Moon Crystal - Famicom (level 1 playthrough/game sample)
2This is my first time using Open Broadcaster. It took some fiddling around to get it to work. The VirtuaNES video was unwatchable due to quality issues. This is only the first level. I don't intend to do a full playthrough. I'm sure you can find someone else with more patience than me who has done one.
Anywaiz... Moon Crystal is a pretty nice platformer with some decent graphics and animations. I love the animation when Ricky turns around and when he hangs onto/climbs up ledges. The music is cool too.
The game was developed and published by a company called Hect. It was released in Japan in 1992. Sadly the US version was cancelled. But a translation is available. The story involves an evil count who wants to use the moon crystal to raise the dead and control the world. The story is told via animated cutscenes that appear between levels.
The only criticism I have is that the control is a little slippery and sometimes stiff. But it's not so bad that you can't deal with it. It can still lead to some unintentional deaths though. Which is why I skipped the extra life in this level. It is doable. Just frustrating even with the double jump boots. When you die you will start at the beginning of the current level checkpoint. So if you get the extra life then die trying to jump the gap you don't really lose anything. You are just back to square one with two lives again.
Having a projectile would really help. But you only get one weapon, a short dagger. You can extend the reach with a power up. You can also extend your life bar. However these do not carry on to the next level and you will have to find new power ups again. It does add some challenge to a game that doesn't feature a lot of variety in terms of gameplay. There's also a double jump power up that I didn't make use of here because I didn't realise that's what it did until now. Aren't I so observant? You can also find extra lives sometimes and a crystal that makes you temporarily invincible.
Bonus fact!: Hect also developed a Famicom game called America Daitouryou Senkyo: United State Presidential Race . It's a US presidential election sim for the 1988 election. One of the choices being Pat Robertson (who actually had a thankfully unsuccessful campaign that election year). It wasn't released outside of Japan. But then again we had the real thing going on at the time.
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