New NES game: Nomolos - Storm the Catsle

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DaMadFiddler
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New NES game: Nomolos - Storm the Catsle

Post by DaMadFiddler »

This just came out last week, and I'm considering a purchase. It's being published by RetroZone, who also handled 2010's "Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril"

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.ph ... cts_id=117

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There's a two-level demo ROM available here: http://www.retrousb.com/downloads/NomolosDemo.nes

I've played a little bit of the demo, and it seems similar to Castlevania or Ghosts & Goblins. Definitely up my alley, and it's always nice to see new releases that are actually playable on vintage hardware, rather than just being "in the style of."
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Re: New NES game: Nomolos - Storm the Catsle

Post by Lartrak »

Didn't realize this was out! Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to buy a copy soon. It doesn't look quite as polished as Battle Kid to me, but still worth a purchase. Think I'll buy it with the box, always had a soft spot for NES boxes even though the things fall apart so quickly.
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Re: New NES game: Nomolos - Storm the Catsle

Post by mankrip »

The graphics of the intro cutscenes looks amateurish, but the graphics from the logo before the title screen looks good. Also, the moon on the beginning of the first level was definitely made with a square pixel aspect, which is wrong for NES hardware since its 256x224 pixels gets widened up to match 4:3 screen televisions.

I only beat the first level yet, but this game already gave me a good impression. The music is nice, repetitive like most NES game soundtracks but not annoying and sets the pace really well, the gameplay is really good, enemies are well balanced and well placed, and the stage layout seems to have been really well thought. Sometimes a lot of stuff may happen on the screen at once, but the deaths doesn't feel cheap. There are a few alternative routes through top/bottom platforms that allows for some strategic planning, and sometimes it's better to just ignore the enemies and run like hell while dodging them, which is also very fun. So far, it's highly recommended, and I'd definitely place it above Castlevania and many other NES games.

It would be nice if they also included the full game ROM into the package, because some people don't have a NES console anymore, and if I bought it I'd also like to play it on handheld emulators.

[edit] Some more opinions:

The game has infinite continues, which is a good thing, though it would be better if it also had a password system.

The difficulty levels only seems to differ in the maximum amount of hearts (6, 3 and 1), in the health level of the tree enemies (which only needs 1 hit to be killed in easy mode), and in that in the easy level the player starts with the mace (wait - this seems to be a bug, as it only happened after I started a new game in the easy mode beating the normal mode).

Enemy placement, AI and items placement seems to remain the same through all difficulty modes (including the health items, which doesn't make sense to remain scattered through the levels in hard mode, since the game doesn't even feature a scoring level for them to make any difference).

Since the hero is a cat, it would have been funny if in the easy mode the player started with 9 lives (though here in Brazil cats are said to have 7 lives).

The second stage does have a couple repeated places, including a small cave whose first version has a weapon stored inside. It also does have some pointless places, like the second version of that cave, which doesn't offer any reason for the player to get into it. The stage is still good and fun to play, but such things does make it seem less polished.
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