 ceiling! Ssssssssssssssssssssss That's drunk! With the arrival of stuff like the NES classic, SNES Classic, and all the other new plug and play retro systems, lots of people are rediscovering older games they'd forgotten about, and as a result many folks are now getting their kids into retro games as well. To try and help out, I made a video about the best kid-friendly games on the Super Nintendo a year ago but I have to admit there's one glaring one I forgot, and Believe it or not, it's Super Widget. This one's actually a licensed game based on the cartoon Widget the World Watcher, which aired for 65 episodes between 1990 and 1992. You play as a 4 foot tall purple alien who's named Widget, and he's hell-bent on protecting the Earth from evildoers who pollute and exploit the Earth's environment and natural resources for profit. And before you say this is a rip-off of Captain Planet, this show arrived just about at the same time as that show did, although in my opinion Widget is slightly less overbearing and obnoxious, and the art style and design has more of a Hanna-Barbera feel to it. Widget first arrived on the NES as just your standard side-scrolling platformer before the sequel Super Widget arrived on the Super Nintendo a couple years later as a, you guessed it, a standard side-scrolling platformer. Both games were developed by Atlas, and when you think of Atlas, most people think of Shin Megami Tensei, or the subsequent series Persona, so these games keep some very strange company. Now, when I first played this one, I was ready to dismiss it as a waste of time because after 30 minutes I had steamrolled through the game without dying once. Not because I completed the game, I just got bored. There is next to zero difficulty here, but then I realized, oh yeah, duh, this game is based on a kid's cartoon, and the game is targeted to kids, not for 37-year-old doofuses like me. And that's one question I still get pretty often from dads out there that say, hey, I want my 4 or 5-year-old to get into retro gaming, but stuff like Super Mario World and the Mario All-Stars games are just too difficult for them. What do you recommend? So in addition to stuff like Kirby Superstar, Doraemi Fantasy, and Super Adventure Island, I'd have to put Super Widget up there too. No, this game definitely is not perfect. The controls are slow to respond, and Widget has a certain weight and momentum to him that's a little hard to get used to. But the level design is pretty straightforward, the enemy design is exceedingly simple, the boss fights are super easy, and the game is really colorful and playful looking, featuring all sorts of environments and settings. In addition to being easy, Super Widget is also really forgiving. You get 4 lives and 3 continues to get through over 30 stages in several different worlds, and there's tons of opportunities to get extra lives. There is a password system as well. Now, the key to this game being such a breeze is the transformation or shape-shifting power-ups that you find throughout the game. Widget can change into up to 12 different characters, everything from an ostrich, a wasp, an octopus, a dragon, or just kind of a superhero looking guy, I guess? There's two tiers of power-ups, for example, when you're the lobster and you find another transformation power-up, you turn into an octopus. Hey man, I don't know how or why, that's just, you know, how the game is laid out, man. Take one hit as an octopus, and you revert back into a lobster. Take one hit as a lobster, and revert back into Widget. Take one hit as Widget, and you die. But bear in mind, there's plenty of other power-ups here as well, like Force Fields and the like. Super Widget may be kid-friendly, but it's definitely still a flawed game. There's some serious issues with hit detection and with the platforming. It's one of those games like Wizard of Oz where, for whatever reason, you just can't friggin' land on the platform you want to, so that can be frustrating. Also, when you're stuck as just Widget, his attack is a straightforward punch. And it's pretty lousy, especially when you're trying to hit flying enemies. So yeah, if you're someone around my age and you play Super Widget, you're likely to get bored and or frustrated within about five minutes. But that's because you're not the target audience for this one. This game is clearly made for kids of a certain age, and if you consider that, this game does a good enough job. The pixel art is well done, the art direction is good, the music is good, the game is super forgiving, and the gameplay features some cool power-ups that get more interesting the further you progress. So yeah, for kids of a certain age, Super Widget gets the job done. Just don't expect that age to be 37. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.