 ...C'mon... That's drunk. On the surface, Wurlo looks like an ordinary run of the mill platformer, but there's a lot going on in this game. This one was developed in 1992 by NOVA, who made lots of licensed games that stayed in Japan. Everything from 3x3 eyes, to Gundam, to the Super Wagon Land games. Wurlo did get a release outside of Japan, but stuck to PAL regions, so this one never made its way to the US. What you may not know, however, and what's not really evident from playing through this one, is that Warlo is actually part of a series. This is the third game in the Valkyrie series, which started on Famicom in the mid-80s with Valkyrie, Noboken, Tokinokagi, Densetsu, which had the follow-up Valkyrie, No Densetsu, for arcades before hitting the PC engine in 1990. Warlo is a prequel to those two games, with Warlo actually being named Krinozandra in Japan, with this game telling the story of all the events leading up to how he met the Valkyrie. And man, oh man, this story is surprisingly dark. One day, Warlo, or Xandra, is hanging out, having a good time doing Warlo things, I guess, before there's a huge explosion somewhere, and it starts raining ash, and anyone who touches it dies of a horrible disease. Warlo's young son catches this illness, so Warlo sets out to find a cure. So yeah, despite appearances here, this is not your typical hop and bop, bright and cheerful platformer. You have to save your family from a plague for God's sake, and not only that, this game has multiple bad endings if you take the wrong path after talking with certain NPCs, which I'll get to in a little bit. The point is, this game is brutal. Sure, you do get seven lives with a password system to get through eight huge worlds divided up into different stages, and yeah, that many lives seems pretty forgiving, but holy crap, this game is way too hard. Warlo has one hit deaths, Contra-style. Plus, all the special moves at your disposal leave you vulnerable for a second, whether it's your trident getting stuck in the ground if you miss a Scrooge McDuck-style downward attack, or getting dazed from missing a charged attack and hitting a wall, or just absorbing too much fall damage, which leaves you stunned for a while. This is one of those games where you have to be pixel perfect with everything you do, and the game is not shy about punishing you if you're not, and because of that, this is legitimately one of the hardest Super Nintendo games out there. Also, look at this game over screen. Good lord, this is dark. This cutesy little green dude trying to save his sick son gets transformed into a heartless minion, doomed to serve a demon for all of eternity. Geez, why don't you just kick him in the green balls while he's down already? Thankfully, the password system consists of symbols instead of Japanese characters here, and the password automatically fills in if you want to continue. Man, so many games make you type in the password all over again, so I really appreciate that small quality of life touch here. Also, I should mention about the difficulty. This isn't one of those cheap ass games that kills you with nonsensical stuff, like the viewpoint arbitrarily cutting off, or hitbox wonkiness, or whatever. Warlo is very consistent. It's hard as hell, but at least it's earned difficulty, not cheap crap. Yeah, you may get bothered by how wimpy your character tends to be, especially the fact that he seemingly takes forever to recover from a missed attack, but the game does reward you appropriately when you execute stuff the way you're supposed to. I liken this game to Super Ghouls and Ghosts in that way. Yeah, it's rigid, but if you charge into this game like it's any other platformer like Mario or something, you're gonna have a bad time. It's a bit like a puzzle platformer where first you gotta figure out the right inputs in a given area, then you gotta figure out the right timing. It's pretty well done if you approach it that way. Speaking of puzzles, there are some text puzzles here that you have to solve appropriately to proceed with the game. It's pretty much just a quiz where you have to memorize certain character traits like, this guy's a good drummer, or this guy has a beard and plays the flute or whatever. What, are you looking for Ian Anderson? There's quite a bit of this stuff for better or for worse. For me personally, it got kind of old. I was enjoying the game and found it annoying to be interrupted by these sequences, but hey, you might like them. They certainly helped the game stand out as something different. But to me, this game is enjoyable just because of all the different stuff Warlow is able to do. Y is a normal attack with your Trident or Pitchfork or whatever. B is a normal jump, but hold the A button down to do a charge jump that helps him jump nearly as high as the screen. Hold the X button, and Warlow does a pop-by-like fist wind-up that has him charge with his Trident in mid-air. You can also do a spinning attack if you press Y while in mid-air, which is pretty handy. What's most frustrating of all about this game isn't just the rigid difficulty, it's that it's a bit hard to finish to make sure you get a good ending. I did finish this one twice and got two bad endings, but I blame my own stubborn curiosity leading me to paths I probably shouldn't have taken. Giving different answers to different characters will send you down different paths, and yeah, on paper, it seems like it should be straightforward, and I think I was overthinking things a bit, but yeah, just be forewarned in that regard. It's just kind of lousy to take the time to refine your skill at such a difficult game only to be met with a crappy ending. That's probably my fault, but I'm just throwing it out there as a warning. So yeah, Warlow is pretty good, but be forewarned, this is not a typical pick-up-and-play game. It's a pick-up-and-die-a-bunch-and-practice-and-get-better game. It certainly has all the usual bells and whistles going for it, the music is great, the visuals are pretty solid, and throughout the eight different worlds you run into a ton of different characters in all sorts of different settings. This is a classic case of a game you might dismiss on the surface, but dang, there is a lot here, and dang, this game is hard. I should mention one small bit of trivia in that this game was re-released once in August of 1998 as part of the Satellaview service where you could download the game onto a flash cartridge provided at the time by Nintendo Power. But ever since then, this game has not been available, so this is another one you've got to play any way you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!