difficult, but it’s obviously aimed at a younger audience. Don’t try to argue otherwise, kids are the only people who are too naïve to see the horrors this game depicts.

In fact, this game terrifies me. The object of the game is to run around, trying to accumulate enough keys to open the door at the end of each level. To do this, Nemo must lull specific animals to sleep using drugged candy. Once they’re asleep, Nemo then has the ability to wear the animal like a skin. I’m not joking. Nemo gets inside of them and continues on wearing the unfortunate creature. This is especially gruesome when using the mole, as the top of the poor animal’s head is bent back like some sort of grim hood. Oh sure, sometimes Nemo will just ride on top of the animal, but regardless of how he chooses to command them, they always explode when he’s done. Yeah, sick twisted stuff.

Apparently this grotesque mess is based off an old comic strip that dates back to the early 1900’s as well as some movie I’ve never heard of from Japan. Luckily for people like myself who have never heard of these things, there is a storyline told through cutscenes. Apparently the Princess of Slumberland wants Nemo to be her playmate, but really it’s a ruse to trick him into defeating the nightmare master. That sounds like kidnapping to me, which is made complete when Nemo is baited into compliance with candy. However, like I mentioned earlier, from a child’s perspective, the storyline is completely innocent. It’s a charming enough storyline and it stays out of the way like every good 8-bit tale should.

There are eight dreams that you must traverse with a lot of variety sprinkled in. A few of the levels even discard the whole key gathering aspect altogether, so it’s really quite refreshing. One level you’re on a toy train, in another you’re in an upside-down house, and in another you swim with the hermit crabs. All of the levels are fairly convincing dreamscapes. Within each level, the game is a fairly standard platformer. Nemo is harmless on his own, but there are many different animals to mutilate, each with their own unique abilities. The mole digs, the bee flies, and the mouse climbs walls and provides you with a hammer for some reason.

Little Nemo’s graphics are excellent. Not entirely surprising given that the game was released in 1990, and was made by Capcom. Still, the graphics are quite colourful, which is something sort of difficult to pull off, considering the NES only had a pallet of 64 colours, most of them black. What really pops, however, is the music. While not the best music on the console, Little Nemo’s soundtrack gets the job done from start to finish. My favourite track from the game is from the topsy-turvy level. It has a sort of circus-like accordion sound to it, which is very surreal and pleasing.

The Bad
There’s a fine line between difficult and frustrating and Little Nemo straddles it like a stripper’s pole. Overall, the challenge is right where it should be, but small adjustments should have been made to tone down the frustration factor. For one, the checkpoint system is screwed all to hell. Not only can you reactivate previous checkpoints if you backtrack too much, but some levels don’t have checkpoints at all. The fifth level is the biggest offender. Here you must procure a frog to reach a lizard which enables you to get a bee and finally a mouse. Should you die after you hop on the mouse, you’re kicked right back to the beginning of the level to do the whole damned thing again. What makes this even more frustrating is knowing that level 2 did a similar progression with switching animal suits. However, if you died before reaching the end of the level, you were only sent back a short distance. Why couldn’t they do this again for the fifth level?

It’s common for spikes to kill an 8-bit character instantly, but Capcom was a bit too clumsy with their placement in Little Nemo. There are a few areas where precise hopping is required to avoid spikes on the ceilings, but their placement results in a lot of instances in which Nemo will gently brush the side of one, which kills him instantly. Barrier placement should have been used to prevent Nemo from being killed by something less concerning than a paper-cut. It’s also sometimes difficult to tell what exactly is considered to be spikes. There are these weird fence things in the Sky Ruins level that I thought were merely part of the background until one killed me. To be fair, Little Nemo isn’t the only game that this problem exists in, but that doesn’t make it any more forgivable.

There are infinite continues, which is a good thing because I’m not sure I’d have the patience to finish the game otherwise. However, there is no password system. What gives? Some of the later levels are obnoxiously frustrating, but if you quit, you lose all of your progress. So basically it’s all or nothing and if you want to toss the controller and turn off the console, you’re going to have to start over. There is a level select cheat that you can use, but I’m not going to give the game any points for it because it wasn’t mentioned in the instruction booklet.

There are a lot of small nuisances that should have been cleaned up. I think the strangest one is that the animals you can pilot will hurt you unless you drug them first. Not only that, if they’re in the process of chewing the tranquilizer, they’ll still hurt you. This isn’t a huge problem, but it is extremely vexing when you’re on your last bar of health and you get taken out by an animal who is only dangerous because he hasn’t yet swallowed. There are also enemies that resemble floater seeds, which are nothing more than pester enemies. They track you from the top of the screen and then descend on you. What’s really annoying about them is that if you kill them, they immediately spawn from the top of screen. It’s easier just to let them fly by, since it will take them longer to spawn.

The Bottom Line
I can’t exactly say that Little Nemo won me over. A needlessly frustrating game isn’t going to win any friends, after all. However, it is an undeniably tight game. Aside from the frustration factor, it’s difficult to poke holes in it. It has its memorable moments, the music is top notch, and the design is relatively sound. Plus, the plot and premise are charming in a childish sort of way. So did I enjoy the game? Mostly. I don’t know. I just couldn’t really get into it. Do I recommend it? Certainly! You could do a lot worse on the NES. Little Nemo: Dream Master is an OKAY game.