GRAPHICS SOUND CONTROL FRUSTRATION FUN FACTOR OVERALL

NES 1 Player Platformer Passwords As NES collectors know, their system of choice has some rarities. Outside of those much-coveted Panesian titles, there are a few, officially licensed gems that a lot of us want to get our grubby little hands on, and Little Samson is one of them. As a collector’s item, it’s Mecca, but is it worth the trouble and money for those looking for a fun game? Evil is brewing, and it’s up to four brave warriors to come together and stop it. Players start out by choosing one of four characters, Little Samson, Kikara the dragon, Gamm the golem, or KO the mouse, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The game starts off with each of the four characters completing a stage alone, after which they join as a team and can be switched on the fly for the rest of the adventure. This is where Little Samson’s hook is. Like Konami’s first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, players can change characters mid-game, utilizing each set of skills and having access to four life bars. However, this game offers more diversity. Depending on the character, you can shoot, punch, fly, climb up walls, and grapple ceilings, just to name some. Using the right character for the job is the name of the game, and this proves to be one of Little Samson’s strongest features. Health restoring potions can be used when needed, but each character can only hold one at a time. Health bars can also be “leveled up” to a certain level. For some reason, this progress isn’t recorded in the password system, so you either have to play the game straight through or hope you can manage. This adds a lot to the game’s overall frustration factor and defeats the purpose of a password system. The password system may be broken, but the rest of the game is excellently crafted, especially the visuals. Being a late-generation NES game, Little Samson is packed with clean and bright graphics and smooth animation. The enemies are creative and the main characters look really good, with only a couple of sprites that look average. The environments range from great to plain while never remaining consistent quality-wise. Taito manages keeps the frame rate and flicker under control, which is crucial for some of the frantic firefights. The audio manages to be effective, but not exceptional. The music is catchy and has a good arrangement, if not a simplistic one. Each character has their own music that matches their character perfectly, and the boss themes work well. The sound effects do their job, but aren’t all that memorable, with the exception of the confirmation sound on the title menu, which is so ears splittingly painful it deserves mention. The controls, meanwhile, are tight and functional, working well this each character’s unique abilities. Each character has their own “feel,” from the swift Samson to the lumbering Gamm, and characters can be switched easily on the fly. The only problem is the wall climbing, which requires a manual button press that is easy to miss. Climbing from ceilings to walls is also a bit confusing sometimes. ......BOTTOM LINE: Little Samson is a very good play, if not a bit of a frustrating one. Some of the boss battles come off as cheap, taking time, memorization, and a bit of luck to succeed in. Others are clever, while others are simple a war of attrition. The platforming also falls into the “fun but frustrating” bin with the occasional fatal cheap shot. I first encountered this game at the local record shop a year back, where it was available for the ridiculously low price of six dollars. I passed it off and found out two days later it was really, really rare. I went back to the store immediately, only to find it had been sold. I managed to secure a copy months later for seven times what I would have paid at the store. Is Little Samson worth trouble and expense of tracking down? You’ll certainly get more miles out of it than other rare titles like Operation Secret Storm. It’s a fun game that may be worth your time and money to track down, but as a collector’s item, you definitely can’t go wrong. -The Collector