izigame.me

Gimmick! is a 1992 NES title from Sunsoft that was originally only released in Japan and several Scandinavian territories. Despite it’s wonderfully colourful look and adorable character designs, it’s an unforgiving platformer that mixes puzzle and precise platforming with some light combat and emphasizes inertia. It has been quite well known for decades now, way before being released in this new emulated Special Edition that includes several quality of life features. And it’s also a miserable experience for anyone who hates replaying the games over and over again to learn their patterns.
The game is full of surprising details and ideas, though. Every level has completely unique one-off moments and characters, the main combat mechanic is also a potential movement mechanic and the game does some things that weren’t common during the era and are almost reminiscent of the immersive sim approach. About that combat mechanic – you generate and throw a big star that bounces around the world with expected inertia. It cannot be generated again until the existing one disappears. And it can also carry you if you happen to jump on it or it “catches” you in a specific way. It’s really cool if not for the fact that it’s also unreliable, frustrating to pull off and in most times where it’s required (either for a secret good ending path or just for progress), failing to do it correctly leads to death.
Though not even that is my biggest problem with the game. Rather, it’s the amount of “gotcha” moments it has. You can get damaged or killed immediately upon entering a new screen, there are traps (some of which instantly kill you) everywhere that are often hard to avoid unless you know they are there, some bosses have extremely particular ways you can damage them that are not even always obvious… And on top of that, to get the “true” ending of the game, you have to get all of the extremely tough to get secrets and do it without using a single “continue”. This approach to “difficulty” was transferred even to this Special Edition, where the ability to save state or rewind is only available in the Normal mode of the game, which also doesn’t give you any achievements. Because only the true hardcore gamers can get those, I guess. I can see some people enjoying this title, but for me it was a frustrating experience and I’d never want to play this game again.