 There are seemingly hundreds of 2D side-scrolling action platformers on the Super Nintendo and of course not all of them can be top shelf stuff like Mario World or Kirby Super Star or Mega Man X or whatever. Most of them end up being bound to some pre-existing source material for better or for worse. Development team probe entertainment is no stranger to this cranking out movie adaptations for all sorts of Super Nintendo games ranging from Stargate and Alien 3, which are both halfway decent to The Incredible Hulk and Batman Forever, which both are not so good. So here we have another film to game adaptation with Judge Dredd, the 1995 edition featuring Sylvester Stallone obviously and not the 2012 adaptation with Carl Urban. And the context here is similar to the games that I just mentioned, and by that I mean this game can only be as interesting or as unique as its source material, and to its credit Judge Dredd, which was originally created as a graphic novel, does have a couple interesting things that make it stand out a bit. At first glance though, this game looks, sounds and plays a hell of a lot like another film based game starring Sylvester Stallone, Demolition Man. The side scrolling stages are similar in that the size, speed and range of motion of your Stallone sprite feels the same, but that's about where the similarities end. Sure, you run to the right and shoot stuff and pick up power-ups and all that, but in Judge Dredd, the game is structured in a series of missions, some optional and some required to finish the level. See, this game takes place in 2139 AD and Judge Dredd acts as Judge Jury and Executioner when going after all the bad guys here, but there are some missions that require Judge Dredd to merely arrest these dudes, not shoot them. You do that by using physical attacks instead of just blowing them away. Some enemies are tougher to arrest than others, but you're rewarded for doing this since most arrestees will drop some kind of item, as opposed to just blowing them away and getting nothing. To give a couple of examples of some main objectives you have to complete, there's the cursed earth stage where there's a prison riot and you have to get to 15 different computer terminals and lock down all the doors before fighting the riot ringleader boss. After that stage, Judge Dredd is framed for murder. I mean a murder of a civilian, never mind all the criminals you're gunning down, I guess they don't count, but yeah, after you lock down the prison and go to leave, your shuttle is shot down and you gotta look for clues that can prove your innocence. What's nice here is that if you ever get lost or confused, you can consult a computer console unit that will tell you your mission status and also give you some stats, which is a nice touch. There is a password system here as well, and that's really handy because this is a long playthrough. So the mission structure here is cool and the controls are good enough. There's a run function here which is nice and you can climb, crawl, hang from ledges to get around obstacles. There's a surprising amount of functionality here and there's plenty of weapons here too. Everything from ricochet or heat sinking missiles to grenades to even stuff like an anti-gravity belt, which allows you to fly around for a short period of time. The game is pretty strict with ammo, however, so keep that in mind. And again, that's what's supposed to give you an incentive to arrest people instead of just eliminate them entirely because they'll usually drop some ammo. The main flaw here, in case you haven't noticed from the footage, is the camera. This one takes a while to get used to playing because at first you'd want an approach-alike contra, right? But the thing is, the camera is really sensitive, annoyingly so, so it's always jostling around and it gets really disorienting. I wouldn't call it game breaking, but it is something you gotta get used to. The visual style of this one should be commended if only for being so closely related to the source material. There's 12 total levels here and seven of the backgrounds of those levels were created by digitizing sets from the film. While the other five levels use backgrounds based on the graphic novel, so that's pretty cool. My main gripe with the design here though are these fricking ladders. I swear, the first time I played this I wandered around for like five minutes not knowing where the hell to go before I finally realized this was a ladder. So hopefully I just saved some of you out there some anguish. Yeah, you see these goofy looking things here? That is a ladder. Other than that, the level design here is pretty good, featuring lots of room to allow Judge Dredd to do his thing. And there's even a rail shooter stage here, thrown in just for fun, I guess. Judge Dredd was one of those games that got a release on all sorts of other systems in addition to the SNES, everything from Sega Genesis to Game Boy to Game Gear to PC, but just strictly comparing the Super Nintendo and Genesis editions, the SNES version is a lot more player friendly. Sure, they look similar, but for whatever reason, the controls in the Genesis edition are terrible. The jumping is incredibly wonky, and trying to use physical attacks is more trouble than it's worth. So yeah, Judge Dredd is a surprise. No, it's not as good as something like Mega Man X obviously, or even something like Phantom 2040, but it's a notch better than stuff like Alien 3, Demolition Man, or the aforementioned Stargate. Yeah, the camera movement gets annoying, but once you get a handle on the controls and once you realize these are ladders, then Judge Dredd is a pretty good playthrough, and it's a great representation of its source material. And I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.