Jeremy Parish
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NES Works Episode 121: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Amagon
🕑 Added 2023-12-27 13:15:01 +0000 UTCSorry about ending the year on a pair of stinkers. But on the plus side, it means things can only get better in 2024. Right???
I did not deliberately pair these games based on their mutual theme of heroes who turn into a raging monster of a man. It just kind of worked out that way. Sometimes, the universe is funny like that. Although honestly the fun ends the moment you experience either of these games. Bad games are sad like that.
Comments
Scott Rothman
I was poking around my library and tried Amagon on a whim. The art and animation gave me very high hopes but good lord is it a miserable game.
Vinushika
New and inventive forms of wretchedness - that's the Bandai publishing guidelines right there. The description of speedrunners as living a monastic existence is both hilarious and remarkably true; I know a WR holder in one of the Mega Man games and she lives off giant blocks of tofu and miso broth like an actual monk. It's inspiring, in its own way. I don't believe anyone has gone in quite this depth to understand the horrors of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and it's really nice to see it all laid out bare as a furiously ambitious game written by people who could not even realize a quarter of it. The decision to cut half the levels is somewhat baffling, but this was the era of the memory shortage, so it's perhaps understandable. Mentioning a Kaizo hack atmosphere for Amagon is an interesting concept, in that I think you could turn Amagon into an all-time classic with ROM hacking efforts. The meat to make it into a good game is all there, and with a kinder hand it could be.
