Mr. Nutz

Sega Genesis/Megadrive version..

Having played this once then again a few months apart my view of the game changed from modest annoyance to total frustration.

level 1 was hard in part due to when dying you are put back at the start of the level,then you have to kill all of the enemies again while trying to reach where you died before.

The health is about as common as gold dust,so hard to find or reach as often you need to jump onto a spider to get it,enemies either just appear or jump out of nowhere,or they throw objects at you when off screen when you don't even know they are there!

You can't avoid the multitude of blighters that regularly mob you,birds harass you,scarecrows throw their heads your way,and worst there these little guys,rats or bugs they can't be shot,so shooting anything,it just flies over their heads if you have any ammo at all which is another annoying thing.

You have a tail swipe but you have to be quick and face the right way or they injure you.

The ammo,it's really a no brainer in platforms games especially in this era in game like this,as jumping around won't protect you,so you can't shoot anything unless you have enough ammo,so getting the apples to be able to defend yourself is beyond tedious,then when you do they just fly straight in a line,they are useless against the tiny enemies,you'll often shoot at a normal sized enemy, they don't travel in an arc so its harder to hit anything if it moves or you suddenly are higher then they are.

Everything is dangerous to you so there's never a feeling of being able to explore or to have any fun,the game never lets up as you get hacked to pieces continually as ladybirds,spiders or mice armed with razor boomerangs target you.

There's a credits system and a password for each level,but it all feels like too little too late,it's not paced well,it's just too hard,the ammo situation is executed badly as you need to shoot almost everything so having 0 apples is going to be a problem,and jumping on enemies can cost health,to the point it just seems like they couldn't be bothered to make the game work in a fair way.

There's multitudes of tiny platforms that bounce you every way but the one way you want to go are beyond idiotic,navigating tree branches that are too short combined with the sloppy jumping equals you falling off easily,the jumping arcs differ so you can end up falling a long way in a critical moment.

All of the the enemies have too much ambiguity in how you can kill them,a lot jump around,others throw things from off screen,some hide in trees and hit you with a mallet,so you're always worried about if something will surprise you,or how to kill them,or how you get past more than one type of enemy which is a common occurrence.

Levels that promise fun and a challenge are just boring slogs,filled with tens of tough enemies going hell for leather as you have to contend with a hack and slash mentality from the game makers.

In all it's badly paced,badly realised,poorly thought out,sloppy game mechanics combine with intense enemies that are impossible to avoid,cheap dirty tricks with the way enemies appear or play dirty in how they fight,there's no ammo unless you go looking it great pains,almost no checkpoints,a pretender that pales to Sonic,Zool,New Zealand Story,or any Platformer ever made.

Unfair does not equal challenging,it equals lazy,rushed and a waste of time,a wasted opportunity with good looking sprites and characters,it just boils down to a dog's dinner of a hard boring totally forgettable frustrating game.