 It's not strong. By 1990, Capcom had developed a variety of great platformers for the NES. The Mega Man series, Bionic Commando, Ghosts and Goblins, plus all the Disney games like DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, and Darkwing Duck. There might have been some pressure to add something new to the platformer genre. Something to add a twist to an ever-expanding NES library, lest their game get lost in a sea of them. So Capcom came up with Little Nemo, the Dream Master. It's a pretty traditional platformer at first glance, except your character doesn't really attack or jump on enemies or anything. You have to feed monsters candy until they go into kind of a sugar coma, I guess. Then you take over their form somehow. Uh, okay? Yeah, I mean, sometimes if you want to come up with something different, it helps to smoke a little doobage once in a while, or, you know, puff some gasoline, or do some whippets or something. Nah, the game is actually based off of the anime film Little Nemo, Adventures in Slumberland, which is based off of the original Little Nemo comic created by Windsor McRae. So who's to say what kind of mind-altering drugs that guy did a hundred years ago? Anyway, this is a precursor to Kirby's Dreamland and Kirby's Adventure, where Little Nemo here can change into various forms depending on what monsters he gets drunk on candy. At which point, you use your given monster's ability to find a collection of keys scattered throughout a series of open-ended stages. I do really like the idea behind this game, but I don't think certain aspects were explored far enough. Little Nemo is not as open-ended as you'd think. For example, I would have liked to have been able to use any monster I wanted for different parts of the game, but overall the game is pretty linear. Like here, you have to use the ape to climb the tree to get to the next stage. Take a game I reviewed a few weeks ago, Avenging Spirit. There, you can possess pretty much whoever you want, and that gives the game a ton of replay value because you can finish the game in a variety of different methods. I'm not saying that to slag on Little Nemo, it's a perfectly good game. In fact, I remember at the time this game came out that this game was derided because it came across as a knee-jerk reaction to the growing outcry that, quote unquote, video games were too violent. So I remember my friends dismissing the game entirely. A game where your weapon is candy? Come on. But yeah, as you can see, it's a perfectly fine and well-made game. There are some great visuals here. The cutscenes look fantastic. I especially like the expressive faces, and that each level is visually diverse. The music is also as good as you'd expect from a 90s Capcom game. Keep in mind, though, that this game is a great example of classic NES difficulty. The respawning here is out of control, along the lines of Ninja Gaiden. If you're familiar with these problems, then that won't be a big deal. If you're not, then prepare to tear your hair out. So yeah, Little Nemo is definitely an interesting story and an intriguing idea for a game. It absolutely stands out among its NES peers. My suggestion, however, would be that if you like Little Nemo, take time to check out Avenging Spirit for Game Boy on the 3DS Virtual Console, and of course Kirby's Dreamland and Kirby's Adventure as well if you haven't already.