Little Nemo: The Dream Master review.

I started playing Little Nemo: The dream master yesterday, it´s one of those nes games that I have in my shelf but never played through when I were a kid. Then I thought to myself that someday I need to complete these old games, how could I call myself a gamer if I don´t?

So a little backstory to the game, Little Nemo: the dream master is a game released by Capcom (the dudes behind Resident Evil and Mega Man series) and is based on the japanese animated film Little Nemo: Adventures in slumberland.

The game takes place in Nemos own surreal dreams where he is supposed to save slumberland from the Nightmare King. Nemo meets with different animals that he can take controll over such as a Gorilla that can climb walls and punch enemies, a Bee that can fly and shoot stingers and a Frog that doesn´t move to fast while going but can jump high and crush enemies under him.

I played this game pretty much when I was younger and one thing that I remembered was that it was pretty difficult, even by NES standards. And that was something that I noticed this time around aswell. Even as we speak I haven´t been able to beat the last level of Nightmare World. It´s not that it is difficult due to random enemie movement (well that´s just a little part of it) but it´s surprisingly difficult due to your own clumpiness as the player. If you die you know why you died, it´s not because of poor programing. What I mean is that multiple times I know I had only myself to blame for my deaths. But it never felt impossible to beat and everytime you get further in the level you got some adrenaline and a feeling of desire to see more.

So you start of with having three extra lives and three health bars. If all extra lives are emptied you return to the title screen, where you can continue. This allows you continue from the beginning of the level you were at. At your disposal as weapons you only have candy that you can throw at enemies to stun them, this is not however killing them and they are only stunned for a short while. However the candy is used to get your animal friends asleep so you can ride them, if you don´t get them asleep they will hurt you aswell. Much later in the game you also get a morning star in your arsenal that is required to kill the bosses.


So the environments in the game really feel like a little kids dream, the first level you start off playing is in some sort of forest, where the mushrooms have grown up to tree length. You are later entering a water level, toy store and your own house. I really enjoyed to the level design and environments, always wanting me to see what the next level would bring. However there are some autoscrolling events in the game, and the first one is in the toy store where you have to ride this toy train through the whole level. This was surprisingly hard and it took me some trial and error runs before getting past that area. To be able to advance to next level the player has to find several keys to unlock the door to next dreamworld. The number of keys differ from level to level, mostly they aren´t that hard to find if you explore the level (which you really should) and they are always in the same place.

The soundtrack has some nostalgic moments that brought me back to my childhood. It was an nice and really set the tone for the level you were at. It´s one of the better NES soundtracks.

Overall the game was difficult but fun ride which should´nt be overlooked in any NES collection. If you haven´t tried the game yet you really should, and if you haven´t beaten it give it another go and I promise you won´t be sorry for doing so.

Overall score: 8/10

update: I have now beaten the game, the nightmare king has fallen! The boss fight itself wasn´t that overly difficult once you learned his patterns. But challenging never the less.

And here´s the video of me playing the game, be aware I curse sometimes Lets play!