why praise Nintendo
when you can blast Nintendo?
death to all mascots!
Additional Comments:
(Be forewarned: if you wish to appreciate Abobo's Big Adventure on your own time, perhaps through a blind run, take leave now as I will likely spoil everything and anything that appears in this game.)
But seriously, Abobo's Big Adventure is a beautiful tribute to the heralded 8-bit era of the NES. Apt? Maybe not, but beautiful for sure. And while it may not contain jabs at everyone's most beloved titles, it showcases a fair cross section of Nintendo's Entertainment System history including popular titles such as the obvious origins of our muscled protagonist, Abobo, Double Dragon, as well as Contra or Super Mario Bros., to some unexpected nods including Joust, Xevious or even Yo! Noid. Yo! Noid? That's certainly pulling some material from left field.
It's not all rainbows and unicorns though. Abobo's Big Adventure has a few hills to climb first, and I'll admit while looking for an arguably well designed Flash game, I held low expectations while scouting the field. Abobo's Big Adventure, in a way, voluntarily threw itself into a pretty deep hole from which it had to climb out. Considering it's a Flash game, a fan game, and not to mention a mashup of officially released IPs, essentially rendering it void of originality, it was obvious the game was going to have to come out of the gate swinging or face bitter embarrassment for all eternity. As far as Flash games go, there are quality games out there; not many, but enough to give unknown Flash titles the benefit of the doubt. When it comes to fan games and mashups, however, things can get a bit sketchier. Very few, if any fan games are honestly worth anyone's time. That's not to belittle the creators, but they're usually products of learning coding, a shortcut to quickly pop out a game, a lack of artistic talent causing the developer to fall back on ripping graphics from other IPs, or general lack of creativity on the developer's part. That being said, there are some decent fan games out there. SMBX: The Invasion 2 comes to mind, though it's not without its flaws, as does I Wanna Be the Guy - although IWBTG being a fan game is clearly debatable since the amount of original content far outweighs the derivative content. Point is, casting all fan games into the categorical pit of hell without a shred of regret is a bit harsh. It's intriguing the two aforementioned games were chosen for comparison since both of them tie in with the third area of concern: mashups. Consider it serendipitous. Obviously, I Wanna Be the Guy plays this up more so than The Invasion 2, but in either case, I found it works.
Abobo's Big Adventure in many respects reminds me of I Wanna Be the Guy, but there's obvious disconnect between the two games on a multitude of levels. To compare them apples to apples is pointless because mechanically and stylistically they couldn't be further apart. Therefore, outside of its mashup utilization quality any sort of comparison is pretty much for naught. But that's the key: pulling resources from a bevy of games and tossing them all into the pot, except Abobo's Big Adventure likely used a witch's cauldron to fit all of its borrowed materials. The fear with this approach, however, is chaos and quickly reading up on the game, chaos loomed as a serious potential threat. Just looking at the splash screen on the game's website, it's easy to pick out Piranha Plants, as well as a Cheep Cheep and Trouter from the Mario franchise, but there's more: Kirby, Bub from Bubble Bobble, a Blue Virus from Dr. Mario, and a Big Fish and Penpen Maker from Mega Man 2 and 3 respectively. That's just to name a few. There's far more sprites tossed into that pile of Abobo's rampant genocide, but that's enough to gauge a base line as far as limits, or lack thereof, when it comes to IP inclusion.
Perhaps one can look at the above list and imagine a prospective platformer. It's possible. While Bub and a Blue Virus may hamper the idea slightly, it's still theoretically possible. And that's the magic of Abobo's Big Adventure. The game not only took these sprites, but took so much more: backgrounds, music, play mechanics and somehow conjured a well crafted hash of everything Nintendo in all its 80s glory. Whether you're punching the daylights out of White Spy in Double Dragon's Mission I, spitting Cheep Cheeps at a Lantern Fish in Super Mario Bros.'s funky underwater physics, defeating the Grim Reaper in a lovable twin-ballooned romp, or cutting Ryu down to size as you climb the Waterfall, it somehow all works. Unlike the expected, and almost certain chaos, the developer's meticulous planning of where, when, and how is easily sensed and appreciated. Even when something appears to be wildly out of place, for example the Goombas slowly ambling across Mission I, little Excitebike riders plummeting to their doom, but not before attempting to burst Abobo's balloons, or gunning down a hovering SOPHIA in Quick Man's stage, the context can be rationalized given how the gameplay mechanics differ from one stage to the next. Would this work in a beat 'em up stage or in a run 'n gun environment? Every sprite is carefully adapted into their new environs and as such nothing ever detracts from the given mechanic for that stage which I applaud because, yes, there are a number of weird choices given their natural habitats in terms of original mechanics.
