Gameplay video for Mr. Gimmick, Sunsoft’s charming NES platformer released only in Japan and Scandinavia. The game looks fun, but I’m posting it because Retronauts’s Frank Cifaldi did a bang-up job producing the clip, making this not only the most informative video game playthrough I’ve ever sat through, but the best use of annotations I’ve seen yet on Youtube. Watch the entire playlist here (don’t miss the minecart section in part 2!).

I typically cannot listen to more than a few seconds of the longplay movies posted by talkative or preteen nerds on Youtube — though I love the way the kid in this Retro Game Challenge video sings, “This game is win! Very much win!” — so it’s nice to come across such a well-executed, annotated clip like this. Of course, it helps that Mr. Gimmick looks like one of the most fun and impressive Famicom/NES games I’ve never played.

See also: Sonic and Tails Adventure 2 trailer

[Via Retronauts. Thanks for the GCCX clip, Matty!]

tags / frank cifaldi / retronauts / mr gimmick / lost levels / sunsoft / nes / famicom

King’s Bounty in under ten seconds. On the Retronauts blog, Lost Levels’ Frank Cifaldi explains how this could be: it’s a tool-assisted speedrun that relies on messing with the game’s random number generator and restoring saves until the game-winning item, which is randomly placed somewhere in the map, ends up right next to the player’s starting position.

By the way, it is super rad to get to read more retro stuff from Frank.

tags / king's bounty / frank cifaldi / retronauts / new world computing / electronic arts / jc