Game of the Day 4/20/2016: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (NES)
Tonight I wanted to take some time to talk about one of my wife's all-time favorite games, Seta's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It's a 2D platformer in which you control the titular Tom (and his buddy Huck in alternating 2 player mode) in his quest that follows Mark Twain's novel to the letter, from the time he pelted all those monkeys with rocks to the bitter end when he fought Injun Joe who fired arrows from atop his pet dinosaur, just like everyone remembers. To my wife this was a cute game she played as a kid with a character she knew. To me, it's a pretty damn good Wonder Boy/Adventure Island clone.
With momentum-based controls that are reminiscent of Hudson/Westone's classic to the arcing weapon (Tom chucks rocks here, though he can get a slingshot temporarily) to the big, cartoony sprites, Tom Sawyer follows the template pretty friggin' closely at a glance. It does take some nice steps to differentiate itself, though, and not just thematically. For starters, no life bar, one hit is all you get. Secondly, instead of points and a timer, your score is simply the fastest time you can complete each stage. Instead of fruit elongating your time/health, you can pick up "T" icons, and collecting 20 gives you a bonus life, but accidentally grabbing a skull takes away 10. Perhaps most importantly, though, Tom Sawyer offers up a pair of shooter segments.
First, a vertically scrolling second stage sees Tom on his raft, dodging whirlpools and, um, dolphins? ...while throwing rocks at logs, angry fish, frogs, and the odd injun on his way to fight off a giant gator. Stage 5 starts off as a platformer, but ends with a horizontally scrolling shooter segment where Tom must ride a cloud and shoot down a blimp. Total accuracy to the source material! Really, though, both of these areas work rather well, although I would have preferred that Tom wouldn't turn around when I press back during the horizontal piece. These add a nice variety that keeps the game feeling fresh through its six stages, which in their own right all house unique enemies and hazards. The game will not get stale on a single playthrough.
What it does wrong, though, is a put out a few common design flaws of the time. It does offer unlimited continues, and continuing restarts the stage you're on from the beginning instead of any checkpoints. This is actually really fair as a way to establish challenge without being brutally difficult, as in the last two stages, it really ramps up on that front. Crazy new hazards, longer stages, and some blind jumps in the last stage are sure to feel a little unfair the first several times you encounter them. The bosses are ridiculously easy, taking only a few hits to take down, almost as if they felt bad for how nasty a couple of stages get before you reach them. Still, these flaws are hardly game breaking, and a little patience will see you through to a fun game if you dig the classic Wonder Boy style.
The graphics are mostly pedestrian, but the boss sprites are huge and beautiful while a bit lacking in animation, and the music is mediocre. I turned it down pretty low while replaying it tonight and watched a movie on an adjacent TV while playing, as it sees fit to butcher a few classical pieces in parts. Not grating, but nothing I really want to turn up and hear so I can hum it in my head later.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a quality platformer to me and a childhood treasure to my wife. I chose it today because I wanted to think about something a little more meaningful than the average game to me, as this is the 100th consecutive game of the day post, starting back on January 11th, and she puts up with me typing these up on my phone while sitting in bed next to her half of the time. I'll be doing it again tomorrow, but I just want to thank everyone who takes the time to respond or read these things. It's not my intent to be any kind of professional reviewer or anything. I have no channel or website to promote, and I don't post anywhere else, but for years before I joined DP, if I got sick one day or had insomnia, reading the "Post your recent imports" thread gave me a smile, and I just want to try and keep the conversation going to a community I've enjoyed since before being a part of it. My goal here is to try and bring up games that aren't the same old few that are the subject of every review, video, or discussion and hopefully keep starting some new conversations and getting to know folks here better. Thanks again, and if there's anything anyone would like to see going forward, be it a format suggestion, system, genre, or specific game, feel free to post or PM. I try to take the time and play each of these games to completion for each post or at least pretty far so I can snap a few pictures with my phone of the TV screen that really represent the game. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for having me.
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Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes
