Little Samson (1992)

Little dragon more like since the dragon was by far the best and most important character. Beat in slow motion mode on Normal. I mostly used the dragon for levels and boss fights, only switching when he was low hp or the situation allowed exploiting another character. The dragon could hover by pressing jump again while in the air, just like in Gargoyles quest. Hover was great for skipping enemies and jumps, avoiding shots, and getting right up in a boss's face for massive dps with turbo shots. His shots fired in a very unusual but effective arc; dropping a little bit at close range before arcing upward. I never realized the shot could be charged up since I was using the turbo button the entire time. It might have killed a few bosses slightly faster and been more useful on original hardware with no turbo. Samson was good in combat too though his shots simply went straight ahead. Sometimes that was more useful, especially while crouched. He could also grab onto and climb walls, which was needed in a few places that were too high for jumping. Apparently he could also do the ceiling but I never realized, instead using the mouse for all ceiling work. The mouse was better at climbing anyway due to being so fast and tiny. The narrow passages for him often led to nice loot or skipped enemies. I noticed that enemies despawned after getting so far past them. The mouse attacked with bombs that ignored gravity. The last golem guy was slow and bad at jumping while being by far the most durable and immune to spikes. It was easy enough to avoid spikes with hover or climbing though. His attacks were melee with limited range but could be aimed in the 4 cardinal directions, so I mostly used him to hit directly up and to soak hits. Down attack was not really useful and it was a shame that no character could attack down diagonal. The only limit on switching was that none of their attacks could still be on screen, otherwise you could freely swap at any time. It was a lot of fun switching back and forth to best deal with each situation and to manage the 4 hp bars. Reading the basics afterwards I learned that potions were a full heal that had to be used from the menu and each character could carry 1. Would have been nice to know but save state scumming worked just as well. The bosses were not that difficult, with the dragon usually hard countering them. Final form of the final boss was the toughest and every character seen some use, though I never attacked with the mouse. Mostly it was point blank hover to the face then using the others to escape when I was getting cornered.

This game was a lot of fun with the switching mechanics putting it up there with Mega Man 2, Kirby and Castlevania 3. The only real complaint I have (other than no story text in the game) is that there was not more. And the map between levels was pointless because there was no indication of the path. They just meandered around but still better than nothing.

9.0/10