why have i played little nemo the dream master
if you feed animals one candy three times they fall asleep and you jump inside their mouth and use their body like a suit to control them from the inside but sometimes you just ride them on the outside
Dont let this game fool you with dreamy fancy looks! Its really tough and requires some "castlevania" skill level :))
Was decent platformer until the final level where they pull out the unneeded precision bs. I'll never understand devs that do this.
Was almost Ninja Gaiden levels of bad.
Was almost Ninja Gaiden levels of bad.
Fucking cursed dandelions
Poor, strange Little Nemo: The Dream Master. A strange little licensed platformer that's too ubiquitous for those who lived in the era to truly be a cult classic, but too obscure to be a regular one. Among NES and Famicom games, this is one that I've long known to exist, but not one that I've seen much acknowledgement for much deeper than that.
I didn't think much of it myself from what I'd seen or played at first. It was Capcom quality, but it was easy to look past it before I played it because there were so many stronger, or at least more well-known, outings by the same developers on the console. As a game it doesn't offer anything groundbreaking to the player, and the unique ideas it has are only somewhat committed to. Open, exploration-focused levels are broken up by straightforward autoscrollers that effortlessly "hide" all progression items at the goal itself, nullifying the game's central design entirely and reducing itself to a series of strange platforming challenges. The animals you sedate, skin alive, and pilot become reduced in function for several levels to their most rudimentary actions, with some only appearing once and never again. Its design is definitely not as airtight as something like Ducktales or whichever particular Mega Man game is supposedly the best one these days.
I say this out of love. Because despite everything, this game is a literal dream. It's a delightful reverie of a tough-as-nails NES platformer on par with Capcom's other outings, but with so many unique settings and circumstances that it never gets tiring. The artwork brings to mind Windsor McCay's own drawings, dream-like without being derivative. The settings are imaginative and largely unlike anything in any other NES game at the time, taking place in defined locations while still making for challenging design and puzzles to conquer. The soundtrack is at times dreamlike, at times whimsical, at times daunting, with the waltz-like pieces of the game's cutscenes and the upside-down house level being particular stand-outs. The game drops everything it's taught you previously about its level structure to put you into a house of toys where you ride on a giant toy train and avoid model planes and hot-air balloons, and it's a GLORIOUSLY fun time on the strength of the jaunty little background tune and the beautiful artwork of the walls and windows you pass by. And that's without mentioning the delightful little interstitials between stages that directly harken back to the original comic's structure. Glorious.
Even the game's climactic final three-stage gauntlet, which you have to replay from the beginning if you game over -- against the spirit of the game's lenient continue system prior -- succeeds perhaps not gameplay-wise, but on sheer TONE. It's a seriously awesome bit of game design that shows that both you and the game have evolved just as its protagonist has. The fact that you aren't even given a proper weapon until the final act of the game is a design choice I legitimately ADORE, and one I definitely think some modern games could stand to learn from on the sheer strength of both how little and how much it changes, especially tonally.
I don't think Little Nemo: The Dream Master is one of the best NES games. It's outclassed enough by some of its contemporaries in terms of being a cohesive, well-oiled experience that I would not be surprised if the general impression it gets from players past its time is middling at best. But it cruises by so well on the sheer creativity and charm that I can't decry it in good faith. It does things wrong as a game, but it's such a delight in terms of sheer vibe that it's quickly become one of my favorites I've played. If you can get your hands on it, I can't recommend it enough; it's not too demanding as a challenge until the final act, and if you can look past some of its jank, it's an amazing game to play in a single session or two.
I didn't think much of it myself from what I'd seen or played at first. It was Capcom quality, but it was easy to look past it before I played it because there were so many stronger, or at least more well-known, outings by the same developers on the console. As a game it doesn't offer anything groundbreaking to the player, and the unique ideas it has are only somewhat committed to. Open, exploration-focused levels are broken up by straightforward autoscrollers that effortlessly "hide" all progression items at the goal itself, nullifying the game's central design entirely and reducing itself to a series of strange platforming challenges. The animals you sedate, skin alive, and pilot become reduced in function for several levels to their most rudimentary actions, with some only appearing once and never again. Its design is definitely not as airtight as something like Ducktales or whichever particular Mega Man game is supposedly the best one these days.
I say this out of love. Because despite everything, this game is a literal dream. It's a delightful reverie of a tough-as-nails NES platformer on par with Capcom's other outings, but with so many unique settings and circumstances that it never gets tiring. The artwork brings to mind Windsor McCay's own drawings, dream-like without being derivative. The settings are imaginative and largely unlike anything in any other NES game at the time, taking place in defined locations while still making for challenging design and puzzles to conquer. The soundtrack is at times dreamlike, at times whimsical, at times daunting, with the waltz-like pieces of the game's cutscenes and the upside-down house level being particular stand-outs. The game drops everything it's taught you previously about its level structure to put you into a house of toys where you ride on a giant toy train and avoid model planes and hot-air balloons, and it's a GLORIOUSLY fun time on the strength of the jaunty little background tune and the beautiful artwork of the walls and windows you pass by. And that's without mentioning the delightful little interstitials between stages that directly harken back to the original comic's structure. Glorious.
