Slight Delay on This Week's Retronauts Micro

I just finished playing Little Nemo! I was digging around for animated films my kids had never seen and came across Little Nemo the film. Apparently it was a big bomb in it's day, but I thought it was decent enough if you could accept the dream-like nature of it. My kids liked it well enough. BUT, I loved the Little Nemo game as a kid. It was probably up there with Ducktails the game for me. I was vaguely aware, at the time, that it was based upon a movie but I never saw it as a kid. So while I remember playing the game as a kid, it was playing it as a game in and of itself and thus I had my own ideas about all the characters in the game. Re-playing it after the film was interesting because my memories of what happened in the film where clashing with my long burried memories of what I had thought about the characters while playing it as a kid unaware of the film. For comparison sake, imagine that the original Legend of Zelda was based upon some Japanese film that you just got around to watching and it turned out that the Old Man in the cave who gives you the sword was a fully fleshed out character as were the goblins who give you money. Imagining the idea you have of those characters as a kid being seen in light of the movie it was based on. Interesting experience.

JR Ralls

I loved renting this as a kid and finally got a cart copy when I was in college about a decade ago. It wasn't until a year or two back that I finally beat it but while it was hard I found it certainly beatable after learning the levels and enemy patterns. I thought the difficulty curve was pretty similar to a megaman or castlevania. That is until the final level. I don't know if it was the change in mechanics with the wand for the bosses or just the level itself, but it was incredibly brutal for me. It probably took me a good month of periodic revisits to finally beat that jerk demon. Even though it would never happen I would love to see a remake of this game similar to a boy and his blob for wii or the recent remake of Womderboy III. The animal partners and worlds are so incredibly fun and whimsical.

Wonderful game. But SO hard. Don't think I ever completed it. The graphics were great and really sold you on an enchanting dream world, running across huge mushrooms and toy trains. In my opinion Nemo also has one of Capcom's finest soundtracks ever. It was also the first time I was introduced to Winsor McCays character. I didn't learn about the celebrated comic strip until years later, and never came across the animated film back in the day. The art style of the game is definitely more Capcom than McCay however. I naturally assumed Nemo was just another of their characters, like Mega Man. Given the production hell the film went through, the game tie-in was probably the best thing that came out of that whole project.

Those puff enemies are BRUTAL.

Bob Mackey

the best part of the game that I remember was its adherence to dream logic just like the comic strip. You throw some candy, then you're riding a gorilla, and that gorilla is climbing a tree, yeah that all checks out. The game wasn't ground breaking or anything, but it did experiment with the Capcom platformer that was well established by 1990. The final boss though, too easy really wish they had made a more clever battle in there

Historia

I remember getting this game for Christmas from my uncle and playing it all the time but I've never been able to get past the cloud level. I'm looking forward to this episode!

Neil L

I love this game and I love this movie. At the time, not having seen any anime, this was my first glimpse into such fluid, colorful, and beautiful animation. I showed it to my six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son recently and, like their dad, loved it, too. As for the game, I received it as a gift on my 7th birthday, and was immediately enthralling. Beautiful sprites, great music, and super-fun game mechanic.

Dave Funk

I played this game never having heard of the comic. Contrasted with most of the grittier or mascot-themed games, it was rather unique. The world was odd and somewhat off-putting, while I journeyed (a too-progressive-sounding word considering the halting and hard-won baby steps I took making it to the end) through a land of dreams unlike most stereotypical cartoonish depictions I'd seen. Even the way the character moved, jumping by flinging himself forward chest-first and convulsing with every candy toss or scepter swing, gave it a different feel from other games. The game was very primitive-looking for its release date, but it made up for it with the crazy variety of abilities you could use (the SM3 power-ups can't beat Nemo's in variety, though they sure feel a lot less clunky).

My parents purchased the NES game for me back when I was little kid (I was 6-years-old in 1990 when the NES game came out). I don't remember why they chose this game over any of the other games they could have given me, although there was apparently a 10 page article in the Nov/Dec 1990 issue of Nintendo Power with Dr. Mario on the cover, so suspect I saw the colorful graphics and weird "throw candy at animals until you can climb onto/into them" mechanic and asked for that game. It wasn't until several years later that I learned what "anime" was and that Little Nemo was a licensed property.

As everyone has said, this game is a prime example of a game that's really easy-going and hand-holding in the first level to draw you in, and then promptly uses that hand to smack you around repeatedly from the second level on out. The music is great, and they really nailed that dream-world-of-the-1900s aesthetic pretty well. 10/10 would nail animals in the head with candy again.

I played this game first before seeing the anime or having heard of the Windsor McCay comics (Which look beautiful and I've always wanted to buy someday when I have too much money to spend). I remember the animation of him jumping into bed before each level was really emphatic to me. It looked like such a comfortable bed! The game eventually becomes Nintendo Hard and I've never beaten the auto-scrolling train level without save states. The music for this game is top notch, and the game mechanic of being able to ride monsters was really new to me as a kid (and great, once you've figured out which ones it works on by trial and error...) This is also one of the few NES games I still own, despite not having had an NES for decades.

Ken Hoyt

Not so much on the game, but I remember playing the game, and then getting a Japanese subtitled copy of the movie 2-3 years before it was released here in the states and realizing that was the reason Capcom made the game in the first place. I never understood why it had taken so long for the movie to release after the game aside from some odd rights issues possibly? I know they claim the movie released in '89, but I didnt see a theatrical release, and only saw it on video around the mid 90's in the US.

RoryDropkick

Oh jeeze, I loved little nemo as a kid, but the extent of my knowledge was the first level and about halfway through the second, when if die to the dandelion puff enemies. Once my brother beat the whole game for me and my cousins so I got to hear more than two levels worth of the really great music

Renzuko

Hey, if it means more Talking Simpsons, then no worries!