 In some ways, in any S-games with the title like Total Red lives up to exactly what you would think it would be. You start the game up and yup, you've got so cool kids watching a magician perform magic that is deemed to be most excellent dude! They even make sure to shoehorn the word like into the dialogue! There's lots of uses of words like righteous and gnarly and radical too! I'd like to think names of the levels in the Special World and Super Mario influenced by this game instead of ninja turtles or whatever. But hey, for what it's worth, the pixel art here is pretty dang sharp looking. Whoops, I mean, it's totally tubular, man. Totally righteous. So this magician is teaching this kid to use magic when he's suddenly attacked by something and the game starts. And as you can see, it's a side-scrolling action platformer. You get three lives and three continues to get through five levels split up into two or three stages each with no saves or passwords. You shoot anything that moves and you can even charge your regular weapon, which is pretty cool. The meters and the upper left signify your life and your magic. And yep, right away you get all sorts of forms you can change into at the cost of magic. Just press start for the list of stuff, pick something, and then press up and B to activate. So really, this turns into a game of management, especially since the only way to replenish your health in this game is through a couple replenish spells. But yeah, the way I usually approached each level was using a spell quickly to change forms at the beginning, then switching back when I got to the boss, and then try and use some of the other spells that cost more magic bars like time freeze or to refill my health bar. The biggest hurdle for anyone to get into this game is gonna be the controls. They just have a different kind of feel to them. The jump is good. It's not too floaty and not too stiff, but there's some quirks here and there that make things kind of weird. Like, you can't run up these slopes and you can't charge your weapon while jumping. It's that sort of stuff. The thing is though, you can look at it from one of two ways. Like for example, I think most gamers have gotten well used to the freedom that more popular action platformers and running guns provide, games like Mega Man and Contra. So if you go into totally rad with the same kind of approach, you're gonna be like, what the hell is this? This game kind of reminds me of Ghosts and Goblins and by proxy Ghouls and Ghosts and Super Ghouls and Ghosts. In that, the controls are just what they are. That doesn't make them broken or anything like that. They're just kind of different. And hey, at least it's consistent within its own rules. It just takes a little while for the player to learn those rules. However, whether or not it's worth the time to learn, eh, that depends. And that brings me to this game's biggest flaw. The level design is as plain as it gets. The second level has you going underwater only not really, because all you have to do is jump across these top platforms no problem. Then after that, it's about a dozen platforms where you're just running back and forth. It gets pretty dull. It doesn't help that some of the enemy design here is way faster than your character, so there's plenty of cheap deaths here and there as well. A, it wouldn't be an NES game without cheap deaths. The only time you get any real use out of your extra forms are when you fight bosses. The levels themselves seem like an afterthought. Also, some of the spells just plain don't work by design. I guess to encourage trial and error or something? Either way, it's stupid. This game still has plenty going for it though. The music is solid. Some of the pixel art here is really well done, especially with the boss fights where you face this eyeball monster thing, then this fish thing that must have been taken a break from the Darius series, and whatever this thing is. The colors are pretty garish, but this game makes it work pretty well with lots of subtle shading here and there, so it's not so hideously ugly that it nearly breaks your TV. Believe it or not, another reason to play this one is the story. Well, okay, not really. This isn't exactly Shakespeare, especially when it comes to the dialogue, but I appreciate any NES game that goes for a ninja guidance style presentation complete with cutscenes that feature some fantastic pixel art. The gist is that you play as this gnarly dude named Jake and his bodacious friend Allison gets kidnapped by these alien dudes trying to learn about the human race. Her dad is a famous professor or something and he tries to save her and he gets caught himself, but not before Jake can save Allison, but now he gotta go save her dad. And I'll told it's like, you know, really cool dialogue, man. Yeah, killer. So yeah, I did not expect to like Totally Rad, especially based on the title, the cover, and the way the game starts with such a dull layout. But this game looks good, sounds good, and plays okay. Just don't go into it expecting Contra or Mega Man kind of polish. It's fun experimenting with all the different forms and spells once you know what they are anyway, although some of them might be a bit overpowered like the invincibility trick where you can't take damage when you jump. Still, it's nice to play an NES game that's not freaking balls to the wall impossible and you should be able to finish this one in about an hour or so. Totally Rad doesn't come near to the best stuff on NES, but it's still a decent playthrough. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.