 Thanks to Ivan for the request via Patreon, if you grew up in the 1990s, you'll no doubt remember the movie The Mask, not to be confused with the 1985 movie Mask, starring Cher and Eric Stoltz. The 1994 film is loosely based on a comic series from Dark Horse Comics and stars Jim Carey at his Jim Carriest. Now I know that may sound awful to some people, Jim Carey was kind of the Jerry Lewis of the 90s, either you loved the guy or you hated him, but in the case of The Mask and subsequently the Mask video game for Super Nintendo, Jim Carey's, uh, Jim Cariness is perfectly used and really makes for great video game fodder, and as a result The Mask is elevated from a blatant video game cash-in to a halfway decent platformer. If you've seen the movie then you'll recognize all the mannerisms and cartoonish craziness here. And that's this game's biggest strength by far. The sprite work here is very well done and captures the vibe of the film perfectly, so if you liked the movie you'll like this game, simple as that. But considering it's nearly 2018 and we're looking at a game made in 1995, I can't imagine there are that many fanatics for The Mask in this day and age, so I have to ask if this game is worth playing on its own merits as an action platformer. And it kinda is and it kinda isn't. This isn't a bad game by any stretch, but it's got some problems. You wander around through seven gigantic levels collecting money and taking out enemies with a boxing glove punch attack and a mallet attack straight out of the movie, in addition to a ton of special moves like a Tasmanian devil style tornado and these giant cartoon guns. You trigger these by holding up and pressing either A, B or X, except for the slide which is down and R. Everything but the punching attack is tied to the number in the lower left corner, it's kind of like your ammo meter, and of course there are a lot of ammo replenishments throughout each level. The attacks are all great looking but the punch attack is pretty limited and it's basically your go-to attack since it doesn't cost anything, so most boss fights are just wars of attrition. It would have been nice to have more opportunities to use the crazy special attacks more often, but instead you're wasting your ammo on stuff like jumping. The biggest problem with the mask though is the level design, there's certain stuff here that's either annoying as hell or just not intuitive at all, like the opening level here, where the hell do I go? Oh I'm supposed to let myself get sucked into a vent? Okay. Also the beginning of the second level is incredibly annoying, you have to jump up these narrow platforms while people dump bags of trash out their windows, ugh. The platforming mechanics here aren't terrible but they're not exactly the most polished either, but at least you get this cool animation of your character squashing into the ground as he lands. But yeah, that's pretty much the game right there, you get 7 huge landscapes to explore. And to the game's credit there are tons of hidden areas with extra items that you can find, but in terms of gameplay there's not really anything that makes the mask stand out from any other ordinary platformer, the enemy design is pretty bland and the boss design isn't anything all that noteworthy either, and the music is just kind of there. This game isn't as blah as something like Super Alfred Chicken and it's not as insulting as a game like Terminator 2, but I mean if you were to describe this game to a friend it'd be difficult to describe the gameplay as anything other than, well it's a platformer, you run around and fight stuff. Like I said earlier the only thing that makes the mask stand out is the sprite work of the main character, it's fantastic, but other than that there's not a whole lot else here to talk about. Whether or not you want to play this one today boils down to asking, do you like the footage you see here, do you like the movie, then you'd like the game. If the answer is no to both then I wouldn't bother, instead I would wait until someone makes a ROM hack of this game that makes it based on the Cher and Eric Stoltz film instead.