 Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Nass drunk! If you're around my age, and I'm 40, then when it comes to retro gaming, you're probably nostalgic for not one, but two different eras. One is for the games you grew up with, obviously, but the other is that golden period in the early-to-mid 2000s, before prices for picking up those same games weren't completely bonkers yet. I can remember getting stuff like Contra 3 complete in the box for less than $30, or games like Shadowrun or Legend of Mystical Ninja loose for like 20 bucks each. There were certain games that back then I considered to be off-limits though, like Little Samson for NES, which even back then was still somehow way too expensive. It goes for a few thousand these days, loose, so it's become a status symbol more than anything else. But that's another discussion entirely. The conversation that I'm more interested in is, what about the actual game? Is Little Samson any good? Boy, it should be funny if it wasn't, but nah, it's a pretty dang good game. It's got some of the same folks that worked on arcade games like Strider and Ghouls and Ghosts, and while it may not share a lot in common thematically with those titles, it does share the same kind of polish those games have. That's probably the biggest reason this game became so popular. It's got that same glossy, high quality, AAA level of workmanship. Little Samson was made by people who were not only big fans of games like this, but it was made by people who clearly knew what they were doing. And they took great care in the details, as opposed to a game where a dev team was merely just assigned a project. Sometimes when you get recommended hidden gems, there's usually something missing or something off that you're just willing to overlook. But Little Samson is a fully realized all around great action platformer, probably a top 20 NES game overall. What's really interesting, however, is that in a lot of ways, this game is extremely simple. There really isn't a whole lot in Little Samson that brought something new or innovative. In fact, in a lot of ways it's just rehashing stuff you're probably already very familiar with. If you've played Mario 3 or DuckTales or any number of action platformers, and you switch characters and weapons just like you do in Ninja Turtles and Mega Man, but it's just that this game executes the basics extremely well while providing a ton of variety and it makes for a game that's not only well worth playing, but well worth revisiting once in a while. The structure is late out Mega Man style. Where to start out with, you get four different levels to choose from, only each of the four has you playing as a different character. The first has you play as Little Samson himself, the most balanced character who shoots a projectile and can climb walls and ceilings. By the way, I should mention quickly, the game's story has nothing to do with the actual story of Samson or the ancient Israelites or anything like that. It's just a weird Taito localization change they made for whatever reason. Anyway, Kikira the Dragon is your hero for the second level, who can fly for five seconds at a time while shooting a fire projectile that arcs upward. There's Gam, who looks like a chibi version of The Thing. He's the slowest and strongest with the largest health meter, but a really slow punching attack, but at least he can walk on spikes no problem. And finally, there's K.O. the Mouse, who has a tiny life bar to the point of one hit deaths at first, but he's also the quickest, sporting a bomb similar to what Samus drops in her morph ball form. The Mouse can also climb walls and ceilings, and get through small passages that Samson cannot. Once you clear all four stages, you have to defeat Kikiri the Dragon in a one-on-one fight for some reason. The game doesn't really explain why, and it's actually a pretty tough boss battle. But once you get past that, the game finally opens up to a series of levels laid out in this overworld, and you've got all four characters at your disposal, each with their own health meters, and you can switch between them at any time by pressing start. And the level design here does an excellent job of laying out certain obstacles that only certain characters can get past, whether it's making yourself a smaller target by choosing the Mouse for really tough levels like this, or switching to the Golem so you can punch downward against ledges to fight these annoying skeleton dudes. At first, it seems like the Dragon is by far the most overpowered character. I mean, that's always my first instinct, just fly past everything. But the game puts the kibosh on that by eventually rolling out these really tough Mega Man-style levels with spikes, and enemies with Herald Miner's vertical leap popping up instantly out of nowhere, or this really tough part here with falling rocks and spikes where you have to constantly be switching between the Mouse and the Golem. That's the other thing Little Sampson has going for it. This game is a long playthrough, and it's pretty dang tough too. But this game is just so dang fun, flipping between characters and using different weapons that it all seems very manageable. There are really tough levels like this one, with disappearing platforms, there's your token, ice, and fire worlds. Seems kind of generic at a glance, but man, oh man, the graphics in this one look just awesome. This Dragon boss here looks badass. A lot of the backgrounds and settings look fantastic as well. Since I'm here, I should mention the music, and the music is fine, but the levels themselves don't have any tunes, only the character you're playing has, has their theme playing. Kind of a bummer since it's easy to get sick of hearing those themes, but it's not like the music is bad or anything. There's a couple other gameplay elements I should mention. You can upgrade your health for each character, as well as stash away an item that replenishes your health meter, kind of like an e-tank, so that's pretty cool. Unfortunately, however, Little Samson uses a password system instead of a battery save, so if you shut off your NES and come back to this game with a password, all your upgrades and items are gone. Another interesting thing about this game is that there is a substantial difference between easy and normal difficulty. Normal puts a cap on how much you can upgrade your health meter, and you've also got more enemies to deal with that pop-up all over the screen. There's also permadeath in normal mode. If one of your other three characters die, you can't select them again the rest of your playthrough. However, Samson will always trudge ahead, even if he dies. One quick aside here, and bear in mind this is mostly conjecture on my part, but there may be an actual reason this game is kind of rare. It was developed by Takeru in October 1992, a tiny company started by former Capcom developers Shinichi Yoshimoto, who directed the aforementioned Strider and Ghouls and Ghosts arcade games, and he was joined by Akira Kitamura, who of course created Mega Man, and Koichi Yatsui, who worked with Yoshimoto on developing Ghouls and Ghosts. Takeru made a couple games in the early 90s, one with the title Nostalgia 1907, a text adventure made for the X68000 computer and Mega Drive CD, as well as a few other computer systems, but it was a flop, and suddenly Takeru needed help. Turns out that having strong publishing muscle like Capcom on your side really does matter, so for Little Samson, they turned to Taito, and even then this game just didn't sell very well. So while we don't have any actual hard data, or sales figures or anything like that, the circumstantial evidence of a struggling developer selling a game for a console that a lot of people had already left behind, then well, yeah, it makes sense why there wouldn't be very many copies. Again, I really wish I had some hard evidence to go on like sales figures or something, so if anyone has anything, let me know in the comments. So yeah, Little Samson is mostly known for its comically overinflated price tag these days, but it should still be remembered for being a really good frickin' game. Again, there's not much new or innovative here, but there doesn't need to be, because the basics are done so well. It's really fun flipping between characters, especially since there's not usually an exact way to proceed through certain sections of the game. You can get creative with it, and that provides a ton of replay value. And again, the graphics here are just fantastic, some of the very best on the NES, so that helps a lot too. Little Samson has every bit of the same polish as some of the best NES games have, so for that reason, I'm always gonna recommend that you play this one any way you can. All right, I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.