Gimmick! (NES, 1992)

Oh man, Gimmick! I don't even know what to say about this game. It's got a cult following, so there's a good chance you've heard of it. If you haven't, I probably know like, 8 people who definitely scoff at you about it. Some people call it Mr. Gimmick, which is weird to me, because the only version called Mr. Gimmick came out in Scandinavia. Not even like a full European release, just Scandinavia.

So Gimmick, from what I can gather from the cutscenes, is a stuffed animal? And the girl that owns him gets kidnapped in her sleep and he has to save her? I know she's in some pajamas when he finally rescues her. Edit: Okay, I looked at the wikipedia page, and I wasn't too far off-- "In the introduction animation, a young girl receives a doll named Yumetarō (ゆめたろー?) for a birthday present. She quickly favors the new doll over her previous toys who, jealous over abandonment, kidnap her and hold her captive in an alternate dimension inhabited only by toys. Yumetarō, as the protagonist, must track down his new owner and retrieve her from the toy world."

This game is pretty much amazing. First I want to talk about the music. It uses a variation of the FME-7 Chip called the Sunsoft 5-B, which was only ever used for this game. It's got a smaller version of the SN76489 chip from the Master System, Game Gear, with three extra square wave channels (but not the 4th noise generator from the SMS/GG). What's really great about the music is that instead of using the triangle channel for bass, and the DPCM channel for drum samples, kicks and snares are made with the triangle channel, and the DPCM channel is used to play back samples of an actual bass guitar. Here's a single youtube video of the entire soundtrack, 28 minutes, to give you an idea of what I mean).

On top of that, it looks amazing, and it's got some enemies that only show up once in the entire game. It also seems like one of the earlier examples of a "this game is trying to kill you" kind of game. There's tons of obstacles that only show up once or twice in the game. And you can't get to the REAL last level of the game without finding the secret bonus item hidden in each level.

Your only weapon is a star that you spawn above your head. It bounces along the ground until it loses enough momentum, and then disappears. The star's momentum is based on how high it's thrown from the ground. In addition to being a weapon, you can also ride on top of it, which will help you reach higher up areas.

This game is insanely difficult. It almost seems like Sunsoft knew that eventually we'd be using emulators with rewind buttons, cause beating it otherwise seems pretty impossible. I've uploaded the NES version here. Later on, Sunsoft started putting out it's Famicom classics on PSX, in the Sunsoft Memorial Series. Volume 6 was Gimmick! packaged with Super Spy Hunter. I've included a PSP EBOOT of this version, because it's only 12mb. Upside: the music is perfect, and you won't have to worry about whether your emulator can handle the soundchip. Downside: you won't be able to save or rewind, you fuckin' sadomasochist.