Swamp Thing (NES) Playthrough- NintendoComplete
362A playthough of THQ's 1992 license-based platformer for the NES, Swamp Thing.
Based on the cartoon from the early 1990s, Swamp Thing tells the story of a brilliant scientist who is turned into a mutant swamp monster when a wannabe criminal mastermind attempts to steal his research for evil ends.
Swamp Thing was developed by Imagineering, mostly known for their work on games carrying high-profile licenses including The Simpsons NES games, Ghostbusters 2, and Ren & Stimpy. Closely adhering to the design template of The Simpsons: Bart Meets Radioactive Man, it is a simple and linear action-platformer, often noted for its generally high level of difficulty.
If you've played Bart Meets Radioactive Man, you'll immediately recognize the similarities between the two games. The stiff controls are very similar between them, with both demonstrating Imagineering's irritating fondness for mapping run and jump to the same button, as are the level designs that focus on long series of precision jumping sequences. The frustration factor is certainly lower here than it was in BvRM, but the cheap enemy placements do give rise to an need to memorize entirely too much of the game in order to play it fairly well.
The graphics and sound should also be familiar to anyone that has played Imagineering's other games. The game shoots for highly detailed, quasi-realistic depictions of locales like we saw in A Boy and His Blob, and the effort meets with mixed results. Some scenes are fairly impressive to look at (the silhouettes of a treeline against a sunset is pretty striking), while others (all of the dark areas) are excessively grainy pixel mush that makes distinguishing solid platforms from the backgrounds a chore (like in Bart vs. the Space Mutants). The music is fairly low key and not at all memorable, and sound effects were pulled directly from the Simpsons games.
I know that all of this sounds inordinately negative, but I can't say that I particularly disliked Swamp Thing. Though totally uninspired, it's competently put together and can be fun to pop in on occasion. However, I found it lacking in any real personality. I loved Bart vs. the Space Mutants because, despite its flaws, it had fun with its license and felt like a fresh, novel experience. Swamp Thing in comparison feels far more mundane and is a strictly by-the-numbers experience, leaving it with little to stand out in an overcrowded genre packed with many far higher quality games on the NES.
If you want something with a bit of a dark, creepy vibe, this might do it for you, but Swamp Thing is a game that you'll likely play through once and then never come back to.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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