Yet another NES game from my childhood that I never really fully understood and (as a result) never really made much progress in as a child.

Coming back to it as an adult, I can say that this game is a pretty shallow / straightforward experience...the general layout of the map as well as the manner in which you collect items is not complex at all, just walk forward the only way you can and check every house along the way. There's no way to really get "lost", per se, and the route through the game is not difficult, just long and repetitive.

Sound and graphics are both very reminiscient of Blaster Master (as they should be, based on the game's pedigree) are reused a lot, and get old fast. The difficulty of the enemies is based in the way they soak up damage; even using a turbo controller it can be very difficult to kill some enemies without having to retreat constantly (thereby spawning more enemies) playing with turbo is a MUST, as your hands will probably fall off otherwise.

The bosses are largely repetitive, with 1&2 having the same moveset while 3&4 have the same irritating gimmick of using a shield to block your attacks; boss 5 is probably the easiest one, while the final boss can be beaten w/ no damage if you stand in the right (very obvious) location.

Worst part of the game is easily the requirement that you walk ALL the way back from the start of the game if you die to a boss, with a close second being how incredibly obnoxious bosses 3&4 are...save states probably shaved 2 hours off my playthrough, just because I didn't have to replay the entire game up to that point when I died.

Overall, there was a certain catharsis to turning off my brain and playing a completely nonsensical game for 90 minutes, but based on the very basic nature of the gameplay as well as the aforementioned issues with a couple of the bosses, I probably won't return to this one nearly as often as some other games from the era.

Game isn't as hard as people might remember. Where the difficulty lies is the weapon downgrades and the bosses. And when you die you have to start at the beginning of the game and traverse the world again. But man that music is soooooo good!