I honestly feel like the basis for a pretty decent game was in here if there was a stronger direction in its design, but thankfully the end results became something much more interesting and historically fascinating. There’s just such a juvenile glee in seeing an official Nintendo Product made with so little polish, such a disregard for their image of Quality Control. The bits of engineering and game design tricks that you always hear about developers at Nintendo coming up with to make a game as enjoyable and accessible as possible are avoided here so much it’s kind of surprising it isn’t an intentional “i want to be the guy” type of Dadaist anti game.

The controls, the enemy placements, the bosses, the thematic incoherence of each level and the mechanics involved. You’ll get an item as a reward for one level and won’t end up using it until several levels down the road. Bombs are the most expensive item at the shop but you use the fire projectiles way more, which are only obtained through killing fire enemies, which can only be killed by snowballs obtained from enemies in the ice levels. Every boss fight is mechanically the same thing and the final boss is an instant kill and the easiest fight in the game, it’s actually insane.

The misplaced effort is where so much of the beauty and tragedy of the game resides. The backgrounds are painted with such care and detail, but often that makes them impossible to navigate, as platforms are unclear and death pits are frequent. The cutscenes are bafflingly bizarre in a way that’s so iconic, with strange animation and an offbeat sense of humor that I fully believe is intentional, but when so much of the game is incompetent, it’s hard to blame people for thinking the humor stems from nothing but an accident.

While there are things to like about this game (the surreal animation, its bizarre & quirky sense of humor, the beautifully detailed backgrounds and at times charmingly cheesy synth soundtrack), these positive qualities don’t add up to much more than the sum of their parts. The game is a tragedy, but is also one of the stronger arguments for comedy being birthed by tragedy.

i guess the thing with this vs nightmare is none of that one feels like witchcraft and so much of this does (yes i realize this version has no slowdowns but still). level design here was always not super impressive but it more than makes up for it everywhere else, and nightmare doesn't because it's worse looking and sounding, beyond being a redo. i love amazing mirror though which might sound insane but i genuinely love the mazey puzzle-er design style and it feels way more expansive than nightmare. this one still feels expansive because it's for the nes originally. i hope i'm making sense

i guess the thing with this vs nightmare is none of that one feels like witchcraft and so much of this does (yes i realize this version has no slowdowns but still). level design here was always not super impressive but it more than makes up for it everywhere else, and nightmare doesn't because it's worse looking and sounding, beyond being a redo. i love amazing mirror though which might sound insane but i genuinely love the mazey puzzle-er design style and it feels way more expansive than nightmare. this one still feels expansive because it's for the nes originally. i hope i'm making sense