Gimmick! Special Edition Review (Rbon)
Gimmick! is the best game that no one played. It is the very definition of a hidden gem and a cult classic, and this is without a doubt the definitive version of the game.
In its original form, Gimmick! was a brutally difficult game, and if you wanted to get the "true" ending, you had to beat (almost) the whole game without using a continue. As someone who has gotten the true ending in the original version without save states, I am completely on-board with them adding save states and rewind to this version, and calling it "normal" mode, because the game is just that hard out of the box. That said, I love the decision to only allow you to collect achievements with the assist features turned off. It means the game retains its original challenge for those who want to seek it.
In addition, there is a speedrun mode, which tracks your splits for every level, for both the normal and true ending. I'm not involved with the speedrun community for this game, so I can't speak to the quality of the mode, but for the sake of giving this version a fair review, I did play through the game once in speedrun mode, and from my own casual perspective, it seemed to work just fine.
In terms of emulation quality, it's pretty great. Input latency is at a minimum, and without doing any fancy measurements, I didn't notice any latency at all while playing. Perhaps those more accustomed to playing the original version on a CRT will have a different experience, but I had no trouble at all with the controls. The video settings are pretty sparse though, with just a toggle between an integer scale of the original resolution, and zooming to fill the screen. I would have liked to see options for NTSC aspect ratio, as well as scan lines, but I know that for those who really care about such things, just having the game output a crisp integer-scaled output is enough, and other tweaks can be added using external means.
Overall, this is an excellent version of an excellent game, and with the new quality-of-life features, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to people of all skill levels. If you enjoy 2D platformers, you can hardly go wrong with this one. The only thing I will say is that, depending on the difficulty mode you choose, and your own skill level, this game can be quite short. If you end up beating the game on normal mode, and still find yourself hungry for more game, then try it again in "serious" mode, and go for the achievements. That should give you something to really sink your teeth into.