Little Nemo: The Dream Master

Today I’m dusting off Little Nemo: The Dream Master for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Also known as "Pajama Hiro Nimo" in japan.  The game is based off of the animated movie Little Nemo: Adventures in slumber land, which is based off the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumber land by Winsor McCay that appeared in New York newspapers throughout the early 20^th century.

Little Nemo: the dream master for the nes. This is a one of many games from  my childhood, as a kid I played it countless times but could never get passed the 2^nd stage. I decided to give it another go twenty years later. I actually own this game on cartridge, no roms or internet or anything like that. Old fashioned plug and play on my old school Nintendo. I played this game straight through and I gotta say, THIS GAME IS HARD! Developed by Capcom (creators of Street fighter, resident evil, and megaman) Yet another movie game that they capitalized on. This game may appear innocent but its tough majority of the time. I luckily have issue 18 of Nintendo Power from 1990, which helped out a lot in finding out what to do during the game.

Capcom also released an arcade game of little Nemo just titled “NEMO” this one was more accurate to the animated film.

The plot is much like the comic with a mixture of the movie. You assume the control of nemo and you’re on your way to Slumber land.  All you have as weapons is candy. You use this candy to feed and tame certain animals to either become them or ride them to help you along the way and to cross certain terrain. Some of the animals Nemo tames are frogs, gorillas,moles,giant lizards, and a mouse with a mallet to name a few. Very cool concept! Whenever you want to turn back into Nemo just press select. The game has 8 stages in total. You must travel through different lands collecting keys to unlock the doors at the end of every stage. Each stage gets Nemo closer to slumberland to meet with the princess and defeat the nightmare king. Some of the enemies in the game are friendly animals from the movie,even Nemo's pet flying squirrel, a bit strange...but whatever.  They should of put the winged goblins from the movie , that would have been better.
 

 

The game has great graphics for its time and solid controls. The games soundtrack is great too, composed by Junko Tamiya; she has done work on games like bionic commando, strider and other Capcom titles. Like I said before this game is TOUGH especially stage 3 and stage 8. There are certain secret crucial areas that I honestly would never guess in a million years if it wasn’t for my Nintendo power. Thankfully the game gives infinite amounts of continues but if you turn it off you gotta start all over again. I must talk about Stage 8,it’s the only stage in the game where you wield the kings scepter as a weapon. If you’re familiar with megaman games it’s an iron man stage. Meaning you must go through several levels nonstop each with their own boss (including the final boss) only on one continue. You will lose sleep on this believe me. But after you get the pattern to all the enemies and obstacles down pat the game becomes passable. The manta ray from the movie makes an appearance as a boss and the nightmare castle looks like it does in the film, as well as the nightmare king. The only con about this game is the fact that it has infinite continues, it lowers the challenge of the game but don’t get me wrong it’s still difficult. Another thing is the censorship with the game, the American version has flip (the hobo clown) with no cigar and there’s also a cigar smoking gorilla in the game that was also censored. With all that said, Little Nemo: The Dream Master is up there being one of the most underrated games for the NES. I give it 4 flying beds out of 5.  Tune in for a future blog on the entire Nemo franchise.