 It's always strange browsing through the Super Nintendo library when you notice which properties did and did not get their own video games. Now forgetened TV shows like Time Tracks and King Arthur and the Nights of Justice got their own titles, but not G.I.Joe or Transformers. Movies like Lawnmoreman and Toys got games, but other movies like The Crow and Nightmare Before Christmas did not. A movie called No Escape also got its own game for both Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis toward the end of 1994, and this was one of those movies that came and went in a matter of a couple of weeks. It's not a great movie, but if you're into the action genre then it's fine for what it is, but a largely forgettable genre movie getting its own game like this was still pretty weird. What's even weirder is that they did not skimp on the production here. I know a lot of folks are used to licensed games getting the NES treatment where it's just a bunch of stuff thrown together, but in No Escape there's a full three-minute long story sequence that's told at the beginning of the game. You play as Captain Robbins and you're convicted of murdering your commanding officer before you're dumped onto a prison island, which is split up into two different groups of convicts. And what is going on with this guy's face? Is he talking with a mouthful of cotton candy? Meanwhile the security guard back there as high as hell just trying to get through his day. The movie stars Ray Leota, Ernie Hudson, and Lance Henriksen, and I should mention quickly that no, neither this movie or the corresponding game have anything to do with the Atari 2600 game No Escape, at least as far as I know. You get a health meter with four lives and three continues to get through at least eight levels that are split up into a few stages each with no battery saver password system. And uh-oh, this is one of those games that tries to get too cute with the sprite animation. Everything your character does has a delay to it because it has to wind up so to speak, like when you do a roll to dodge melee damage, something you'll be doing a lot in this game, you press a downward diagonal plus the B button and there's a split second delay so the game can show off this totally radical combat roll man. In the past I've talked about how important it is to get the balance right between your character's range of motion and the level design, but I don't know if I've ever seen a 16-bit game get it more wrong than No Escape. Your character is made to be slow and deliberate, which is fine I guess, but each level has a booby trap every four or five steps and there's no way you can react quickly enough to dodge anything, even if you know it's coming. I mean if you want to just make a difficult pick-up-and-die style game that's cool just make sure your character isn't slow and plotting first with goofy sprite animations that get in the way of actual gameplay. Not only that, this is another one of those awkward games where the hitboxes are wonky, like in order to beat this guy in this one-on-one fight early on, you have to dodge his weapon and roll right on top of him so you can, uh, kick his shins till he falls over. You do that with all these enemies, including these guys wearing conquistador helmets, these big lumbering dudes that throw axes, guys that try and kill you with blowdarts. Safe to say the combat in this game is not great, but believe it or not this game does have some interesting stuff going for it. For instance when you complete the first level that's when you visit your camp, where who else but a 16-bit version of Lance Hendrickson himself greets you. At this screen you can trade items based on what the upcoming level requires, and there's all sorts of characters in the camp that you can trade with. The column on the left is what's already in your inventory that you've picked up so far, and the column on the right is what you can trade it for. To give one example of how trading works, the game tells you you'll need a flashlight with batteries to access this level here, so you'll have to trade in the correct sequence from each person in your camp so you can eventually obtain both those items. This game even has crafting. You press select to get to your inventory, and you can select up to four items to fill in the row on the bottom of the screen there, and it's actually pretty intuitive. You just select any combo of items to see if they'll make something that you need, or more specifically something someone in your camp needs that you can trade. This isn't the most complex game mechanic, but I was pretty dang impressed to see this game featured a decent crafting and trading system. There's over a hundred and fifty objects you can find and make, everything from a crossbow to a blowtorch. Not only that, but the manual features tons of text breaking down what each character in your camp actually does and what they're usually keen to trade for. It's actually pretty neat, and it kind of reminds me of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves for NES, although that might just be because of all the goofy portraits. One more thing I want to point out quickly, for the final boss fight a helicopter shows up and this is the sound it makes. No, there's nothing wrong with your speakers or your earbuds, that's actually how the game sounds. Just this charring clipping sound. I don't remember a Super Nintendo game ever having anything like that before. It sounds like I accidentally dropped a fork down into the garbage disposal. So yeah, no escape is surprising in both good and bad ways. I was stunned to see the amount of depth in the manual and the effort that was put into what's otherwise a throwaway forgotten game. It's just too bad a lot of the effort was misguided when it came to developing the basic gameplay. Seriously, this one is such a pain to play through, and you'll know what I mean, even if you played two minutes into this one. You can also slog your way through this one on Genesis if you'd like, and it's nearly the exact same game with only minor differences. I do appreciate the effort that went into the crafting and trading system here, but the platforming and combat sections are just awful to the point that I can't recommend this one. Alright, that's all for now. I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.