 |
Milon's Secret Castle Developer: Hudson? Based on: The erroneous notion that aimlessly searching for invisible items everywhere is inherently fun. |
Time for a little break from Master System stuff. Also, I'm pretty much out of my crummy limited-play SMS games; the stuff remaining on my stack is mostly more involving, higher-quality stuff like Zillion, Golvellius and Wonder Boy III' that deserves something akin to time, patience and objectivity.
So instead, let's talk about Milon's Secret Castle for NES.
I bought a copy of the game at the suggestion of Ben Turner, one of our esteemed competitors. Also, I think I remember a friend expressing some degree of fondness for the title at some point in the distant past. I, however, had never even touched it; as a pre-1988 game of no particular acclaim, it totally slipped below my radar. I mean, really, once I had played Mega Man 2? it was pretty hard to go back to first-gen NES games.
At first I thought Ben's recommendation was simply an attempt at friendliness, speaking as one fan of older games to another, but now I recognize his nefarious scheme for what it is:
A dastardly attempt to dissolve my brain into goo and give GameSpy a crippling victory over 1UP. The fiend.
Milon's Secret Castle is completely awful; and yet, it is simultaneously compelling. It actually reminds me a lot of Tower of Druaga or Deadly Towers or some other really annoying NES game with "tower" in the name, except that it's not wretchedly unplayable. It adheres to that mysterious early-era Famicom design philosophy of being packed with an infinite array of hidden secrets which require an unbearable degree of luck and persistence to uncover. It is also ridiculously difficult -- Milon has just one life, and as the man said, "There are no continues, my friend."
(Actually, there are, but it's kind of a cheat.)
Despite the fact that the entire game is built around shooting every object in the room, pushing random blocks, smacking the ceiling with your head, and dying frequent, untimely deaths, it's still weirdly addictive.
It's the mysterious Rogue formula at work again: no one knows why, but games like this tap into a primal sense of obsessive compulsion. Everything seems so simple, but it's so hard, and so obtuse -- there's a weird feeling of accomplishment when you shoot the proper random block and manage to avoid dying pathetically.
Anyway, I figure this game would actually be quite a bit more enjoyable if it adhered to a few modern design conventions, particularly not being viciously difficult. Remember how when enemies in Kid Icarus ran into Pit, he cried and flashed invincible for like ten seconds? Yeah, well, Milon flashes invincible for a tenth of a second, and it's easy to lose your entire health meter in an instant by falling into a narrow area with an enemy. So I picked up an Game Genie from eBay and intend to cheat my way to success -- all hail Galoob. I'll report back once I can play the game without having to worry about all those endlessly respawning enemies and can focus on the important aspect, i.e. shooting walls until happiness comes out.