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Armadillo is a cute sidescroller visually similar to Kirby, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Gimmick.
You control an Armadillo who is fairly vulnerable in his cowboy hat wearing form, however he can ball up, that’s where most of the side scrolling action is as you hold the jump button to bounce higher and higher to make precise platforming movements.
Armadillo feels slow, yet deliberate.
The other aspect of the game is the Overworld design, it is similar to SMB3’s overhead board game style of design. As you move Armadillo across the world, the boss also moves. It’s nifty cornering a boss before beating every level and there are aliens you can save who can fly you directly to a boss skipping multiple levels.
I found I was playing this out of obligation to get to the end and not for personal enjoyment. The control scheme is novel but takes time to build up to full jumping force!
You control an Armadillo who is fairly vulnerable in his cowboy hat wearing form, however he can ball up, that’s where most of the side scrolling action is as you hold the jump button to bounce higher and higher to make precise platforming movements.
Armadillo feels slow, yet deliberate.
The other aspect of the game is the Overworld design, it is similar to SMB3’s overhead board game style of design. As you move Armadillo across the world, the boss also moves. It’s nifty cornering a boss before beating every level and there are aliens you can save who can fly you directly to a boss skipping multiple levels.
I found I was playing this out of obligation to get to the end and not for personal enjoyment. The control scheme is novel but takes time to build up to full jumping force!
Charming little game, for sure! It has some nasty slowdown that hinders the experience a bit but I think the positives outweigh these drawbacks. Neat animal transformations albeit with an awkward change input. Cute and colorful with a large variety of environments and enemies, most of whom are also cartoonish animals. The stages make fairly good use of the bouncing and rolling features, though they’re a lot more satisfying once the mechanics are fully mastered.
Other than the crippling slowdown, my main complaint about Armadillo would be the weak bosses. Other than maybe two of the fights, the game’s bosses can be cheesed to death before they can fire a single shot. Regardless, the game’s flaws are well worth enduring. There’s a fair bit of challenge to a lot of the platforming late in the game as well.
Other than the crippling slowdown, my main complaint about Armadillo would be the weak bosses. Other than maybe two of the fights, the game’s bosses can be cheesed to death before they can fire a single shot. Regardless, the game’s flaws are well worth enduring. There’s a fair bit of challenge to a lot of the platforming late in the game as well.
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
Obviously, this is the game that Ultraman Ball for Gameboy totally ripped off. The whole time I was playing Armadillo, I was thinking “God damn, this is exactly like Ultraman Ball.” It was that similar. Aside from the stupid overworld map, anyways. So you're an armadillo, I guess, and you can roll into an indestructible ball. An indestructible ball that can jump. You can stay in a ball the whole time, but you won't get very far. I mean, how else are you going to climb ladders? And you jump higher when you're normal. Also, you can slide down ledges, which helps you reach high ledges (just like Mega Man X, and, yes, Ultraman Ball). So yeah, it'd be pretty cool if there wasn't some serious slowdown, throughout the entire game. Sigh.
Obviously, this is the game that Ultraman Ball for Gameboy totally ripped off. The whole time I was playing Armadillo, I was thinking “God damn, this is exactly like Ultraman Ball.” It was that similar. Aside from the stupid overworld map, anyways. So you're an armadillo, I guess, and you can roll into an indestructible ball. An indestructible ball that can jump. You can stay in a ball the whole time, but you won't get very far. I mean, how else are you going to climb ladders? And you jump higher when you're normal. Also, you can slide down ledges, which helps you reach high ledges (just like Mega Man X, and, yes, Ultraman Ball). So yeah, it'd be pretty cool if there wasn't some serious slowdown, throughout the entire game. Sigh.
Mario 3 is one of my favourite games of all time and potentially my favourite Mario game ever. Armadillo (which was reskinned as Super Mario Bros 4 as a bootleg, which might be the only reason you've heard of this game) contains some of Mario 3's DNA. Not in it's action, not in it's technical prowess, but in it's charm and it's ever-present, entirely interesting world map.
