You know those early Playstation games which feel like they could have been made for the SNES because the devs hadn't caught the 3D train yet?

Well that's not the case of Little Ralph.

Little Ralph was made well into the console's life and the creators obviously WANTED to make a 16bit-styled 2D platformer. And it was made with a lot of love.

It's a beautiful game with nice-looking and well-animated pixel art. It controls with only two buttons, and two buttons are enough (there's a nice downward slash and a charged-attack you can use to blow small enemies and projectiles away which is very satisfying). You can play for scoring, the stages are full of secrets, some bosses have a fun gimmick, there's a minecart section,... It's a great little game!
I'll still give a warning: Little Ralph is tough as nails. You die in one hit and the game can be extremely unforgiving at times. Thankfully, there's a lot of checkpoints, unlimited continues, and you can save your progress on memory card. If you're not afraid of a bit of challenge, Little Ralph is well worth a try.

Oooooookay... Can I start by saying that this game is kinda horrifying?
Ralph doesn't just bounce up and down the screen like Mario or Sonic when losing a life, oh no. This poor kid gets impaled, crushed(both of these complete with blood splashes), vored and digested by slimes, burnt to a crisp, petrified and eaten by maggots with his SKULL flying out once they're done, jesus christ.

I guess 7 year old me playing this didn't really understand what was going on, because I definitely didn't remember this part of the game lmao

With that out of the way... It's alright. Very old school. 1-hit deaths unless you grab a shield around the stages, power-ups you lose after death, score fruits all over the place and uh... Also a fighting game?
Yeah, from Stage 4 or so onwards, bosses turn into traditional fighting game battles. That caught me by surprise, but throwing out not-Hadoukens and not-Shoryukens to beat their asses was oddly endearing.

What isn't oddly endearing is the difficulty spike akin to a glass-covered hamburger on the last stretch of 8-3, what the fuck was up with that. Precision platforming to the extreme; thank god you can use continues...

The soundtrack is very bouncy and catchy, but the instruments kinda suck. It sounds like someone having a lot of fun with a cheap Casio keyboard at times.

Fun game, but 8-3 can go die in a fire. And the death animations were somewhat offputting in a game like this, even if it did get a laugh out of me.

This game feels like a remake of an 80's arcade that doesn't exist. Constant pickups, one-hit deaths, defeating combos of enemies for higher scores, and bosses that don't have any I-frames? It knows what it wants to be, and it perfectly evoked the feeling of challenge and expectation of mastery like plenty of arcades before it. I suppose scoring high isn't necessarily everyone's thing, but it's hard not to recommend when it's so immediately enjoyable and short to begin with.

Love the graphics, love the controls, LOVE the boss battles; there's not really a whole lot of negatives I can think of besides wishing it was longer.

I've yet to give it another go on Hard which apparently has additional stages, but it really shouldn't take much time to finish even with that in mind.
Fuck that minecart stage though.