However, while most stages worked, especially the Zelda and Balloon Fight parodies, the Mario stage felt clumsy. Abobo's marriage with SMB-styled water physics and Yoshi's tongue really marred what was otherwise a well made mashup. It's very possible the controls are to blame for this level's wonky execution since the controls seemed backwards for this one stage compared to the rest of the game. In fact, I kept going back and forth regarding where I wanted my "A" and "S" buttons mapped on my controller. Every other stage felt natural - just with fidgety control issues common to most Flash and/or fan games that can be easily overlooked considering - but for this one stage I was desperately fighting the controls no matter how I mapped them. As such, any potential enjoyment out of a Bubble Man and SMB water pairing fell flat. I loved the premise of the pair as it may have been one of the most accessible in the entire game, but frustration of the controls ruined the experience for me.
Other instances of dubiousness included the Pro Wrestling stage but that's only because I'm unfamiliar with the original title. Fortunately, I'm familiar with WWF Wrestlemania and the two games appear to be extremely similar. Still, most of my issues with this stage likely stemmed from a lack of fore knowledge, at least enough to ascertain quirks between the original and Abobo's reinterpretation and whether or not my struggles with the mechanics were simply down to bad reinvention. Albeit, once I started replaying levels in hopes of churning out any of the missing achievements, or medals as they're called here, I grew accustomed to Pro Wrestling's stiff and somewhat latent controls.
My biggest bout of frustration came from the final stage, but only because, like Pro Wrestling, I've never played Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! The game has just never appealed to me despite the praise it receives from nearly every retro gamer under the sun. I got all the boxing excitement I've ever needed from a video game from either Boxing on the 2600 or Boxing on the Intellivision to last me a lifetime. Sure, those may both be cringe-worthy titles to be throwing about, but I enjoyed them for the short amount of time I played them and they handled all my boxing needs. Street cred, which I believe is what Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! thrives on more than anything, isn't enough to warrant casual perusal. Nevertheless, my lack of familiarity with the game proved to be my downfall. Again, much like Pro Wrestling, I'm uncertain how faithful the controls are as I have no benchmark. And, once again, like Pro Wrestling, the controls felt incredibly stiff and overridden with a ridiculous amount of latency. But somehow, despite heavily emphasizing reflexes, I imagine the controls in the original game being just as slow and stubborn as they are here. Because of this, I felt like I truly had nothing to blame save my own skill, and boy did it take a beating.
Thanks to Contra's push to enter the Konami code to survive the hells of the Jungle and the Waterfall, I had more than enough lives to go around by the time I had to face off againt Little Mac. But all the lives in the world couldn't spare me the embarrassment of being K.O.d before the end of the first round. I think once I made it to the second round by mere survival, but failed to ever take Little Mac down even a single time. My dodges were slow, my punches ill-timed, and my overall method sloppy. My reliance on reflexes were daftly traded for button mashing after several rounds of ire, which only made things worse since Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! doesn't even remotely rely on any sort of button mashing. But that's the magic of frustration - pitting us into a hopeless downward spiral from which we'll never recover...until you walk away and take a breather that is. Down to my final life, that's exactly what I did. If there was a way to skip all the cutscene garbage before the final level, like you can in the entire rest of the game, a game over would have mattered naught to me; otherwise, I wasn't going down without a fight.
