Retro NES Game Review: The Little Mermaid

simonjay (78)in #gaming • 17 days ago

I'm sure most of the readers here will likely already be familiar with the Disney movie of The Little Mermaid. I personally watched it when I was a child and found it to be a enjoyable film, well except for Ursula, she was a little scary haha. Anyway we are here to look at the game not the movie, and so right from the start I have to say I'm very impressed by the tittle screen. Not only is it a great image of choice but the sparkles used here is likely the secret on to why this presentation looks so good. It also plays music, which is of course had to be the theme from the Little Mermaid, it's a theme that I'm sure most of us love and still can't get it out of our heads. With such a nicely done tittle screen we can often assume the rest of the product will be of good quality.

Source: Images Captured During My Gameplay

However we do begin with a little disappointment, there is literally no options what-so-ever. You are forced straight into the story of the game. So we begin the little mermaid, there is no princess to rescue here, instead our story starts when Ariel our main character from the movie has already transformed into a human. Both Ariel and Eric have already fallen in love, Eric is wishing to marry Ariel. But the plans are interrupted by Ariel's friends from the sea, they returned not to foil her wedding on purpose but to tell Ariel about what the power hungry Ursula is trying to do. Ursula plans to take-over all the seas, placing it under her spell.
While it was Ursula who transformed Ariel in the first place into a human like requested, Ariel still won't stand for this and explains this to Eric.
Ariel tells Eric she is a princess of the sea, and it is a duty she must fulfil, to her friends and Kingdom, to not let all oceans fall under the control of Ursula's magic.

Source: Images Captured During My Gameplay

Without giving Eric much choice, on he's refusal to let he's love Ariel go, this does not stop Ariel quickly diving into the ocean, transforming back to a mermaid.
And so now begins her adventure towards Ursula's castle to set things back into order under the sea.
I have to say even the story intro is very good for a NES game compared to many other tittles, some great sprite images and a good amount of text.
So what is The Little Mermaid..? well it's not a platformer or at least not to begin with. The game reminds me mostly of space shooters, except it's slower paced, because we are underwater. But hold on it's not what you think.. the game is not on rails like most space shooters where the screen forces you onwards. No instead with the little mermaid you are free to explore the small sections of level all you want, which I think was the right choice considering the type of game it seems they are going for here.
What I don't like is you can't revisit previous parts of the level once you pass over to the next section.
I believe this was on purpose for another reason, which I will talk about later.

Source: Images Captured During My Gameplay

Ariel herself looks better than I expected, because her hair moves from being underwater, her movements are also smooth and seem to a have some extra detail, usual for a NES game.
So it's actually nice seeing the extra detail there, just when moving her left to right as she swims under the sea. While this does slow her down, I still think it fits really well with the game, because after all she is under the sea. However Ariel isn't perfect, her colours are a little off, even in the into story sections, but it's honestly nothing that horrific that makes her not recognisable in-game. Since Ariel moves a little slower than what you are probably used to, it can take a while to get comfortable with her movement. And I think what makes it a little more difficult is perhaps the larger than expected enemy hit boxes on some occasions. But honestly I think the idea of a underwater game is a good one, there's not many, and right now I can't think of another NES game that is based mostly underwater. I think there's one but I can't remember it's name right now. Actually I think there's Jaws, also based from a movie and I'm sure there is still another.

Source: Images Captured During My Gameplay

Anyway The Little Mermaid plays a bit like when your playing a platformer and suddenly you have a underwater level, some people don't mind these levels while others hate it. So if your someone who hates those underwater levels it's likely you wont enjoy playing the Little Mermaid. Apart form moving around and exploring.
Ariel can also attack using her tail, but this is not to hit enemies with, instead this move makes bubbles to trap her enemies. Once they are trapped in a bubble Ariel can grab enemies and throw them, she can also throw them towards other enemies to dispose of them both.
I noticed there are also large sea shells laying around, these can be picked-up and thrown towards sunken treasure chests, doing this you will find power pears.
These are the power-ups of the game, they can increase the power and size of Ariel's bubbles, or they can increase in it's range. Ok goo but this all leads to something that I'm not particularly happy about.
If your playing a level, die and have to restart it, your power-ups are gone. Now I'm used to this being a thing, but it's not that which bothers me. Its the fact that without that initial power-up Ariel can't interact with the only moveable objects in the level. I feel this really takes away from the experience and where players would get the most fun out of the game. For example on the ship level it's fun to push that barrel from the top of the stairs, this is so that it crashes down breaking the treasure chest open.

Source: Images Captured During My Gameplay

But without that initial power-up these fun moments are lifeless. Might not seem like a big deal, if there were more things in the level to do then I wouldn't complain about this issue at all. Unfortunately there's already a lack of much else to do in a level. It's to the point you could be fooled initially to thinking that this game is going to be just about exploring and enjoying scenes from the ocean. But this is not true, with the octopuses and the 2nd boss at the end of level 2, these will bring some challenge to the game.
I think the developers picked this way of doing things so that you would play through the game multiple times to be able to interact with those objects. But I really do think those interactions should be standard as they already are in most other games. The further I went on the more I felt punished for losing my power-ups, like this leaving me no other choice but to get through sections quicker. The game I found to be very sort, this wouldn't of been a problem if it was engaging and fun but due to those missing power-ups the game continued dull. Well except for some of the scenery but due to the Nes capabilities it's just not enough. Things started to get interesting during the under the sea volcano level, the difficulty suddenly spiked up, it needed it but I don't like spikes like this in games.

Source: Images Captured During My Gameplay

Especially when the next level being the final level was easier. It was a typical NES end of game spike, I like a challenge but I don't like annoyances. And unfortunately part of the difficulty was some annoying shrimp type enemies who couldn't seem to make up their minds if they were going to attack you or leave then screen. Ursula had some good sprite work on her for the end boss moments but the final battle could of been done better. In the end it wasn't difficult to make the conclusion that this game is going in the trash. But honestly it's a shame, I liked the idea of a underwater based game and The Little Mermaid had some nice colours and sprites going for it. But the levels were just too dull, short and even the music got boring. Maybe just fixing the power-up issue would of been enough to make me change my mind. Hope you all have a good day or night and I will hopefully see you on the next Steemit post.

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