[Review] NES - Gremlins 2 - A New Batch

The past 2 weeks I've been way to busy actually but I was able to play some Gremlins 2 in spare hours. A spare hours is maybe not enough to get the good feel of the game, but luckily I remembered a lot of the game.

First off, the music in the game is awesome! It's not some simple 4 note loop that is repeating, it's actual music that really fits with the awesome movie of my childhood. Funny side note on The Gremlins, recently I was in the video-rental store and I noticed they moved the Gremlins movies from Horror to Comedy. I remember the old days when they were under the Horror movies along with Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Time changes.

Anyway, the music is awesome. So are the sound effects. They've really put some major effort into creating the right setting in the game.

The game itself is about Gizmo fighting off his evil relatives and many other small creatures. Gizmo starts off in the labratory, just like in the movie, and follows a path along the moviestory. Which is quiet unique even for these days. That a movie based title actually stays close to the original story.

Gremlins 2, The New Batch is one of those easy to pick up, hard to master games. The controls can feel a bit stiff in the beginning and due to the graphics of platforms jumping can be a bit odd. The developers really added some time into creating a semi-3D top-view perspective, resulting in shadows on places where you can stand but your mind will tell you it shouldn't be able. Like many games from the era Gizmo suffers of one major set back; he hops back when getting hit. This can often result in you falling off an edge, missing your jump or getting pushed back into the pit. Luckily Gizmo is granted with an unlimited number of continues and a very easy password system so you can really master the game by an easy trial-and-error ritual.

As I said, the music is good and the graphics just look like they should. Gimzo looks like he should look like and all the other enemies are well designed aswell. Sad thing thought, but not very annoying is that the rats (or mouses, whatever they are) are actually bigger then the bats that fly around. Not a really big deal but it's kinda funny. The other key-Gremlins look a lot like in the movie and you can really see that this game is a high quality movie adaptation.

Gremlins 2, is really one of the games I'll remember for a long time.