Preliminary: I've heard how hard this game is (that's not a good thing for me haha). But I love how there's a world map/adventure feel to the level progression screen, and I love that there's a set ending (at first I thought it just loops infinitely but turns out the first "ending" is an illusion and you replay the levels with a higher difficulty, which I think is lame, but it then has a true ending

Look: 7/10 Fits the Halloween-y theme. Nothing special for a 1985 arcade game though. Way too many repeated boss enemy sprites. The main character sprite is quite well-done tho...

Sound: 7/10 Good enough song that fills out the Halloween-y, yet goofy/humorous, Feel of the game. Tho it got real old after repeating so many times and frustrated by the clunky, overly difficult gameplay

Play: 6/10 The jumping feels clunky, no movement mid-air.., as do moving platforms, but I only did just finish the first Level, I assume I'll get used to its quirks (I mean.. this is an arcade game... it should be tight and well-done with controls). They definitely wanted things hard: jumping is weird, shooting slows you down, and other little quirks that you'll have to get used to. But right off the bat you're onslaughted! The platform collision masks were super goofy, often to your favor (thankfully), but still... I expect more from a renowned 1985 arcade game. It was almost nauseating when the screen would shift up from your jump not-actually-reaching the platform above you but-counting-anyway heh, and other such situations. Some of the enemy projectiles' collision masks were forgivingly badly done too--I definitely got hit a few times but it didn't count. Hey, I'll take it heh. I almoooosst gave during the "boss" of the 2nd level (really just 2x the 1st level bosses... lame and anticlimactic), but pro-tip: don't go all the way to the right so you can just fight the first boss alone then the 2nd boss. A lot easier that way.

Feel: 7/10 Nice bit of humor with the armour going off and being unclothed and the way your booty is emphasized as you climb the top of a ladder (but that quirk was mostly just annoying like cmon, don't encourage clunky controls to fit the humorous vibe, I want tight responsive controls for a hard game! haha). Other annoying quirks that I know are intentional--but why--that come to mind are, like, the limited amount of throws (usually 2 it seems) you can do then your character just sits there not throwing projectiles but still doing the animation lol. As well as the inability to jump onto/off of ladders... Cmon that had become a basic feature of even microcomputer and console platformers by this time... Oh and ammo [thankfully] goes through some walls but not always, especially not grounds... as can enemies... At least there was no fall damage even for super far heights...

Attachment: 7/10 For how many rudimentary platformer mechanics they failed to include, even mid-jump movement.., they sure did spend a lot of time on advanced and impressive enemy mechanics and pathfinding! Never expect that simple, level 1 enemy to stay its course--it will suddenly hone in on you--and don't waste both your 2-shots-in-a-row because it will likely dodge the first one so you gotta time your 2nd.

As I got to Level 4, and I see right from the start their pulling the classic microcomputer platformer tendency to proudly exploit the bad/quirky mechanics it has (in this case, the utterly horrendous moving platform mechanics, both from how your momentum of jumps goes to how the [forgiving but annoyingly inaccurate] platform collision masks work). I made it through those, laughing at how the platforms paths would sometimes run into each other illogically and blend in, how I could jump through some platforms glitchily but not others, how my momentum sometimes made sense and sometimes absolutely not... and after getting through all that, I see one of the Red Demon enemies, which I had fought before, and I sighed. Why tf am I pushing through this. Especially when I know it will reset from the start with even harder difficulty... A game that has an incredibly clunky main character, but insanely fast and responsive enemies? The enemy can respond mid-fly-at-me, but my character can't simply move mid-jump (at least he can face the other direction I suppose...)? A game that is the opposite of why I game--I don't game to show off, I game to have fun... And yet here I am heh. Then I clearly run into one of the flame pillars coming up, but hey, the collision mask must be only the center of the flames so I'm good? Makes sense... A lot of people would chalk up these things to limitations of hardware, but I can safely attest 1985 arcade games were more than capable of handling these quirks in a more accurate, tight, and responsive way (thereby, more fun-to-learn way). Not to mention it just repeats the levels so it's not like we are talking a huge number of levels here taking up memory/space... And indeed, the boss of Level 4 is another repeat boss. But shoot there's 6 levels, I might as well commit to just finishing the regular mode and accepting that it was an illusory room and never returning to this hell of a game again lol. Why do I do these things to myself...

Omg I was sooo frustrated when they crammed the 2x Level-1-Boss at the top of a ladder... It's like the programmers knew how much I hated the top-of-ladder-takes-his-time mechanic. After several tries, I got his booty to move fast enough while both bosses were on the right side, and how happy I was to see the Level 3-and-4 dragon boss up next too. Ugh.

(The only way to get a screenshot of where I was at, because of how fast-paced it was, was to savestate ha) Welp, at this point I had had enough. And the fact that I didn't just keep pushing through and abusing savestates etc, is a sign that this game really deserves a 6 for Attachment. To top it off, seeing the Level 6 boss was, again, just 2 of the Level 5 boss... Lame... The only reason it gets the slight boost is because, deep down, I always want to finish a platformer like this. Especially one I've heard about, thus further boosting the Attachment. But as much as I feel like I should find a way to boost this rating to a 3 star, considering how I'd always heard of it and deep down I want to finish it and I was at the end of the last level..., the fact there was I felt relieved and happy to stop playing... said a lot heh. Only play this game if you pride yourself in flexing your abilities--if you're looking for something fun, look elsewhere.

Completion: To the end of Level 6, Score 94,500 Playtime: ~1h 20m