The first time I saw footage of Mr. Gimmick, my immediate reaction was: “holy [expletive], this is Badnix!”
Not because there are any specific similarities, mind you (although the protagonist has a shade of Rogginess). But it gives form to what the comic tries to be: a time capsule of the kind of vibrant, immersive worlds you used to see in the great console games of the 80’s and 90’s, still untarnished by time, nostalgia, or a procession of bad sequels and remakes.
Gimmick‘s creator, Sunsoft programmer Tomomi Sakai, developed the game for the Famicom (NES) in 1992, hoping to produce an 8-bit game that was competitive with the newer 16-bit games that were dominating the market. From a numbers standpoint, he failed – the game sold poorly, and was never released outside of Japan and Scandanavia (?!) – but from any other perspective Gimmick more than succeeds.
Watch the video. The graphics and music are among the system’s best, the latter being partly due to a special sound chip developed for the game. The game mechanics are surprisingly sophisticated as well, with curved and sloping worlds that would seem more at place in Super Mario World then an obscure NES title. There’s even a simple physics system that seems to affect every enemy and object in the game! Pretty amazing stuff. Sakai mentions in an interview that even Shigeru Miyamoto, notoriously stingy with praise, had to admit that the game impressed him.
Moreover, the game is rich with that sense of fun and brightly-colored absurdity that drove games like Super Mario Bros. and Kirby’s Adventure to father dynasties. Like those games, Gimmick serves up a world that makes no logical sense, that exists entirely on its own terms, and yet completely sucks you in. I absolutely adore it.
Sadly, the game is pretty rare, and finding a copy that will work on a North American console is, well, literally impossible! And even if you do find it, the game is so incredibly Nintendo-hard that you might have a hard time getting through it. For most of us, gameplay videos will have to do. (Also internet piracy.)
– CC
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