GOTD 5/6/2016: The Adventures of Dino Riki (NES)
I've almost always found the Hudson Bee to represent quality video games and remind me of getting stung in the armpit while going across the monkey bars on the swingset in my parents' back yard when I was a kid. So, when I saw it on the Adventures of Dino Riki at FuncoLand in the '90s for a buck, it was coming home with me. I was expecting a platformer, and, well... I did and didn't end up with one.
Dino Riki is really a vertically-scrolling shooter, but it does have some pronounced platforming elements. you always face and fire forward, dodging enemies and their shots while collecting power-up revealed by shooting scenery such as flowers, rocks, skulls, and occasionally out of thin air. You can power up your weapon three times, giving you increasingly stronger weapons with improved range and rate of fire, get boot icons to increase your speed, birds to let you temporarily fly, hearts and meat to expand and refill your health, and a special muscle Riki that allows him to bulk up and fire manly clones of himself across the screen. He can also jump, which allows him to quickly dodge about the screen, and also opens up the platforming elements.
The platforming in Dino Riki is unfortunately unintuitive. Riki jumps considerably faster than he walks, which makes getting used to it tricky, especially with an auto-scrolling screen. The platforms are often narrow, making for not just tricky jumps, but if you've powered up your speed, even a slight tap can drop you off the edge, killing you instantly. To compound matters, there are moving platforms, but you don't move with them... they will juat slide out from under your feet. Many of these sections are skippable if you have wings, but I have died far, far more from platforming than fighting, and in a shooter, it's a bit of a let down.
For an early NES game, though, the graphics look really good. Backgrounds vary between jungles, swamps, deserts, and mountains, and enemies are cartoony and distinctive. The bosses are nice and big, but they're very easy, and the music is just decent. Its challenge can feel a bit uneven with the platforming, but the control is very responsive, and it can be mastered with just a little practice.
So... played this one? Any early NES memories?
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As you pointed out, the controls for jumping are just terrible, I remember distinctively the little leaves in the water I always fell off because the controls where just not accurate. It is one of those games where challenge is replaced by frustration because of the bad controls.