Even the game's climactic final three-stage gauntlet, which you have to replay from the beginning if you game over -- against the spirit of the game's lenient continue system prior -- succeeds perhaps not gameplay-wise, but on sheer TONE. It's a seriously awesome bit of game design that shows that both you and the game have evolved just as its protagonist has. The fact that you aren't even given a proper weapon until the final act of the game is a design choice I legitimately ADORE, and one I definitely think some modern games could stand to learn from on the sheer strength of both how little and how much it changes, especially tonally.
I don't think Little Nemo: The Dream Master is one of the best NES games. It's outclassed enough by some of its contemporaries in terms of being a cohesive, well-oiled experience that I would not be surprised if the general impression it gets from players past its time is middling at best. But it cruises by so well on the sheer creativity and charm that I can't decry it in good faith. It does things wrong as a game, but it's such a delight in terms of sheer vibe that it's quickly become one of my favorites I've played. If you can get your hands on it, I can't recommend it enough; it's not too demanding as a challenge until the final act, and if you can look past some of its jank, it's an amazing game to play in a single session or two.
This game had a pretty cool mechanic where you could take over control of all kinds of creatures to gain new abilities, i remember liking it a lot.
One of the fairer platformers on the system. A childhood favorite.
Solid little NES platformer made by Capcom, so that alone should tell you enough.
SOUL
little nemo is the original 3d mario
If I was a seven year old playing this in 1990, I don't think I would like video games anymore.
i'm starting to think capcom's signature design is to make enemies as annoying as they can get
Little Nemo joins the likes of Rayman and Ecco the Dolphin of "cute game for kids that's actually painfully difficult." The first level lures you into a false sense of security with its charming music and cute candy-throwing mechanic. Then the second level smacks you with a dead end that can only be bypassed by climbing off screen. There's no indication that you can do this, and the game only continues to obfuscate from there. Level 3 is a horribly punishing auto-scroller, Level 5 is a laborious, checkpoint-free shuffle back and forth across the entire level to swap animal abilities, and all the while Nemo has no means to defend himself from the infinitely respawing enemies. When the last 2 levels finally give you a direct attack, 1. it's never explained that you can charge up a projectile attack that is mandatory for beating the bosses, and 2. you spend most of the time still using animal abilities so you can't make use of it anyway. The final level is an absolute marathon of precision platforming and 3 boss fights, which is a ridiculous amount of ground to cover should you game over because a crocodile jumped out of the water and knocked you one pixel up into a falling spike ceiling.
Little Nemo has terrific music and great art, but that's about where the fun ends. It's an incredibly frustrating game with a difficulty spike as ridiculous as the spikes that randomly come crashing down on you as you dodge flying squirrels on a speeding train. It's a very odd and uneven experience from Capcom, and maybe it should've stayed in Slumberland.
Little Nemo has terrific music and great art, but that's about where the fun ends. It's an incredibly frustrating game with a difficulty spike as ridiculous as the spikes that randomly come crashing down on you as you dodge flying squirrels on a speeding train. It's a very odd and uneven experience from Capcom, and maybe it should've stayed in Slumberland.
A stunning looking game with good gameplay but don't let its cute looks fool you, it's also painfully difficult.
Capcom does it again. A good and challenging platformer with a cool costume mechanic. Maybe the lack of combat options is a turn-off for some, but it has good platforming action, good visuals, and a killer soundtrack. Check it out.
Confirmed #bats
I really like it! I just think it could be a little less hard!
Like maybe if the animal friends and especially Nemo himself had a better way to fight beasties. Way too often the focus is avoiding swarms of baddies and I would have much preferred smacking them with a weapon or animal fists
I really like it! I just think it could be a little less hard!
Like maybe if the animal friends and especially Nemo himself had a better way to fight beasties. Way too often the focus is avoiding swarms of baddies and I would have much preferred smacking them with a weapon or animal fists
I love this game, the last level is brutal and unfair in a couple spots but otherwise its fantastic! Took me 6.5 hours to beat.
I only remember this via a really crappy bootleg Game Boy cartridge that was pretending to be a Pokémon game but instead was this...
except Little Nemo's been replaced by a badly drawn Sandshrew sprite...
and the whole thing was entirely in Japanese so my small child mind couldn't understand what anyone was saying.
Surely the game itself is good but that's all I can remember from this one.
except Little Nemo's been replaced by a badly drawn Sandshrew sprite...
and the whole thing was entirely in Japanese so my small child mind couldn't understand what anyone was saying.
Surely the game itself is good but that's all I can remember from this one.
W H I M S Y
An ambitious little game that feels a little rough but is a fairly enjoyable time. This game has a lot of great ideas that was used in future platformers like the mechanic of using animals to traverse the stages was used to great effect in Super Mario Odyssey and the dream aesthetic was fully realised in games like Klonoa and the upcoming Balan Wonderland (pleeaaaaase be good).