This adaptation of the animated TV series differs significantly from its NES namesake. The nephew of Agent 007 must foil the plans of malevolent S.C.U.M. agents, who are hunting for rare artifacts that would allow them to dominate the world. Unlike the NES game, this version is a more action-oriented side-scrolling game without detailed mission objectives or puzzle-solving. The game consists of three levels, each beginning with a section in which Bond pilots a helicopter, a boat, and a jet, respectively. These are controlled in arcade-like fashion, similarly to side-scrolling shooters. Enemies must be dealt with using weapons mounted on the craft. Various hazards are scattered through the stages, requiring the player to react quickly in order to stay alive.
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James Bond Jr. for the SNES is unfortunately a pretty rough ride. Choppy animation, bland level design, and repetitive gameplay make it a slog to get through. The side-scrolling sections are frustratingly difficult, and even the helicopter levels feel uninspired. There's a spark of potential there, but the execution is just lacking. Only for hardcore Bond fans who truly want to collect them all.
My mama used to rent this one.
Another game based on the James Bond Jr. cartoon, this one developed by Grey Matter. While sometimes different games of the same name shares some elements, such as level themes or rough story, this one is completely different to the James Bond Jr. NES game. The SNES version is a mixture of a platformer and a scrolling shooter.
One interesting thing is this didn’t even start out as a James Bond Jr. game, it was originally a SNES remake of Grey Matter’s NES Captain Planet and the Planeteers game, but due to company changes an license issues, they ended up re-tooling the work they had done into a new licensed game.
You start off in a temple level, hunting for the villain Dr. Derange, you barely have time to figure out the controls before you reach the first vehicle segment – and I’m not exaggerating about the time, it really is less than 20 seconds.
You might expect a short but simple minigame, but it’s surprisingly long. If you played it perfectly, it will take 5 minutes, which doesn’t sound long, but you will die. A lot. There’s a ton of projectiles flying around and one hit kills you. You can get a shield that will protect you from a few hits, however that doesn’t protect you from the environment, with some very narrow sections to navigate, slightly bumping any pixel will kill you.
Your helicopter moves extremely fast, and the sprites are so large that you don’t have any time to react to anything. Instead, this section is a long trial and error as you get a bit further each time, having to memorise the entire route to react before things appear on screen. You have two weapons: a shot that fires completely forward.
Back to the main gameplay, you now have three acts of a temple level, punching natives and SCUM soldiers. Exploring the level you can find dart guns and explosive drinks cans to use as grenades. along with other powerup, such as springy shoes to jump higher.
The gameplay itself is pretty solid, and the graphical style is quite nice. There are hidden areas to explore but the route to the end is fairly simple. One problem is, once again, the size of the sprites. James Bond Jr is kept firmly in the middle of the screen throughout the levels, which means the gaps for jumps reach the edge of the screen, often with enemies hanging on the edge, not visible until you’re mid-jump, yet also so close to the edge that if you don’t use your dart gun before jumping, you’ll take damage.
Once you defeat the boss, it’s onto the next stage. All three stages follow the same structure: a vehicle section followed by three short platforming levels. This one is a speedboat section as you head to Venice, and this part is a lot of fun, dodging gondolas, shooting enemies and making jumps, collecting a power up that makes you jump even further. At this point I was thinking that, after the rough start, fun vehicles with some decent platforming would make the rest of this an alright game.
And then you get the inevitable sewer level, notorious for always being terrible levels. This one is no exception, with confusing layouts, really annoying bats and lots of awkward jumps to make. While the developers avoided the same problem with getting stuck in levels as the NES game by having the shoe power-ups be permanent, they end up making the same mistake here. In this level are ice power ups, these are limited in number.
These are used to freeze pools of toxic waste, allowing you to cross over. Use too many against enemies (or use them on the wrong pools) and you’ll have to restart. There’s also some really annoying door traps. They’re just a grey line and if you walk over them, they repeatedly slam James Bond Jr, draining his health.
Get through there and you reach the next area, this vehicle section is a plane which functions exactly the same as the helicopter in the first stage. It’s not quite as frustrating as the first one, so at least it’s over quicker. You’re then on the final level.
