Doraemon (1986)

Preliminary: Whoa, I'm loving this so far. A StrategyWiki is available; it's an open-world action-adventure platformer?? with side-scrolling platformer dungeons it seems? (I thought I invented that idea years back! lol); there are cool mechanics like a dungeon area thing that you can return to to heal up a la an RPG inn or healing spot. To top it off, this dusk-vibe city is giving me good Feels! We are about to head to bed early for our honeymoon (ah!), but when I return in 5 days, I will be very excited to play this! (Oh no, I just read on the wikipedia that each world is basically a separate game... boo I was really enjoying this action adventure platformer vibe... tho on a positive, I love reading that there are things you can collect in the first 2 worlds to help you for the 3rd... true RPG/adventure vibe put into a action-platformer)

Look: 8/10 I knew I was gonna enjoy the Look when I saw this map

It's giving me Link to the Past and Pokemon vibes and I love it. (And indeed, that First World had an amazing Look. And the rest had good-to-decent Looks)

Sound: 7/10 Functional, cute enough, never got too annoying. Often reminded me of Zelda

Play: 7/10 Would be nice to have diagonal movement. But yessss to the weapon upgrades (tho a bit tackily hidden, so were the Zelda ones sooo). Like I was iffy about how weak and slow my weapon was, but already have upgrades for both those factors (plus, it was easier dodging the early enemies anyway). For people who replay this enough, I'm sure it'd be fun to limit oneself to the basic upgrades or none at all etc. Near the ending of the First World, I started wondering whether I'd have to resort to cheats to get through it, but then at the perfect time, I got a hamburger? drop (apparently dorayaki is the word, but they looked like hamburgers to me :-p )

Annnnnd time for the 2nd world. Here's where my love for the game will really be tested: a whole new gameplay style? Ah! Similar to how I wish you could move diagonally in the first world, I wish you could face both directions (even if the scrolling kept going the one direction, that's fine) in the scrolling shooter part of the game. Luckily I love me some shmups so we should be good! Plus I got the Flashlight upgrade in World 1, so I'm already shredding through enemies. (And StrategyWiki has a very valuable map of where all the upgrade spots are). I didn't like how it wasn't clear which terrain/level sprites you could pass through, which you couldn't, and which would harm you. But I loved the idea of "finding assistants" and other upgrades, like the action-adventure World 1, so I'm pushing through.

Feel: 8/10 Without a guide telling me where the power-ups are, I bet I would have found this much more frustrating. Such odd random spots (tho at least in this game, if you notice your shot "hits" something that's not there, that's the game telling you where a hidden item is. Better than many game secrets from its time). Regardless, with savestates and a StrategyWiki, this is perfect! Challenging but doable.

For the second world, like often happens for me with shmups, I eventually just focused on dodging more than killing ha. Which was a bit confusing at first because of the assistant concept, but thank goodness for them--someone had to be doing offense ha. More and more, I was growing disinterested with that second world, though: the way you "enter" the tunnels at the bottom of the screen was superrrrr clunky. And brutal how your health carries over to the next segment after a boss. Good thing the game had such a good Feel and concept to it that I kept pushing on anyway

Attachment: 7/10 At last, the Third World. I don't even know how someone could have kept their power-ups/assistants long enough to gain the Passing Hoop before the Third World. This world looks huge (and the first enemy I see reminds me a lot of Mario... haha). Oh god no... it's a swimming world?!?!?!? Meh. Not only did the item management suck in this world, but also the enemies do wayyyy too much damage (coupled with unavoidable damage from the octopi...). Plus randomized locations for the items?! Boo!!

The game reallllly started to drag in this third world. I wish they had stuck with the format from the first world... it had such promise. I decided to take a break because I was really burning out on it. But I have 2 lives left, I know where all the kids are, and have the Holding Bag to start transporting them to the uh temple place or whatever. And then it's just the final stretch... Luckily I only had to do 2 of the tacky Octopi.

Welp yea, the third world sucks. Even though I know where are the kids are, even though I have all required items, and even though I know what to do (and I've gone this far...), nope. On a 2nd play session, I really burned out. The item management is atrocious. I like that they tried to emulate the early text adventure and arcade-adventure games with the item management factor, butttt they do it so poorly. Here's where I stopped, trying to leave the Talisman somewhere while also having both the Hoop and a Kid available to go save another Kid, then bring them to the underwater temple gate, then go back for the other Kid and Talisman... nope. nope nope nope. Sounds awful. And I am trying to remember that gaming is for fun. So I'm moving on. Too bad too, because it started so good. That first world, as a full game, could have easily been a favorite.

Completion: Found location of all 3 Kids and Hoop and Talisman in World 3 (had a handwritten map too haha) but did not finish. Score 194, 870 Playtime: 1h 40m