I love Ufouria/Hebereke and I'm glad to play it again, genuinely one of the best NES games for my money. This is a truly bizarre port though, the way they quietly dropped it with no fanfare on a random day while overshadowed by its own sequel? The fact that they wrote a whole new translation with the original Japanese character designs intact, but you only see it via screenshots that you unlock and access via a menu?? It's kind of fitting that it is as strange a port as Ufouria itself is a game. Really excited to play the sequel, waiting on the physical release to pick it up even though it's readily available right now, but I'll be there day one.

The epitome of Keep It Simple, Stupid. Absolutely rules when you can focus on run and gun FPS mayhem... where it falters is when it tries more complex objectives, many of which end up obscure and unreadable without either looking them up or simply having prior knowledge from spending way too much time with it back in the 90s. The game will often not do much of anything to communicate how you're intended to complete some of these objectives (or in some cases even identify what they actually are), and doesn't really have a way to without spelling it out entirely and ruining the exploration. This, combined with some questionable level design, can make the game needlessly frustrating from time to time. Control on anything above Agent? Those turrets are absolute misery, it becomes a truly godawful level. Caverns, the most linear and basic level in the game, will be the easiest thing to run until the very end where horribly placed inept (or seemingly suicidal) enemies at the end regularly throw a grenade at you that they almost always manage to blow themselves and the radio up with. Most of the levels are fun to play through, but some of these little moments just hamper an otherwise very enjoyable game.

What's most impressive to me is that it is a hell of an adaptation of the movie. Watched the movie for the first time two or three years ago, and it makes it very easy to appreciate the care the game took in adapting the various locales and setpieces... it's an achievement by Rare just how authentic it feels to its source. I watched the movie 25ish years after playing the game and could identify almost everything as a discrete moment from the game. Even with N64 graphics, you can identify things with ease, it's insanely readable and shows the care that Rare handled this with. Excellent work.