"Like Ecco the Dolphin, except nothing like it."

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

In the golden age of the NES, Capcom made a number of games based on Disney cartoons. While games like Ducktales where a staple of my childhood, a few of them passed me by until more recent times. One of these was Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

The game opens up with a cutscene that contains a few still images and text. Ariel, who is already human at this point, is contacted by her various aquatic buddies after the sea witch, Ursula, has cast a spell giving her control over most of the fish. Ariel then explains the situation to Prince Eric (including that she is a mermaid) and willfully turns back into her original self to stop Ursula.

Controlling Ariel, you can swim in any direction with the d-pad. The “B” button increases your swimming speed while the “A” button shoots bubbles. When you first start, your attack is extremely weak and short range. You’ll have to hit an enemy several times before they will be encased in a bubble.

Once an enemy is in a bubble, you can carry them around for a limited time and throw them at an unsuspecting enemy. This is the key to defeating larger enemies as well as all of the game’s bosses. Every boss in the game will provide you with small enemies to put in bubbles and use as ammunition to fire back at them. Some of the bosses would be difficult if it weren’t for the fact that you can throw in more directions than just left and right. While defeating the bosses is the same strategy ever time, they at least look and move differently which is more than I can say for Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa.

As you progress through each level, there are large treasure chests. These chests must be opened with the aid of a special shell or occasionally another object. Some times a shell will be placed in a spot that forces you to back track a tiny bit to get to the chest. But since shells cannot be carried to a new screen, they’re never very far away from chests.

Sometimes the chests are completely empty which can be a bit frustrating after having carried a shell over to it with no payoff. Usually though, these chests contain one of two different attack powerups. A teal sphere will increase the range of your attack. This is by far the most common one you’ll find. The second is the red sphere, which increases your power. Power up enough and you’ll be able to encase enemies in bubbles in a single shot.

The Little Mermaid is as easy as it is short. In your very first playthrough, you can probably blow through the game in twenty minutes or less. There are only five levels with a boss at the end of each as well as one additional final boss (which is actually one of the easier bosses in the game).

The story is pretty silly. It seems like the developers only saw a couple clips of the movie or maybe just some artwork and a sheet of character names. There’s no mention of the trident (which is a huge part of the movie on which the game is based), but you can see Ursula’s final form has it. Instead, the game uses some classy dialogue to “explain” the situation (shown below).

Why did I pick this game?

While I didn’t grow up playing this game, I know somebody who did. A good friend of mine use to play it with his sister back in the day and had some fond memories of it. With the Capcom Disney games I had played being as fun as they are, it only made sense to seek the rest of them out.

How does it hold up with time?

While the game is mildly amusing, the controls can be pretty unresponsive at times. In fact, any and all challenge within the game purely stems from fumbles with the controls rather than game design. Turning around is awfully slow and occasionally an enemy wouldn’t finish getting into a bubble because of his proximity to another enemy.

I can’t imagine forking over too much dough to track this down as it is ridiculously short. The combination of how easy it is and the fact that it only has five levels make it a really lean game. It does have a certain charm, though, and could be worth a couple of bucks to blow through and might even rekindle some old childhood memories.

Tags: 2-D, capcom, Disney, Disney's the Little Mermaid, Friday Old Games, NES

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.