Let us all rejoice - the love for Nintendo's 27 year old 8-bit home console continues to this day. Over the past few years we've got our grubby mitts on a number of fantastic ROM hacks such as Megaman Ultra and Mario Adventure, celebrated the long overdue translations of fantastic games like Sweet Home and counted our blessings that we can get games we were denied on carts like Earthbound thanks to those who make NES and Famicom reproductions.
All the while, a little site called retrozone has quietly been slowly releasing reproductions of its own, only without any donor parts required. First they released Nintendo World Championships 1990, a special prize cart given out during that event so long ago. They expanded to give us Nintendo Campus Challenge, a similarly rare cart. Since then they've been releasing homebrew NES games and abandonware on new carts, in other words new NES games.
While most of these are in my opinion filed under "meh", Retrozone has released something that most definitely is not: a little title called Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril.
Battle Kid is an action platformer similar to Megaman, but the game has much more in common with the brutally difficult PC flash game I Wanna Be the Guy. However, unlike I Wanna Be the Guy, its almost always clear to the player what they need to do in order to proceed and the game doesn't rely on cheap tricks to kill you like IWBTG.
You will die in Battle Kid alot, but what makes the game so much less frustrating is there are frequent savepoints and the game is so much fun you actually won't mind repeating the same sections over and over until you master them. The music is also comprised of new, original top-notch chiptunes.These tracks rival some of the best work done on the NES by big name developers. To say it's impressive is an understatement.
You can purchase a copy of Battle Kid through Retrozone.
http://www.retrousb....&products_id=86
The game runs on every version of Nintendo's hardware, including the NES toaster, NES2, Famicom, AV Famicom, Twin Famicom and a number of Famiclones.
Still not sure if the game is worth picking up?
Well, try it out. Yeah that's right, there's a demo available. It contains only the first level and no password or difficulty adjustment systems, but it will give players a feel of what the game is all about.
The Demo is playable on any emulator as well as the PowerPak.
Here's a direct link to the demo.
http://www.nintendoa...K%2Ddemo1%2Ezip
Get your controllers ready!
Oh and by the way, since Retrozone ins't producing any boxes and since I want to case this game along with the rest of my games, anyone up to the challenge of making a cover for Battle Kid?
