God I fuck with this game's vibes. Something about 16-bit consoles and their fairy tale/fantasy/anime hybrid works are so enchanting (fuck yeah landstalker). Peter's got one of my favorite player character sprites in any game tbh, I just love his jaunty walk and the way it transitions into this powerful jog, and his hair is way too fucking anime for Robin Willaims. Jesus Christ. Whole experience reminds me a ton of Midnight Wanderers and other early CPS works visually and I love it for that, you could EASILY convince me this was a Capcom project if not for some little imperfections.
But is it a good platformer? Idk, it's a weird combo of slow and floaty. It works for what it's trying to do, and feels in-line with the magical flighty theming of neverland, but it's a hard sell. Doesn't help that it has fucking super mario controls, where your run button is mapped to holding your attack - is the SNES version like this? Idk. They had a third button on Genesis, man, they didn't have to.
Speaking of, Genesis is fairly downgraded from the SNES original, done by Ukiyotei. The Genny version was handled by Core Design, the esteemed producers of Chuck Rock. SNES definitely has more fully-realized visuals, with BG effects and animated tiles missing in the Genesis version. Also feels like some sfx are missing here and the gameplay might be a tad slower - not like 'worse performing', just slower on movement/etc. Still looks great as its own thing tho, I'm always a fan of the way designers recolor SNES games for Genesis and make the palette more distilled and contrast-focused.
One thing Genesis wins out on tho is the music, god damn I have no idea how people stomach that farty SNES soundtrack. Genesis has those crunchy drum samples and cleaner, punchier synths. Only real dock against it is that listening to it outside of gameplay, it's not very 'full-sounding' - doesn't have very good backing chords, like they didn't use all the channels. But hey, props to both versions for bringing the film's score into chiptune shockingly well.
Did you know there's also a master system beta version of this? I couldn't play it cause it crashed twice on my flashcart :/
Also, was hook popular in japan? It also got an arcade beatemup by irem. Kinda sus
But is it a good platformer? Idk, it's a weird combo of slow and floaty. It works for what it's trying to do, and feels in-line with the magical flighty theming of neverland, but it's a hard sell. Doesn't help that it has fucking super mario controls, where your run button is mapped to holding your attack - is the SNES version like this? Idk. They had a third button on Genesis, man, they didn't have to.
Speaking of, Genesis is fairly downgraded from the SNES original, done by Ukiyotei. The Genny version was handled by Core Design, the esteemed producers of Chuck Rock. SNES definitely has more fully-realized visuals, with BG effects and animated tiles missing in the Genesis version. Also feels like some sfx are missing here and the gameplay might be a tad slower - not like 'worse performing', just slower on movement/etc. Still looks great as its own thing tho, I'm always a fan of the way designers recolor SNES games for Genesis and make the palette more distilled and contrast-focused.
One thing Genesis wins out on tho is the music, god damn I have no idea how people stomach that farty SNES soundtrack. Genesis has those crunchy drum samples and cleaner, punchier synths. Only real dock against it is that listening to it outside of gameplay, it's not very 'full-sounding' - doesn't have very good backing chords, like they didn't use all the channels. But hey, props to both versions for bringing the film's score into chiptune shockingly well.
Did you know there's also a master system beta version of this? I couldn't play it cause it crashed twice on my flashcart :/
Also, was hook popular in japan? It also got an arcade beatemup by irem. Kinda sus