Which, naturally, is a slippery ice level, because everyone loves those. Thankfully, part way though you get some rocket boots, letting you fly around the level, along with being able to find a ring that fires lasers that help immensely with the final boss.
James Bond Jr. is an average platformer, but hampered by visibility and a few awful vehicle levels. It looks quite nice, with some good animation throughout, but for the most part is a fairly forgetful game.
One interesting thing is this didn’t even start out as a James Bond Jr. game, it was originally a SNES remake of Grey Matter’s NES Captain Planet and the Planeteers game, but due to company changes an license issues, they ended up re-tooling the work they had done into a new licensed game.
You start off in a temple level, hunting for the villain Dr. Derange, you barely have time to figure out the controls before you reach the first vehicle segment – and I’m not exaggerating about the time, it really is less than 20 seconds.
You might expect a short but simple minigame, but it’s surprisingly long. If you played it perfectly, it will take 5 minutes, which doesn’t sound long, but you will die. A lot. There’s a ton of projectiles flying around and one hit kills you. You can get a shield that will protect you from a few hits, however that doesn’t protect you from the environment, with some very narrow sections to navigate, slightly bumping any pixel will kill you.
Your helicopter moves extremely fast, and the sprites are so large that you don’t have any time to react to anything. Instead, this section is a long trial and error as you get a bit further each time, having to memorise the entire route to react before things appear on screen. You have two weapons: a shot that fires completely forward.
Back to the main gameplay, you now have three acts of a temple level, punching natives and SCUM soldiers. Exploring the level you can find dart guns and explosive drinks cans to use as grenades. along with other powerup, such as springy shoes to jump higher.
The gameplay itself is pretty solid, and the graphical style is quite nice. There are hidden areas to explore but the route to the end is fairly simple. One problem is, once again, the size of the sprites. James Bond Jr is kept firmly in the middle of the screen throughout the levels, which means the gaps for jumps reach the edge of the screen, often with enemies hanging on the edge, not visible until you’re mid-jump, yet also so close to the edge that if you don’t use your dart gun before jumping, you’ll take damage.
Once you defeat the boss, it’s onto the next stage. All three stages follow the same structure: a vehicle section followed by three short platforming levels. This one is a speedboat section as you head to Venice, and this part is a lot of fun, dodging gondolas, shooting enemies and making jumps, collecting a power up that makes you jump even further. At this point I was thinking that, after the rough start, fun vehicles with some decent platforming would make the rest of this an alright game.
And then you get the inevitable sewer level, notorious for always being terrible levels. This one is no exception, with confusing layouts, really annoying bats and lots of awkward jumps to make. While the developers avoided the same problem with getting stuck in levels as the NES game by having the shoe power-ups be permanent, they end up making the same mistake here. In this level are ice power ups, these are limited in number.
These are used to freeze pools of toxic waste, allowing you to cross over. Use too many against enemies (or use them on the wrong pools) and you’ll have to restart. There’s also some really annoying door traps. They’re just a grey line and if you walk over them, they repeatedly slam James Bond Jr, draining his health.
Get through there and you reach the next area, this vehicle section is a plane which functions exactly the same as the helicopter in the first stage. It’s not quite as frustrating as the first one, so at least it’s over quicker. You’re then on the final level.
Which, naturally, is a slippery ice level, because everyone loves those. Thankfully, part way though you get some rocket boots, letting you fly around the level, along with being able to find a ring that fires lasers that help immensely with the final boss.
James Bond Jr. is an average platformer, but hampered by visibility and a few awful vehicle levels. It looks quite nice, with some good animation throughout, but for the most part is a fairly forgetful game.
Based on the cartoon show about James Bond’s Nephew, this is the second ever game developed by Eurocom, who have made a bunch of Bond games over the years. The NES version of James Bond Jr. is completely different to the SNES version.
With licensed platformers on the NES, you can create a list of annoying things that will frustrate anyone: bullet sponges enemies, maze-like levels with no maps, having to backtrack, enemy attacks knocking you back, annoying springs, having to playtform between screen loads, enemies that trap you in endless damage loops and getting softlocked due to limited ammo. James Bond Jr on the NES manages to tick all of those boxes.