In a final act of desperation, when a hero is in their darkest hour, that tiny spark of hope and determination blossomed as it always does if every story ever is to be believed and I'll be damned but I buried that son of bitch as I looked death in the eye. I was out of my chair screaming in excitement that I bested that motherfucker when up to this point I was lucky if I landed more than a couple spectacular punches. I'm not just talking about phase one either. I somehow plowed through both phases with enough grit and determination to make even the most hard bitten cowboy proud. I'd liken the level of victory to that when I finally beat the clock in Fable's stupid card sorting debacle. It's interesting to think what sort of challenges manage to exude such celebration. Though, to be fair, Abobo's Big Adventure duly deserves it seeing how it awarded my efforts with a beautiful yet tragically depressing end sequence. Oh, Abobo. How can you be so cruel?
It'd be hard to pin down the best parts of the game. For sure, as I mentioned earlier, the Zelda and Balloon Fight segments would rank up there, though bias might play into that. Although, to credit bias for the Balloon Fight stage isn't actually possible considering my first real experience with the game is NES Remix. I've always been aware of the game. I've just never had a chance to play it, and based on initial reactions after buying Astro Robo Sasa for the Famicom a couple years back, which has very similar physics, I had a feeling I'd enjoy it should the chance ever arise. It just took a couple of quirky titles for that chance to finally rear its head. Then of course there's stages based on Mega Man 2, Double Dragon, and even Urban Champion, which is not without its charm. But the highlight has got to be the Contra levels. Everything meshes together so perfectly and the Kirby battles are well done. The first battle can be slightly bemoaned for having some blind spots, but given the awesomeness of the battle, I don't even care, nor should anyone else.
Again, maybe it's nostalgia for Contra, a game I haven't played in god knows how many years, but these two stages is where the overall game just comes together and seamlessly fits like a glove. Yet out of all the levels, there's probably more kooky cameos going on than anywhere else in the game: Rambo, RoboCop, Jason Voorhees, the Toxic Avenger - it's like all of Nintendo's IPs original based on movies found their home in the jungles of Galuga. Surprised the likes of the Terminator, Bill & Ted, John McClane, Max Rockatansky, Wayne Campbell, Conan, and Willow, among many others, failed to make appearances here, though I suppose Jaws broke the mold by appearing elsewhere. To be fair, some of the other stages have outlandish cameos as well, but none of them seem to be as focused as Contra's in the variety of oddballs that somehow seem to belong together.
Despite taking issue with the controls at times, the game is brilliant and considering it hits up all three of gaming's black marks, it pulls through victoriously. I'd only ever recommend a Flash game solely for a good laugh or its poignant representation of gaming irony - Super Press Space to Win Adventure RPG 2009, anyone? - but Abobo's Big Adventure is so much more than a simple Flash game. It's more than a simple fan game for that matter. The game has far exceeded my expectations, considering its roots in gaming mediocrity. Hell, even disregarding its connection with the blasé, the game has impressed me immensely. As such, I can't help but imagine what the game could have been had it been coded outside of the Flash medium. Perhaps it would be no different. After all Flash can be a powerful tool in the right hands as this game certainly proved. Still....
Verdict? I would gladly recommend Abobo's Big Adventure to any avid gamer, in fact I already have, and especially name it a must play to any die hard NES enthusiast. Kudos to the developers for proving that not all Flash/fan/or mashups have to be detestable garbage clogging up the internet for the sole purpose of YouTube poops or bored Let's Players. And kudos for taking the time to make a quality piece of work out of what could have easily been a tragically, chaotic hodgepodge of 8-bit memories.
Nano-Win:
Bonus content starring Falcor!? Are you fucking kidding me!? Why has this never been a thing until now!?
Seriously, how has such a game, no matter the genre - though Falcor's Fast Food style antics found here are just epic - never been made? It should have been a lock. What the hell, Konamis and Capcoms, Sunsofts and Taitos, Bandais and FCIs of the 80s? What the hell LJN? You saw too it that every other movie was made into a game by one of your many marionette developers. Why not something that actually would have made for a brilliant game for once? Why'd it take nearly 30 years before a group of guys making a fan game finally decided to make this happen? I suppose the difference in years can be to blame although movie games existed on the 2600 as well - Porky's....what? But come on, the Blue Brothers got a game and that came out in 1980, so...no excuse.
Rating: 4 sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads out of 5*
*Ok, a bit outside NES fare, but given the context of the situation, it's just so fitting.
