Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
164A playthrough of THQ's 1991 license-based platformer for the NES, Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates: The Revenge of Captain Hook.
Did you love the cartoon as a kid? Did you enjoy games that let you feel like the heroes from your favorite shows? Well, get ready!
The THQ logo is the first thing you see when you turn the game on.
...sigh.
Or, in the immortal words of Q*Bert, "@!#?@!"
As far as the NES goes, that logo is a promise of terrible things. If early 90s THQ was willing to publish a game, it was safe to assume you'd be feeding a dumpster fire into your console's cartridge slot, and wouldn't you know? Peter Pan holds the honor of being the game that started that tradition: it was the first game that THQ ever published.
While this is a step up from Rocky & Bullwinkle and Home Alone, don't be tempted into thinking that anything here approaches quality. With the somewhat audacious claim, "[a] new and independent adaptation inspired by J. M. Barrie's classic novel Peter and Wendy," blazoned across the opening screens, you might've hoped that this was an adaptation on par with the many games based on Hook.
But nope. No such luck.
If you are looking for an NES game that's *easy*, this might be perfect. That's about the best I can say for it. Unlike most NES games, most people will easily be able to finish Peter Pan and the Pirates the first time they play, if they can be bothered. Health power-ups are found everywhere, the enemies do little damage, and the horrendous collision detection means you won't often get hit. You'd actively have to try to fail here.
The graphics are a mishmash of unidentifiable pixelated blobs and clashing colors, the few songs that you get are all shrill and irritating (hint: Start + A turns off the music!), and not even halfway through, the levels start to repeat themselves. For a real thrill, you get to play through the last stage three times back-to-back before you're allowed to end the nightmare by feeding Hook to an alligator. It actually feels like an unlicensed title. If you're familiar with any that Sachen, AVE, or Color Dreams created, you'll probably see many parallels between them and this.
This embarrassment is a stain on the NES's library. It's not the only stain, and it's not the biggest one, but it's thoroughly off-putting all the same.
If you're actually curious about Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates, just go ahead and watch a couple minutes. Hopefully this video sates any masochistic ideas you might be entertaining. If you don't heed the warning, that's all on you.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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