Trog ended up being a bit of a hidden gem! It’s another entry in the maze chase/dot eat genre, originally an arcade game with claymation visuals. The NES version doesn’t retain those visuals, of course, but the whole game has this great, expressive, cartoonish style with a lot of flair in the animations. The goal is to collect a bunch of eggs before escaping to the exit, all while being chased by the caveman-like, cyclopean Trogs. Your character comes equipped with a surprisingly effective punch attack that renders the early stages trivial, but as time goes on, the Trogs get quicker and start throwing curveballs at you. They light fires, roll fast-moving stone wheels, and use these bizarre spring shoes that let them jump erratically all over the place. The amusing thing about the traps is that the Trogs will frequently fall victim to them as well. They’ll walk into fires, get squashed by the wheels, and you can easily bait them to walk right off the edge of the stage. Despite this, they start moving so quickly that they’ll surround you in a second if you’re not paying attention.
The game gives you just enough freedom in the movement and attacking that you don’t feel powerless, while also throwing enough at you to make the experience challenging. Once I learned how the warps work, it wasn’t too difficult to get to the final stage, 50. I had a good enough time with this that I’ll probably come back for a 1-credit clear someday.

Trog! on NES is a port of the arcade game of the same title, unfortunately there was little hope in bringing the claymation graphics to NES, but it still looks pretty great here and I love how goofy Bloop looks dancing in the win screen. We're also down to two playable dinosaurs instead of four in the arcade game, which again I think is fine. It probably would've been troublesome getting four dinosaurs on screen with all the trogs too.

The game itself is a maze game akin to Pac-Man, but the stage design itself kinda reminds me of Bomberman without the destructible blocks. You gotta collect all the eggs and get to the exit while avoiding the titular Trogs, who won't hesitate to knock you out and eat you alive, pretty nightmarish. Over the course of the game the Trogs get smarter and start inventing new ways to try and catch you, like jumping and throwing wheels at you. You defend yourself via punching in your normal form or collecting powerups like pineapples to temporarily turn into a goddamned t-rex to chomp those fucking Trogs or grabbing a fire stick looking thing to be able to shoot fireballs.

The charm and simplicity of this game only served to make me love the shit out of it more. It even features one of my favorite tropes in video games which is enemies getting hurt by their own moves, Trogs get smarter but are also still dimwitted and get flattened by their own wheels or get roasted from walking into fires another one started.

I really didn't expect this one to get me addicted, I would've absolutely loved the shit out of this game as a kid and with a friend it would've been even more fun.

I loved this game. Great in single player and with a buddy. I know a lot of people prefer the arcade version for it's claymation graphics but cmon the NES version looks great too. The little cutscenes of the cave men thinking up ways of getting the dino's always made me laugh. Gameplay was like a mix of pac man and a beat um up. Crazy to me as a kid. Plus trying to get as far as you could was always a challenge. There was like 100 stages. Go for a high score? Out last your buddy? CoOp with your buddy? Always fun to me. Holds up incredibly well. Top class NES game.