Game Article - Little Samson/Lickle

THE LITTLE SAMSON THAT COULD
 

When I say the name Little Samson what's the first thing you think of?  Chances are you think of the story of Samson and his superhero strength from his hair in the bible.  Well unfortunately for the NES game Little Samson I think this is what most people thought of.  Unfortunately they didn`t think to keep the name given to the game in Japan, Lickle Legend of the Holy Bell, sure it`s a little odd but it might not have made people think of games like Bible Adventures.  Because of this for the most part people avoided this game like the plague, which is really a shame because it is one of the best looking and just best games available on the Nintendo Entertainment System and not based on Samson from the story of Samson and Delilah or anything religious at all. 

Little Samson is reminiscent of other awesome games like Mega Man, which makes sense as it was created by two employees who left Capcom to make their own company Takera. For this game they teamed up with the artist from Cocoran and Ghosts `n Ghouls and Taito which most people know from Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble to put out this game. Luckily for us we got an awesome game, even if not many people realized it at the time.

When you first start up the game you watch cutscenes showing us The Dark Prince (wearing green) escaping from captivity.  He threatens to take over the land and takes out all the king's soldiers.  The King quickly summons help from four unlikely heroes to defeat the evil Dark Prince and save the kingdom.  The really cool thing about the story is it is told without any dialogue or text just a few cutscenes. Which is awesome because you can still play the Japanese version and feel like you aren't missing out on anything because of the language barrier.

You play as four different characters while on your quest.  Little Samson the one human character who can climb on walls and the ceiling and throw bells as projectiles, Kikira the Dragon who can breathe fire and float for short periods of time, Gamm the Golum who moves slow but has excellent health, can walk over spikes and has powerful attacks and K.O. the little mouse who has a smaller health bar but makes up for it with his speed, his ability to climb walls like Samson and drop powerful bombs. The game gives you the option to switch characters at any point in the game, so if you jump and are going to fall on spikes, no problem just switch to Gamm. You could beat the game with just one character but it would be a lot harder and it's a lot more fun to switch depending on the situation.  

This game offers an "Easy" and "Normal" difficulty to choose from, so it shouldn`t be too stressful to get through. At times it does give you a good challenge especially towards the final levels, but it won`t be so hard you want to destroy your controller. It also helps that the controls are tight and precise so you won`t ever feel like you died because of bad controls which is so important especially in a platforming game. Plus it has a nice short 4 character password system so you can continue where you left off!

This game features over 20 different stages ranging from jungles, rivers, caves, to castles and each level looks incredible.  That's the nice thing about it being released so late in the console cycle, they really knew how to push the limits on the graphics so you get an amazing looking game that tries to rival the new 16 bit games that were just released on the SNES.  One of the most impressive visuals is when you fight in a boss battle.  The bosses are huge, dark and scary compared to the bright and colorful graphics of the main characters. They almost look like they walked out of a Castlevania or Metroid game to hunt you down. 

There is so much more I could say about this game, but do yourself a favor and make sure you check it out!  Due to the timing of it`s release, lack of advertising save a small 5 page feature in Issue 40 of Nintendo Power and unfortunate name change this has become one of the harder games to find for the NES.  If you are lucky enough to find it, don`t be surprised to see it upwards of $200!  If this is too expensive for you, which it would be for most people, just do what I did and grab a version of Lickle for the Famicom.  If you don`t have a Famicom to play it on, then just get yourself a Famicom to NES converter then you are set.  Trust me, you don`t want to miss out on this game, it`s definitely one of the best to be released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.