I played this as a kid and all I remember is a very weird experience. Playing it today and it's not very weird. Kinda wish it measured up to my memories of it, but what ever really does?

You collect items that you can use through out the stage and you also shoot balls at monsters. One of the items is a ladder, which is pretty self-explanatory (you climb it to reach higher spots); another lets you jump higher; there's a bomb which might be for blowing up enemies, I don't know. You also collect "K" blocks which are basically Mario coins. Not sure what they do, but I'm amazed they made all sorts of configurations out of them but still managed to never put three Ks in a row... ahem.

(I take that back)

It plays perfectly fine, you can get pretty powerful pretty fast if you collect three balls to shooty with. I think the weirdest aspect of this is that they brought this guy back as a boss in Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja and made him the last boss in Fighter's Destiny: Karnov's Revenge. For whatever reason y'know. Now I want to go play that and see if he still be shoot the balls.

I miss the days when wish fulfillment also included weird bald shirtless Russian dudes with handlebar mustaches.