Armadillo's world map might look like Super Mario Bros 3, but it works differently here. When you spawn in, the worlds boss will spawn on the other side of the map. Everytime you clear a space on the map, you create an X which the boss can no longer force. The world map becomes it's own tiny and unstated minigame, and surpasses the actual game of Armadillo as something worth thinking about in a game-designerly sense. It feels like the natural evolution of Super Mario Bros 3's world map, which in many ways encouraged the player to think of it as it's own level. There's secrets throughout, places to go and things to do. There's a level of interactivity that allowed Super Mario Bros. 3's worldmap to absolutely stick in the minds of anyone who enjoyed it. Armadillo's world map is entirely less believable, it doesn't feel like another well designed level, but rather it's designed almost like a boardgame. Decisions have to be made on what levels you go to, are you just going to play them all, or are you going to find the best path to getting to the boss early? The answer is different for everyone, which makes you wonder why no one has extracted the DNA of the game's overworld system to create 2024's next indie hit. Seriously, make it a roguelike! Make the overworld the size of a Mario Party board, put multiple bosses there at once, just go wild with it!
It's easy to say that it's a shame the platforming doesn't hold a candle in comparison, or that the performance issues single-handedly ruin a lot of the enjoyment, but that overworld system is so cool man, and inspires the imagination in a way I didn't expect. It sucks that IGS didn't get to release Armadillo II, who knows, maybe it could have stuck around in the public's conscience.
Armadillo's world map might look like Super Mario Bros 3, but it works differently here. When you spawn in, the worlds boss will spawn on the other side of the map. Everytime you clear a space on the map, you create an X which the boss can no longer force. The world map becomes it's own tiny and unstated minigame, and surpasses the actual game of Armadillo as something worth thinking about in a game-designerly sense. It feels like the natural evolution of Super Mario Bros 3's world map, which in many ways encouraged the player to think of it as it's own level. There's secrets throughout, places to go and things to do. There's a level of interactivity that allowed Super Mario Bros. 3's worldmap to absolutely stick in the minds of anyone who enjoyed it. Armadillo's world map is entirely less believable, it doesn't feel like another well designed level, but rather it's designed almost like a boardgame. Decisions have to be made on what levels you go to, are you just going to play them all, or are you going to find the best path to getting to the boss early? The answer is different for everyone, which makes you wonder why no one has extracted the DNA of the game's overworld system to create 2024's next indie hit. Seriously, make it a roguelike! Make the overworld the size of a Mario Party board, put multiple bosses there at once, just go wild with it!
It's easy to say that it's a shame the platforming doesn't hold a candle in comparison, or that the performance issues single-handedly ruin a lot of the enjoyment, but that overworld system is so cool man, and inspires the imagination in a way I didn't expect. It sucks that IGS didn't get to release Armadillo II, who knows, maybe it could have stuck around in the public's conscience.
Sometime ago I reviewed a game called Faussete Amour. I mentioned how the developers had made a game called Armadillo that I would maybe someday check out. Well here it is. You might have heard this game before as it’s been compared to stuff like Sonic due to coming out the same year. It’s even well known for having a bootleg that stars Mario. Not too many have gone through this game so is it a good game? Well no, but it’s got potential.
Armadillo has you taking control of an armadillo named Billy the Shell. You go through 8 worlds to save your girlfriend named Sheryl. This game is a platformer but does something rather innovative for the console. You can roll in a ball that’s not only a way to dispose of enemies but can be used for platforming too. You can bounce to gain more height but it is rather tricky, in fact the controls are tricky as a whole. You have a lot of momentum especially when involving slopes or in your ball form. You better get used to it quickly because you will die many times if you don’t learn it quickly. Even not in ball form it can be tricky to land on small platforms.
You can use many items however to help you on the journey. First are the abilities like the kangaroo that can help you jump higher, the fish to help you swim better (at least I think, it didn’t seem to help much), a snail that can climb walls and ceilings, and the bird to help you fly though this is only for a limited time. Besides the bird, you can switch to these forms with the same button for curling up though they are context sensitive at times like the snail only happens if you’re on the ground. There’s also an umbrella that can help you glide which is easily the best one if you want to beat the game. There’s a potion that will reverse your hitbox meaning uncurl will defeat enemies while curled gets you killed. There’s a speed up and your usual invincibility items. There’s also dice that will give you bonus points at the end of the stage. There’s coffee that will give you more time and a mirror to give you a 1-up (wait why is it a mirror??) You can also grab an ability you already have for a free life as well. 30,000 points also awards a 1-up.
The level design is actually not too bad with some cool ideas that try to feel designed with the physics in mind and the mechanics. You have to put some thought into things or else it’ll be easy falling into a pit. You do have a wall jump but it’s pretty weak and can still lead you to death especially without practice. There’s even these sections where if you touch an apple dropped by a bird,it will turn you mini and you can go into these small areas for goodies. Sometimes the level design is a little too heavy on using the same challenges and since this is 8 worlds it can be pretty long too. Regardless there is thought put into this game.
