Game:

Little Nemo: The Dream Master (1990)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 17:24

128 views

4

Little Nemo: the Dream Master Episode #1

--------------------
Action Sofa is the sensational duo, Kim Stolz and Duncan MacRae, coming at you from Victoria, BC, Canada. We’ll play anything!

Action Sofa on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/actionsofa/
Action Sofa on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/actionsofa/
Action Sofa on Tumblr: http://actionsofa.tumblr.com/
Action Sofa Email: actionsofa(at)gmail(dot)com
--------------------

Title: Little Nemo: the Dream Master
Released: 1990
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Capcom

Background

Little Nemo: the Dream Master is a single-player platformer by Capcom for the NES released in 1990. It’s got a couple of interesting mechanics and some very strange imagery and themes. It’s based on the Japanese animated film “Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland”, which in turn was based on the early-20th-century comic strip “Little Nemo in Slumberland” by Winsor McCay. That’s right, it’s a videogame, based on a Japanese movie, which in-turn was based on a fantastical American comic strip written nearly a hundred years previously. If you want to pile a little more weirdness onto that, the North American release of this game preceded the North American release of the movie by two years, which means the game reached English-speaking audiences with essentially no context (unless you happened to be a fan of turn-of-the-century comic strips).

Overview

The story follows a little boy who, upon falling asleep, goes to Slumberland, a strange world where dreams are real. Or maybe it’s a representation of Nemo’s subconscious. Regardless, the King of Slumberland, Morpheus, has been kidnapped by the Nightmare King, and Nemo must journey through Slumberland to the Nightmare Kingdom to rescue him.

Nemo’s mission each level is to find a series of keys that unlock a door to the next level. The level design is nicely varied, both visually and with respect to gameplay. There’s a water level, a level where you’re on a train, a cloud level where you have to fly high enough or be eaten by the bottom of the screen. Pretty standard stuff so far.

Along the way, he enlists the help of various animal companions, either by riding them or, when he is feeling particularly adventurous, climbing inside of them and wearing them like a suit. In order to do so, he needs to use his magical endless bag of “sleep candy” to put animals to sleep before he does this. If all of that isn’t enough to make you raise an eyebrow or elicit an audible “huh” then listen to this part: when he’s done with an animal, he gets off/out of it and it disappears in a puff. It ceases to be. I don’t know where it goes, but I can’t imagine it just magically transports back to its other animal friends like “This kid fed me a bunch of candy, I got really sleepy, then I ended up here. Weird, right?”

My favorite thing has to be the various strange, unidentifiable characters that meet Nemo at the beginning of each level to give him a cryptic piece of information before disappearing and leaving him to fend for himself. I am unsure whether these are friend, foe, or something more sinister.

Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty typical of NES platformers. Jump, get required items, don’t fall in the hole, don’t even think about touching an enemy. The animal companions add a neat twist that keeps the game from being generic. Each animal has different attributes, including more or less health, higher jumping, flying, shooting projectiles, digging, swimming, etc. The levels sometimes end up being a bit of a puzzle, where you need to find one animal to get to another, which in turn lets you get to a key necessary to finish the level. The enemies vary quite widely, from toys that come to life to monkeys who throw plates, and each level brings a few new and different ones to mess with poor, little Nemo.

Bottom Line

In all, I’d say the game was a pretty good effort. The subject matter is bizarre, and I’m uncertain that the developers of the game (or the movie, for that matter) saw the irony in creating a children’s game based on a comic strip that was intended as an exploration of surrealism and dream psychology. Still, the bizarre setting and characters are in good company on the NES, and they add to a visually appealing and varied experience. The game itself is hard, and can get frustrating, but it doesn’t feel like the game is necessarily trying to beat the player the way some arcade ports often do. I found it to be a solid game that would probably have been well-received by a child in 1990, and according to Kim, it was!

--------------------

INTRO MUSIC
‘News Intro Sound’ - Maximilien
www.soundbible.com
License: CC Attribution 3.0

OUTRO MUSIC
Little Idea - Composed and performed by Bensound
http://www.bensound.com
License: CC Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Other Statistics