The game consists of four levels, each involving you tracking down objectives and then finding the level exit. The first level has you exploring sewers to disarm missiles. At the start, you drop down a large hole and come across your first enemy: a giant shooting multiple rounds that requires 30-40 hits to kill. Your pistol uses up ammo very quickly, although it will slowly recharge up to 30 rounds (collecting ammo packs will fill it to 99).
When you find a missile, you have to complete a sliding puzzle piece challenge to get colours into the right order. Near the start of the level, there’s something that looks like electric that hurts you if you land on in – this is actually water that you can swim though if you get a scuba mask.
The second level has you searching for safes. In the section in the image, I got trapped in the corner by these annoying dogs that are difficult to hit. Once you find a safe, you have to work out the combination in the worst codebreaking minigame I’ve encountered. This isn’t mastermind-style. You put numbers in four slots and see if any are right. You have nine attempts, so if any of them are the final number you have to try, you have to start again (and the combination resets). On top of this, some of the safes are traps that blow up in your face.
The third level thankfully ditches minigames and you just have to blow up strange “reactor” objects in rooms. You can find a jetpack in this level which runs out of “ammo” very quickly – and there are some sections you can’t navigate without it, meaning you have to restart. There are lots of moving platforms and annoying jumps – I forgot to mention that jumping feels very unresponsive.
After James Bond Jr. defeats the secret base, he escapes by helicopter but is than shot down, conveniently landing right next to SCUM’s secret base. Here you have to rescue scientists by killing the monsters guarding them. You can find a potion which will turn James Bond Jr. into a monster, letting him jump higher – use it up in the wrong place and you’re stuck.
The NES version of James Bond Jr. is very typical of licenced platformers on the NES. Everything seems to be made to frustrate the player, and enemies take so many hits that even defeating them isn’t fun.
With licensed platformers on the NES, you can create a list of annoying things that will frustrate anyone: bullet sponges enemies, maze-like levels with no maps, having to backtrack, enemy attacks knocking you back, annoying springs, having to playtform between screen loads, enemies that trap you in endless damage loops and getting softlocked due to limited ammo. James Bond Jr on the NES manages to tick all of those boxes.
The game consists of four levels, each involving you tracking down objectives and then finding the level exit. The first level has you exploring sewers to disarm missiles. At the start, you drop down a large hole and come across your first enemy: a giant shooting multiple rounds that requires 30-40 hits to kill. Your pistol uses up ammo very quickly, although it will slowly recharge up to 30 rounds (collecting ammo packs will fill it to 99).
When you find a missile, you have to complete a sliding puzzle piece challenge to get colours into the right order. Near the start of the level, there’s something that looks like electric that hurts you if you land on in – this is actually water that you can swim though if you get a scuba mask.
The second level has you searching for safes. In the section in the image, I got trapped in the corner by these annoying dogs that are difficult to hit. Once you find a safe, you have to work out the combination in the worst codebreaking minigame I’ve encountered. This isn’t mastermind-style. You put numbers in four slots and see if any are right. You have nine attempts, so if any of them are the final number you have to try, you have to start again (and the combination resets). On top of this, some of the safes are traps that blow up in your face.
The third level thankfully ditches minigames and you just have to blow up strange “reactor” objects in rooms. You can find a jetpack in this level which runs out of “ammo” very quickly – and there are some sections you can’t navigate without it, meaning you have to restart. There are lots of moving platforms and annoying jumps – I forgot to mention that jumping feels very unresponsive.
After James Bond Jr. defeats the secret base, he escapes by helicopter but is than shot down, conveniently landing right next to SCUM’s secret base. Here you have to rescue scientists by killing the monsters guarding them. You can find a potion which will turn James Bond Jr. into a monster, letting him jump higher – use it up in the wrong place and you’re stuck.
The NES version of James Bond Jr. is very typical of licenced platformers on the NES. Everything seems to be made to frustrate the player, and enemies take so many hits that even defeating them isn’t fun.
Blasting the first note of this game hit sound effect on my headphones until someone asks me "Who hurt you?".