Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A playthrough of Data East's 1988 action-platformer for the NES, Karnov.
Karnov, originally released in arcades in 1987, played no small role in establishing Data East's reputation for the slightly off-kilter. The game marked the debut of their corporate mascot, the titular Karnov, a barrel-chested, fire-breathing Russian strongman who left the circus to search for the Lost Treasure of Babylon.
Karnov's quest for riches involves battling his way through nine stages packed with roaming droves of demons and wild animals, but it doesn't play like your average hop'n'bop platformer. The stages are designed around the use of special items that grant Karnov special abilities - things like wings for flight, a scuba mask for swimming, bombs for clearing walls, and glasses for revealing secrets - and many stages feature harder-to-reach alternate paths that reward experimentation and exploration with large caches of primo items.
The NES adaptation is a good facsimile of the original arcade game. The graphics and music are immediately recognizable, most of the level layouts are the same, and the controls feel similar. As for the differences, Karnov can now take an extra hit before dying, the fourth and eighth stages were changed, and the wizard boss was replaced with a dragon. The North American version also lacks the cutscenes and multiple endings that were seen in the Famicom game.
Karnov is a little rough around the edges, but the novelty and substance of its gameplay offsets the technical crustiness, and it's a fitting springboard to propel one of gaming's strangest icons to stardom.
I had a lot of fun with this one.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
A playthrough of Data East's 1988 action-platformer for the NES, Karnov.
Karnov, originally released in arcades in 1987, played no small role in establishing Data East's reputation for the slightly off-kilter. The game marked the debut of their corporate mascot, the titular Karnov, a barrel-chested, fire-breathing Russian strongman who left the circus to search for the Lost Treasure of Babylon.
Karnov's quest for riches involves battling his way through nine stages packed with roaming droves of demons and wild animals, but it doesn't play like your average hop'n'bop platformer. The stages are designed around the use of special items that grant Karnov special abilities - things like wings for flight, a scuba mask for swimming, bombs for clearing walls, and glasses for revealing secrets - and many stages feature harder-to-reach alternate paths that reward experimentation and exploration with large caches of primo items.
The NES adaptation is a good facsimile of the original arcade game. The graphics and music are immediately recognizable, most of the level layouts are the same, and the controls feel similar. As for the differences, Karnov can now take an extra hit before dying, the fourth and eighth stages were changed, and the wizard boss was replaced with a dragon. The North American version also lacks the cutscenes and multiple endings that were seen in the Famicom game.
Karnov is a little rough around the edges, but the novelty and substance of its gameplay offsets the technical crustiness, and it's a fitting springboard to propel one of gaming's strangest icons to stardom.
I had a lot of fun with this one.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
![Lorettas Portrait: Sherlock Holmes (SG-1000) Playthrough [English]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KhZcz5cAOiQ/mqdefault.jpg "Lorettas Portrait: Sherlock Holmes (SG-1000) Playthrough [English]
A playthrough of Segas 1987 adventure game for the Sega SG-1000, Lorettas Portrait: Sherlock Holmes (ロレッタの肖像 / Roretta no Shouzou).
For this video, I used Jamiras recently released English translation patch. You can find the patch at https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7526/
Loretta no Shouzou is a point-and-click detective adventure game for the SG-1000, the precursor to the Sega Master System. It was one of the SG-1000s final official releases (followed only by The Black Onyx), and weighing in at one megabit, it was notable for being the largest game ever produced for the console.
You are Sherlock Holmes, and youve been hired to investigate the theft of a painting from a local art gallery. As you poke around nineteenth century London questioning suspects and finding clues, it becomes apparent that the painting is just the tip of the iceberg, and you soon find yourself entangled in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.
The game plays out like a PC adventure. You click on items to examine them, you interact with people and move between locations through a series of context-sensitive menus, and additional actions and places are made available as you uncover new information. Itll immediately feel familiar to anyone who has played Enixs Portopia no Satsujin Jiken or any of the MacVenture games.
What stuck out to me about Lorettas Portrait was how ambitious it was for an SG-1000 game. The machine wasnt designed to handle much beyond simple early 80s arcade-style shooters and platformers, and yet here we see a fully explorable city, full-screen background images, window overlays, boatloads of text, and a save system. As crude as the graphics and sound are, I cant help but be impressed by what Sega achieved with this cart.
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
