Hydlide

From where I'm standing, this is one of the worst games ever created. And yes, I say this after having subjected myself to the torture of actually playing it. And no, tis has nothing at all to do witht e good folks at Lukie Games, who are at no fault for how the game turned out. So why do I give it such a low score, you ask? Read on and you'll find out. First let's look at the story and gameplay. You play the role of a knight on a quest to rescue a princess who has been transformed into three fairies by an identity chalenged demon who couldn't decide if his name was Varalys or Boralis. This after an evil man had come to the Fairyland palace to steal one of the three jewels that held the demon bound. To find the fairies and restore them to their rightful form, that being Princess Ann, Sir Jim must fight off enemies and gain experience. This would all be just fine and dandy, even with the horribly corny, slapped-together plot, were it not for what I'm about to talk about next. I firmly feel that whoever came up with the control scheme for this game ought to be found and beaten severely with a rubber hose. The way the controls work is that while the A button isn't being pressed, Jim is in Defense mode, meaning that he will take less damage from attacks. Holding down theA button will switc him to Attack mode, which means he'll cause more damage but also be disturbingly vulnerable. Unfortunately the only way to do any decent damage to your enemies who, yes, even the slimes, seem to be made of stone, is to put Jim in attackmode. The problem is that the game's colision detection is down right horrible, meaning that you will, despite your best efforts, more often than not find yourself slamming into your enemies with lethal force...lethal to you that is. I should also point out that even defend mode doesn't offer much more protection. There's even a magic system but it's so laughable as to not be worth anything. Now we come to what is perhaps the worst aspect of this game aside from the controls. And I should warn you now, this one is almost physically painful. Well all right so maybe it isn't but it's definitely horrible. We're talking about the audio. Now as I understand it the original Japanese computer version of the game had no audio of any kind but that is no excuse for what they've done here. The NES could, and indeed already had, produced much better by the time this game hit US shores with a splat, as the Legend of Zelda had already begun raking in the dough. First let's discuss the music. Not only is it extremely short and extremely repetitive, but all of it sounds like a lame knockoff of something else. The bouncy, upbeat main theme which you'll be hearing most is a shameless ripoff of the Indiana Jones theme. So too is the at most seven-second and also endlessly looped ending theme. Then you have a password screen theme that sounds like Girls just Wanna have Fun by Cindy Lauper, minus her anoying voice of course. The theme for the final battle in the game sounds dismayingly like a grade school rhyme that, if a teachher heard you singing it on the playground, would probably land you in detention. Let's just say it's about a place in France and a hole in the wall. Now let's cover the sound effects, which are extremely few but not, unfortunately, far between. There are at most six. There's a sort of bwink sound for when Jim takes damage and a couple different Blum type sounds for when you attack an enemy. Then there's a whispery fire sound for when you use magic. Last but not least (ok so there are five sounds not six), is the sound for when our hapless hero dies. It's meant, I suspect, to be a sort of flute or Irish tin whistle sound that by its very nature and its cheerfulness is so mocking as to set your teeth on edge. What, are we supposed to rejoyce that Sir Jim bit the dust? All in all this is probably one of if not the absolute worst game the NES ever saw and, if not the absolute worst it definitely belongs in the top five. Nor are the sentiments I've expressed mine alone. This is, by all accounts, one of the most infamous games known to man. If you want my recommendation I'd say save your money, and if you absolutely HAVE to try the game out just to see if it's as bad as all that, get an emulator. Then if the game sucks as badly for you as it did for me you can easily get rid of it and won't be out any money.