That said, this game has some awful problems. Let’s start off with the fact this game is optimized really poorly, it will slow down for most of the game and I really don’t know why. You know what’s also stupid? This game just straight up reuses levels, this isn’t just me going crazy, there are even Youtube reviews for this game that prove this happens. This basically discourages doing every level in this game because I’ll explain that in the next paragraph. The game’s difficulty also gets really bad in the end because it just gets brutal and it’s easily harder than the rest of the game. There’s also these bumpers that just do not work like intended. Do not rely on them for bouncing in a correct spot because odds are the collision won’t work well. There’s also the save feature, this game has a very weird way of doing it. You see, you can’t use passwords or even save normally if you have just the game. You need a peripheral called the Battle Box to save. This game can take a while if you aren’t good at it or using save states. I was trying to wonder why they would even do it this way until someone gave me a theory that it may have been done to save on costs by just using an earlier peripheral because this had already existed to be used for a game called Battle Stadium.
Now I should tell you how the world map is. It’s sort of a non linear map as you need to chase down where the boss is. Each square you do is basically a turn and they will try to go the opposite direction of where you’re going. This means you can choose what levels you wanna do to get to him. Sadly it doesn’t work as well as it probably should, it’s very easy for the AI to set itself up to get caught. There’s even a martian you can find in levels that can take you anywhere that isn’t where the boss is sitting at. A tip I’d give is you can still make a boss move if you press A on a square that’s already been stepped on. It’s so easy to get him you can skip half a world doing this. This might be why they even reuse levels. By the last world they just give up on this mechanic and make it strictly linear which is rather lame. If you’re playing with a friend, you will trade turns once you step on a single square so keep that in mind.
The bosses are rather lame as they don’t ever feel designed with your moveset in mind. Seriously 6 of the 8 bosses can die in like 5 seconds and even the ones that don’t die quickly are a joke including the final boss. Honestly the final boss being easy just hurts the difficulty spike of the final world even more. It’s all just so uninteresting I don’t even know what to say for this section.
This game graphically looks alright. I feel like it could look a lot better for 1991. The slow down being horrible doesn’t help matters. While I do like the varied locations, stuff like the overuse of desert-like locations make it all feel kind of stale. Also some of the background graphics just feel really random and bad looking to me. The sprite work however is pretty nice, I like the over exaggerated enemy sprites even if some of them don’t fit perfectly with the other characters. The music is really boring and it feels like there is barely any music to begin with. It’s hard to care about it when I can’t even remember there being more than 6 songs.
Armadillo is one that disappoints me. I know some might think I’m being too harsh on it but I just want to love this one but can’t. I’ll admit I do love the attempt put into this game and I assume some of its issues involving the controls was probably more of a limitation of the hardware. It’s just such a hard game to recommend because of said issues. Surprisingly they would make a sequel though you’ll never expect what it became. A sequel was meant for the Game Boy but then got turned into an Ultraman game of all things called Ultraman Ball. I’ll probably check that out someday. Who knows maybe you the reader could enjoy this game but me, yeah I probably will never replay this again unless there could be a way to remove all of the awful slow down.
Armadillo has you taking control of an armadillo named Billy the Shell. You go through 8 worlds to save your girlfriend named Sheryl. This game is a platformer but does something rather innovative for the console. You can roll in a ball that’s not only a way to dispose of enemies but can be used for platforming too. You can bounce to gain more height but it is rather tricky, in fact the controls are tricky as a whole. You have a lot of momentum especially when involving slopes or in your ball form. You better get used to it quickly because you will die many times if you don’t learn it quickly. Even not in ball form it can be tricky to land on small platforms.
You can use many items however to help you on the journey. First are the abilities like the kangaroo that can help you jump higher, the fish to help you swim better (at least I think, it didn’t seem to help much), a snail that can climb walls and ceilings, and the bird to help you fly though this is only for a limited time. Besides the bird, you can switch to these forms with the same button for curling up though they are context sensitive at times like the snail only happens if you’re on the ground. There’s also an umbrella that can help you glide which is easily the best one if you want to beat the game. There’s a potion that will reverse your hitbox meaning uncurl will defeat enemies while curled gets you killed. There’s a speed up and your usual invincibility items. There’s also dice that will give you bonus points at the end of the stage. There’s coffee that will give you more time and a mirror to give you a 1-up (wait why is it a mirror??) You can also grab an ability you already have for a free life as well. 30,000 points also awards a 1-up.
