 Two things stand out right away about Hook. Number one is that it's the rare case when a 16-bit game based on a movie is actually good. Number two is that this game is immediately familiar. A few months ago I did a review on Sky Blazer, which had the exact same developer and publisher as Hook did. Ukiyatai and Sony ImageSoft respectively. But in a weird twist, Hook actually came out first in October 1992. Sky Blazer didn't come out until January of 1994, and that game has nearly the exact same guts as Hook, a movie-licensed game. I don't know, to me, that's really surprising. I mean, there's no incentive for a movie-licensed game to be good. The game's gonna sell if you like the movie attached to it, but Hook was good enough to actually have a copycat game, that's impressive. The comparison is a lot like Soldier's Affortune, or Chaos Engine, and True Lies, although in that case the movie-licensed game was the copycat, as you'd expect. Anyway, while Hook and Sky Blazer look and play in very, very similar ways, Hook has a much slower and deliberate pace, and for this reason, I think I'd rather play Sky Blazer. But Hook is still a pretty well-made piece of work, with all sorts of nice little touches. One I really like in particular, is that when you're dealing with the Lost Boys at the beginning of the game, when you hit someone, instead of exploding or blinking into obscurity or anything like that, the enemy simply raises his hands and surrender with a sad look on his face. I really like that. The level design is diverse the same way Sky Blazer is. You can fly, but only with the help of Tinkerbell. I do like how that's handled in this game, kind of like the balloons that inflate Mario in Super Mario World. You have to keep finding Tinkerbell every so often to stay in the air, although, uh, not entirely sure what's going on there. The levels are usually pretty long and offer some variety, with some that favor exploration, some that are entirely just flying, some with underwater sections, it's well done. They also do a nice job implementing a different strategy for each boss. The only flaws are, like I said earlier, you move so slowly, so that's kind of a bummer, and also the hit detection is a bit weird at times. The biggest surprise this game offers, in my opinion, is the music. Holy crap, the entire soundtrack sounds fantastic. If you close your eyes while playing this, you'll think you're playing a square soft game, with music by Umatsu. While the game only replicates the music from the movie, it does a hell of a job doing so, and is a lot of fun to listen to. Now, while Hook may be a movie licensed game, it doesn't exactly follow the movie as much as it follows the original Peter Pan story, and all the better if you ask me, as the movie story is as boring as it gets, and would make for a lousy game. As it is, you track down Captain Hook in the hopes of saving Maggie and Jack, and the lost boys are involved in all that. It's also worth mentioning that this game is nothing like the NES game, which was as lousy as it got. It even earned a spot on an angry video game nerd video. So yeah, I'd give Hook a surprising recommendation for some nice variety in the level design, and the strong soundtrack. It goes for an average of $8 on eBay if you want the cartridge. Also, if you like this game, I strongly recommend checking out Sky Blazer, which I think is even better.