“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” -Christopher Reeve

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Special thanks to Mega Cat Studios first of all for making NES games in the 2010’s. That’s a special kind of awesome, developing new titles for one of the greatest consoles of gaming’s rich past. Secondly, Mega Cat Studios kindly sent us some copies of their games for review, for which I am very grateful. The first game I immediately gravitated toward was Almost Hero. Black NES cartridge. Cover art of a ninja literally jumping the shark. Description labelling it a throwback to the beat ‘em up genre. Yeah of course it was my first choice.

The road to actually playing the game wasn’t an easy one, however. The NES that had served me faithfully for years decided to give up on me shortly after I received Mega Cat’s games. I blew it out as best I could. I even busted out ye olde NES Cleaning Kit but it wouldn’t have it. I read several times before about how to clean the pins and show some much needed TLC to the old girl but time constraints and a severe lack of know-how (I’m seriously dumb when it comes to this kind of thing) dissuaded me from that avenue.

Instead, I decided to wager on another affordable option: picking up a Super Retro Trio by Retro-Bit, at the advice of my wonderfully encyclopedic friend, the Deviot of Comma Eight Comma One. And wouldn’t you know it? After finagling with getting my HDTV to recognize the device’s signal by routing RCA cables into my VCR and then RF cable into my TV, it worked!

I was quite overjoyed to play a new NES game in 2017 when that opening Mega Cat logo came up on my screen. Almost Hero begins by telling you of Omosai, the bonsai capital of the world, and Chow Khan, the old man who sells holiday themed bonsai trees on “Etsi” (presumably a deliberate misspelling of “Etsy” to avoid real-world consequences for the name drop). Your mission as a ninja fresh out of training is to get more bonsai seeds. As you can tell, there’s a layer of lighthearted humor in this game.

Almost Hero is a classic-styled beat ‘em up which takes clear inspiration from River City Ransom, one of my favorite NES games. You’ll recall that when you knocked out baddies in Ransom, they fell over and said ridiculous things like “BARF!” In Almost Hero, I had a good laugh at enemy defeated dialogue such as “This was my ultimate form!” and “I took an arrow to the knee!”

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2017/11/30/almost-hero/