The level design is actually not too bad with some cool ideas that try to feel designed with the physics in mind and the mechanics. You have to put some thought into things or else it’ll be easy falling into a pit. You do have a wall jump but it’s pretty weak and can still lead you to death especially without practice. There’s even these sections where if you touch an apple dropped by a bird,it will turn you mini and you can go into these small areas for goodies. Sometimes the level design is a little too heavy on using the same challenges and since this is 8 worlds it can be pretty long too. Regardless there is thought put into this game.
That said, this game has some awful problems. Let’s start off with the fact this game is optimized really poorly, it will slow down for most of the game and I really don’t know why. You know what’s also stupid? This game just straight up reuses levels, this isn’t just me going crazy, there are even Youtube reviews for this game that prove this happens. This basically discourages doing every level in this game because I’ll explain that in the next paragraph. The game’s difficulty also gets really bad in the end because it just gets brutal and it’s easily harder than the rest of the game. There’s also these bumpers that just do not work like intended. Do not rely on them for bouncing in a correct spot because odds are the collision won’t work well. There’s also the save feature, this game has a very weird way of doing it. You see, you can’t use passwords or even save normally if you have just the game. You need a peripheral called the Battle Box to save. This game can take a while if you aren’t good at it or using save states. I was trying to wonder why they would even do it this way until someone gave me a theory that it may have been done to save on costs by just using an earlier peripheral because this had already existed to be used for a game called Battle Stadium.
Now I should tell you how the world map is. It’s sort of a non linear map as you need to chase down where the boss is. Each square you do is basically a turn and they will try to go the opposite direction of where you’re going. This means you can choose what levels you wanna do to get to him. Sadly it doesn’t work as well as it probably should, it’s very easy for the AI to set itself up to get caught. There’s even a martian you can find in levels that can take you anywhere that isn’t where the boss is sitting at. A tip I’d give is you can still make a boss move if you press A on a square that’s already been stepped on. It’s so easy to get him you can skip half a world doing this. This might be why they even reuse levels. By the last world they just give up on this mechanic and make it strictly linear which is rather lame. If you’re playing with a friend, you will trade turns once you step on a single square so keep that in mind.
The bosses are rather lame as they don’t ever feel designed with your moveset in mind. Seriously 6 of the 8 bosses can die in like 5 seconds and even the ones that don’t die quickly are a joke including the final boss. Honestly the final boss being easy just hurts the difficulty spike of the final world even more. It’s all just so uninteresting I don’t even know what to say for this section.
This game graphically looks alright. I feel like it could look a lot better for 1991. The slow down being horrible doesn’t help matters. While I do like the varied locations, stuff like the overuse of desert-like locations make it all feel kind of stale. Also some of the background graphics just feel really random and bad looking to me. The sprite work however is pretty nice, I like the over exaggerated enemy sprites even if some of them don’t fit perfectly with the other characters. The music is really boring and it feels like there is barely any music to begin with. It’s hard to care about it when I can’t even remember there being more than 6 songs.
Armadillo is one that disappoints me. I know some might think I’m being too harsh on it but I just want to love this one but can’t. I’ll admit I do love the attempt put into this game and I assume some of its issues involving the controls was probably more of a limitation of the hardware. It’s just such a hard game to recommend because of said issues. Surprisingly they would make a sequel though you’ll never expect what it became. A sequel was meant for the Game Boy but then got turned into an Ultraman game of all things called Ultraman Ball. I’ll probably check that out someday. Who knows maybe you the reader could enjoy this game but me, yeah I probably will never replay this again unless there could be a way to remove all of the awful slow down.
Dillon's Rolling Western (2012).
Armadillo has a lot of nice ideas in it like turning into a ball to beat enemies, ramps and slopes to angle your path, and wearing a cool hat. The problem is that it utilizes none of these ideas well (except for the last one) because the game suffers from the Kirby's Adventure problem of the game itself running really choppy while moving across the screen.
Sonic the Hedgehog did the "go fast and turn into a ball" thing significantly better a couple months prior. Granted it was on the Genesis and not the NES, and it's kinda cool to see a similar idea executed on an older system.
The game itself is not great though.
Yee-haw.
Armadillo has a lot of nice ideas in it like turning into a ball to beat enemies, ramps and slopes to angle your path, and wearing a cool hat. The problem is that it utilizes none of these ideas well (except for the last one) because the game suffers from the Kirby's Adventure problem of the game itself running really choppy while moving across the screen.
Sonic the Hedgehog did the "go fast and turn into a ball" thing significantly better a couple months prior. Granted it was on the Genesis and not the NES, and it's kinda cool to see a similar idea executed on an older system.
The game itself is not great though.
Yee-haw.