Yet another stop on my never-ending journey to complete every animal themed platformer in existence.
Ardy Lightfoot is perhaps even less remembered than Bubsy or Aero the Acrobat, and I'm sure that "Titus" logo had something to do with it. Even before they dumped Super Man 64 on us, they weren't exactly running toe to toe with third party publishers like Capcom nor Konami. It stars what I'm assuming be some sort of cat or fox accompanied by Pepe-At-Home (seriously...I bet these guys were fans of Monster World IV) in a quest to retreive the seven Chaos Emeralds-At-Home.
One thing Ardy does exceptionally well compared to other B-tier mascot games is (surprisingly) storytelling. Everything is told through pantomime cutscenes like Sonic 3 and Knuckles, granted these are a bit more extensive. To cap it all off, there's a beautiful (non-interactive) world map showing the characters' progression. The in-game art is also pretty solid, although not mindblowing for 1994.
Unfortunately, the game stumbles where it matters most- gameplay. It does, however, start out strong. You'll be using Ardy's signature tail bounce move to scale vertical sections and tossing your buddy (who also serves as a hit point similar to those weird fuzzy things in Psycho Fox) about to solve puzzles and kill enemies. By the time you reach the pyramid scene, however, the game starts introducing massive difficulty spikes and doesn't organically explain certain mechanics.
One such stage is Beecroft's Stronghold, which introduces security cameras that deploy traps if Ardy is caught. At first, I thought this was a stealth section and that said traps/cameras could be avoided by hiding underneath certain platforms until the camera faces away. Nope- you basically have to run for it every time as the traps will always spring up. There's another section like this in Ancient Pyramid, where you would think there's a way to avoid a beam of light that triggers an avalanche of randomly generated spikes. Nope- you just have to deal with it and hope you don't take a hit.
Underground Passage redeems things a bit and sees you powering-up your buddy so that he can chomp through otherwise indestructible blocks. You'll also be looking for switches to pull in order raise the water level and make your way out of the scene. It made me wonder why more levels couldn't have this sort of pacing and sense of exploration, honestly.
The last few stages focus on scaling a tower and are ungodly annoying due to the iffy collision detection. Using a bunch of spears to make your way up would've been an alright idea if Ardy's lust for clipping through them wasn't so high.
Then there's a long autoscroller where you're assaulted by a bunch of electric spears. While you could try to memorize where they come from and what you need to jump, duck or tail-bounce over...there's one thing I haven't mentioned yet. By holding up, Ardy can pull out a mirror which (for whatever reason) shields him from attacks for a decent period of time. The catch is that it's stationary, has a brief window before it triggers and he'll eventually put it away regardless of if you let go of up or not. Considering this section is long as hell, you only get one hitpoint via Pec (the aforementioned buddy) and no checkpoints here- I opted to cheese it by timing my mirror shields properly.
While the game is tough (bordering on unforgiving in the late game), it does have enough concessions. You have unlimited continues, many of the scenes are fairly short, and there's often a ton of stars (this game's coins) or a 1-up around the difficult sections. In addition, if you lose Pec, it's often not long before you find him waiting in a chest nearby. It doesn't fix that some levels are simply miserable to get through, but at least you'll never lose much progress at any point.
Overall, Ardy is worth a once-over if you're willing to adjust to its crap factor and have already played the better platformers on the SNES. Slightly better than Bubsy, but a far cry from the likes of Sparkster.
Ardy Lightfoot is perhaps even less remembered than Bubsy or Aero the Acrobat, and I'm sure that "Titus" logo had something to do with it. Even before they dumped Super Man 64 on us, they weren't exactly running toe to toe with third party publishers like Capcom nor Konami. It stars what I'm assuming be some sort of cat or fox accompanied by Pepe-At-Home (seriously...I bet these guys were fans of Monster World IV) in a quest to retreive the seven Chaos Emeralds-At-Home.
One thing Ardy does exceptionally well compared to other B-tier mascot games is (surprisingly) storytelling. Everything is told through pantomime cutscenes like Sonic 3 and Knuckles, granted these are a bit more extensive. To cap it all off, there's a beautiful (non-interactive) world map showing the characters' progression. The in-game art is also pretty solid, although not mindblowing for 1994.
Unfortunately, the game stumbles where it matters most- gameplay. It does, however, start out strong. You'll be using Ardy's signature tail bounce move to scale vertical sections and tossing your buddy (who also serves as a hit point similar to those weird fuzzy things in Psycho Fox) about to solve puzzles and kill enemies. By the time you reach the pyramid scene, however, the game starts introducing massive difficulty spikes and doesn't organically explain certain mechanics.
One such stage is Beecroft's Stronghold, which introduces security cameras that deploy traps if Ardy is caught. At first, I thought this was a stealth section and that said traps/cameras could be avoided by hiding underneath certain platforms until the camera faces away. Nope- you basically have to run for it every time as the traps will always spring up. There's another section like this in Ancient Pyramid, where you would think there's a way to avoid a beam of light that triggers an avalanche of randomly generated spikes. Nope- you just have to deal with it and hope you don't take a hit.
Underground Passage redeems things a bit and sees you powering-up your buddy so that he can chomp through otherwise indestructible blocks. You'll also be looking for switches to pull in order raise the water level and make your way out of the scene. It made me wonder why more levels couldn't have this sort of pacing and sense of exploration, honestly.
The last few stages focus on scaling a tower and are ungodly annoying due to the iffy collision detection. Using a bunch of spears to make your way up would've been an alright idea if Ardy's lust for clipping through them wasn't so high.
Then there's a long autoscroller where you're assaulted by a bunch of electric spears. While you could try to memorize where they come from and what you need to jump, duck or tail-bounce over...there's one thing I haven't mentioned yet. By holding up, Ardy can pull out a mirror which (for whatever reason) shields him from attacks for a decent period of time. The catch is that it's stationary, has a brief window before it triggers and he'll eventually put it away regardless of if you let go of up or not. Considering this section is long as hell, you only get one hitpoint via Pec (the aforementioned buddy) and no checkpoints here- I opted to cheese it by timing my mirror shields properly.
While the game is tough (bordering on unforgiving in the late game), it does have enough concessions. You have unlimited continues, many of the scenes are fairly short, and there's often a ton of stars (this game's coins) or a 1-up around the difficult sections. In addition, if you lose Pec, it's often not long before you find him waiting in a chest nearby. It doesn't fix that some levels are simply miserable to get through, but at least you'll never lose much progress at any point.
Overall, Ardy is worth a once-over if you're willing to adjust to its crap factor and have already played the better platformers on the SNES. Slightly better than Bubsy, but a far cry from the likes of Sparkster.