Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Recently this game got a RetroAchievements set, and that gave me the kick in the butt I needed to finally sit down and learn this game. I've always thought it was a pretty interesting gameplay design, but it's tougher than it looks.

A lot of this game comes down to routing, figuring out where the good items are so you don't have to waste time with point items (You COULD be picking up the red balls for bonus points, but their point values are random and I was not aiming for a high score on this run). You also only get 3 lives with no extends, so only being allowed to make two mistakes is rough. Still, the game is kinda fair in that enemy collisions or shots don't kill you outright, only getting knocked off the platforms count as death. And your hitbox is surprisingly small so a lot of shit that looks like it might hit you actually won't.

I took a death on stage 5 from a badly timed jump, which I didn't expect because usually that stage is pretty easy when you get the high jump hat on the left side at the start. Whoops. Stage 8 was a pretty important stage to route because the timer can be a concern, ended up clearing that with only 22 seconds left. And then the final stage 9 is a nightmare, it's possible to reach and beat the boss within 180 seconds but it feels like you have to play extremely aggressively to pull that off. Instead I had to play cautiously and take a death after I reached the last checkpoint, which refills your timer and gives you enough time to clear out the stage. The last boss can be a little scary because she summons so many enemies, but luckily everything went well enough.

This feels like a rather uncommon arcade 1CC so I'm happy to have cleared this.

youtube.com/watch?v=9DY3K-MYn5A