Omg such a cute look and sound. Great jingle. Turn enemies into cakes. Great variety of fantasy enemies like orcs and golems. But ah! 101 unique screens?!?! That's far too manyyyyyy for a completionist mind like mine.

Look: 9/10 I mean cmonn yessss

Yesss, I love that they repeat that animation every so often, but with different texts and hues for the background/environmentttttt I lovvvve when games let us love the many different slightly different tints a background can have. I don't think that ever gets boring... reminds me of playing with Photoshop on Ambien when young and silly. I real quick snipped an image to show you what I mean, tho the Dragon was almost out of the screen lol, and I really should've taken the time to screenshot some of the amazing UI/edge-of-level graphics, but it's hard mid-game! At any rate:

Indeed, such a cute variety of UI/edge-of-level graphics. I was going to stream OSRS Slayer today but uhhhh, this took the cake for sure. Oh nice, I got a moment to screenshot the UI I mentioned, this one a cake type theme ha, and accidentally unlocked some bonus version of the level by not doing anything... nice haha

Sound: 8/10 It could benefit from more variety, but a cute fantasy-vibe jingle makes sense for the game. As good as the jingle was, and instantly nostalgic sounding, I eventually turned it down and played Wandering Flame and even some Arrested Development while playing heh. Again, could have benefitted from more variety, tho a strikingly good main jingle. Oh, like more of the jingles when the Sun comes out that's a nice touch that changes things up. The fact that thirty mins later, I'm still playing this game and forgot to turn on Wandering Flame says something heh... (it was Round 67 when I finally did put something else on and started truly getting irritated by the repeating jingle)

Play: 9/10 Super fun setting up to squash enemies with the enemy-cakes lol. Plus you get bonus points for that. Tight controls as per usual with arcade games. Nice touch with power-ups too tho I often was just focused on clearing out the enemies, not peak points etc. Awesome that you can shoot mid-jump etc, that made for a lot of fun moments. Ironically, with all this high-quality gameplay, I didn't even notice much that the jump mechanic is quite archaic for mid-85 arcade games... But who cares when it's still so fun (and responsive, nevertheless)! Some tips I learned over time: enemies will always come to you, especially if you go above or below them, which can help when it's a headache to get to their spot with the level layout. Oh, and the enemy-cakes squash you as well as enemies ha, so be careful when you're all excited that another enemy is pushing off an enemy-cake--steer clear! Only criticisms of the gameplay I can really think of is that some of the power-ups' functions are a bit unclear (I bet the arcade machine had explanations tho :) ) and again, the jump mechanic is archaic for its time. It'd be nice to move mid-jump too. Oh and sometimes the enemy UI/pathfinding was too archaic that they'd just time out before being able to be killed or kill me. I know part of that is me trying to balance risk/reward, but sometimes it was just outright on their pathfinding ha.

Feel: 9/10 Cute variety of death animations. Is it just me or do you turn into a Red or Black Mage when killed by a Wizard haha. And I'm always grateful when you don't die from falls in a platformer. Omg and no time limit BS?! Yes! At first, I was not happy to see there are parts where you can't jump high enough to get out of, potentially inescapable traps (tho often the enemies eventually come to you, so yet again, the creators did an excellent job balancing this game imo). But then I remembered I had safely landed on top of a Wizard in an earlier level (you normally should not run into the enemies ha), and so the solution to the seemingly inescapable area was indeed this cute:

Cute way of introducing the vertical looping in the levels in Round 22. And yay lol bonus points for the Worm enemy getting one of the other enemies instead of you. Dang that amulet power-up that shoots stars every where and just kills all the enemies is OP!

Attachment: 9/10 But would it be possible to hold my love for 101 screens?!?! of increasing difficulty no less?! Perhaps I need to accept that, as we reach stronger hardware capabilities especially for arcade games, it's okay to consider a game played even if it's not fully complete. And that that's not a negative about the game as long as I got a lot of time in and had fun throughout... Hm.

Welp, in my first hour of gameplay I got to Round 42, and was still absolutely loving it! I mean I was eager to finish it, but I wasn't boring of the gameplay plus it kept adding new mechanics. Still worried about 101 Rounds, but hey, it's going strong still. I gotta get some other stuff done but I am eager to return to this! A good sign! Maybe finally a 2nd Favorite Favorite for 1985/2023?! It's been rough so far this year heh (compared to the many Favorite Favorites I came upon last year)

Now, on further replays, I see there are repeating levels, so it's not entirely unique for the 101 levels. I guess that means I can stop earlier than that and still consider it complete heh... but they say you get the Diamond in the end and have an ending screen! So I must! Round 53 was frustrating, you have to use the enemies to jump up an inescapable area. But no worries, figured it out after only one death. Not bad. (FYI, same with Round 63... gonna have to start being more conscious of it and pausing at start of Rounds to make a plan... I hope it doesn't detract from my momentum to get through the astounding 101 rounds in one day, which is a lot of gaming for me!). Round 83 is insanely hard too.. Maybe it's something about the 3's heh. But ah! It's time for movie with my husband. This is a long game!! (Wound up pushing through to Round 89 in the last few moments, will have to finish it tomorrow or Monday ah!)

Welp, I'm back at it. I don't necessarily love the puzzle vibes on levels such as Round 90, where you have to squash from above, but it would make sense for the last levels to be hard and puzzle-y. Uff yea they're really trying to test my patience and love for this game.... Round 91 with the jumping... meh. Whenever I'd get close to calling it quits (I also am feeling sick and meh tonight so that's a factor... plus only the last brutal levels of the game heh), I'd get the Amulet powerup to kill everything on the screen, or for instance I solved Round 94 on my own and loved killing every enemy in one shot+squash (necessary to complete the level, mind you, not some hi score grabbing there heh). The last 10 levels, though, reminded me of the microcomputer platformer games where they're obsessed with using their clunky bad jump mechanic or the frustrating pathfinding, literally the only negatives I mentioned above--exploited endlessly in the last few levels heh. So it goes with early platformers but meh, I was liking that this game didn't seem to pull that early platformer trope. Like Round 95 is entirely about exploiting the mediocre pathfinding and bad jump controls/inability to control height of jump or mid-jump direction heh. Why be proud of that? But anyway, I kept pushing cuz the music continued to be entertaining enough (how after 101 rounds?! ha) and the gameplay still solid despite the frustrations... and at last, this must be the final level!

Pro-tip: don't over think the final boss, indeed just stay safe from the fireballs and mash it with attacks, no special factor to it (surprisingly... I thought maybe we'd have to drop something on it or something). Tho it does seem that hitting it in the white part in the front is main place to take damage? And the timing of it shooting fireballs is much like the timing of all the enemies in the game with projectiles timed (Well, scratch that.. the timing is def different)

At last! Yesss, I love the fierce face the otherwise sweet character has

Love that it has an actual ending screen. I love that it emphasizes just how many damn screens there were heh. Rare for arcade games especially, but also action platformers from this era in general. (In fact, the fact it properly ends was criticized by contemporary reviewers, cuz they felt that it should re-cycle infinitely for hi score grabbers... but that's not me!)

Completion: Main Story. Score 1,645,680 Playtime: ~4 hours