Not too long ago I posted my first impressions of Street Fighter X Mega Man, a fan-game-turned-official by Capcom to celebrate Mega Man and Street Fighter's 25th anniversary. Well, I figured I'd do a quick write up of another retro-style game...only this one can be played on a retro system.
About three years ago (almost to the day), GN's own Jeremy Duff made a news post about a new NES game titled
Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril. I picked it up a couple years ago and it blew me away. When I heard that Sivak, the main person behind the game, was making a sequel, I couldn't wait until I could get my hands on it. Well, that day was today. After getting off work I checked my mail, saw the package, and began a live stream of the unboxing of
Battle Kid 2: Mountain of Torment...yes, an unboxing of an NES game. Over on RetroUSB.com you can get the game by itself for $36 or a limited edition with a box and concept art book for about $45. Being the NES freak that I am I went for the limited edition and the box now sits proudly on my bookcase between the boxes for The Adventures of Lolo 3 and Bionic Commando, but how is the game itself?
The game plays the same way as the original, but there's a lot more to the story. At the end of the first game, you chased down the group who was behind the Supermech, but only two of them got away, leaving the third, Chester Donnavan, to be captured and interrogated. After some truth serum was administered, Chester explains that the Supermech that you defeated in the original Battle Kid wasn't even fully completed. As such, the group's main weapon is now a mega cannon. All of the sudden an alarm goes off and you're sent to a warehouse district where your adventure begins.
Much like the original
Battle Kid, Mountain of Torment seems to have taken some inspirations from games like Mega Man, Metroid, and I Wanna Be The Guy. There are five different difficulties. Easy and Normal both utilize passwords and unlimited continues, but Easy gives you three hit points while all other difficulties give you only one. Hard difficulty gives you no passwords and a 65 life limit (up from 50 in the first game), Very Hard gives you 25 lives, and Unfair makes you complete the game on one life. While items from the previous game return, such as the Damage Amplifier and the Feather, new items make their debut such as the Wall Grip, which allows you to grip certain walls and hang off of them, and the X-Sludge, which allows you to move through sludge like it was water (otherwise, you move quite sluggishly in sludge).
I'm probably about a third to 40% of the way through the game and I've enjoyed it so far. Much like the first game, the rooms are challenging and the bosses are fun to fight. I won't spoil much, but patience plays a huge part in boss fights in this game. You can't just open a constant stream of fire and hope to win. You have to actually see what the boss is going to do and act accordingly, otherwise you won't survive for very long. If you liked the first game or are a fan of tough but fun retro-style games, head over to
RetroZone and give it a shot. Keep in mind that you do have to have an NES to play this game or the original. You can also head to
Sivak's NintendoAge page to download demo ROMs of both games to try them out before you buy them, and I highly recommend giving them a shot.
