 Snastro? Hamelin No Violin Hickey, or the Violinist of Hamelin, is a game loosely based off the fantasy manga of the same name. You're Hamel, who's a wandering violinist who annihilates anything in his way with music, projectile notes produced from his oversized violin. He's kind of a dick, too, as he runs into this orphaned girl named Flute, and convinces her to tag along so she can help him out. You know, by being used as a step ladder and being thrown into things. Hamelin has a life bar, but Flute can take infinite damage, but she does lose gold if she gets hit. You can't control Flute at all, other than to press X to get her to stay still, and press it again and she'll follow you again. That's what the call means around that black bird flying around you. What immediately stands out about this game is the artistic style, and not just how well the anime-styled artwork pops out, and how fantastic it lends itself to the Super Famicom hardware, but how expressive everyone is. When Flute is stood on, or when she's tossed into some boulders, it's genuinely amusing, if not laugh out loud funny, that's the game's biggest strength. There are other anime-styled games on the Super Famicom, but none of them look this good or this expressive and funny. Most of the laughs come from the relationship between Hamelin and Flute. Not only does he have her do a lot of this dirty work, but he has her dress up in ridiculous costumes that you find throughout the game, which, conveniently enough, lend themselves very well to whatever stage you're in. Flute can dress as a monkey to climb walls, or a frog to jump higher, or as a robot to walk on spikes and smash stuff. This is where the game really shines, the levels are cleverly designed to take advantage of each costume, some levels requiring different ones to use, in a sequence. And again, Flute's tortured expression in these costumes really makes this. It's a near-perfect match of content, artistic style, and gameplay. My only problem with the idea to change costumes is that you have to pause the game to do it, and switch from a menu. It would have been nice to be able to just use the LRR buttons to scroll through them, kinda like how you scroll through weapons in the Mega Man X series, but, oh well, that's not a real deal breaker or anything. So yeah, the level design is very smart, and the game has a great sense of humor, the controls are tight and responsive, but there's a catch. There's no save feature or no password system. This game has four worlds with five levels each, making 20 levels total, so it's a little bit too long to beat in one sitting. Just to explain real quick, though, there is an overworld, like in Super Mario World, so there's towns you can visit in between levels, where you can buy items that help Hamilton absorb damage, for example, and there's also an in where you can rest up for 50 gold. Now, despite there being two on-screen characters, this game is single-player only, no multiplayer, which is kind of a bummer, but I don't mind, since a lot of this game's charm comes from the computer AI and how it controls Flute. Anyway, I just wanted to make this video to both let you guys know about this game because it's really good, and to give a bit of background on what's actually going on and how to actually play the game. I'm not too sure about the story outside of the relationship between Hamelin and Flute, but that knowledge isn't really necessary to play what is a really fun game. Hamelin No Violin Hickey is definitely worth tracking down. It's very clever with the distinct charm and striking visual appeal.