As mentioned in my Darkwing Duck review, I'm roughly 5 years too young to have any experience with TaleSpin outside the knowledge that it's a Jungle Book spin-off that has nothing to do with The Jungle Book beyond lifting characters from it. Oh, and the theme song is a banger which was reproduced here faithfully. There's another really good track, the City Stage, which I learned is an oldie called Da Do Ron Ron that was recreated here too.
That said, Baloo's status as a goofy pilot adds to the gameplay: The main gimmick of being able to turn your plane upside down to fly (scroll the screen) in the other direction as well as fire behind you is an interesting one. It allows you to do your own interesting maneuvers, but on the other hand it's an NES game so you can easily just make the enemies respawn if you're not careful. You can also shoot at angles but only if you're moving exactly up or exactly down so it's really finnicky to work right but you can do things with it too.
The levels are interesting but feel completely out of order: The early stages can be brutal, with the Stage 3 (Sky) boss and stage 5 (Haunted Mansion) in particular feeling really brutal, but the final few stages are laughably easy as if they were meant to be played first. You do upgrade your ship inbetween levels, but the most you get are more shots out at a time, aspeed boost and an extra hitpoint, so it really does feel like the level design becoming easier as the game goes on, or not properly scaling with the capabilities of Baloo's plane.
I'm glad this game exists to give me another game based on the childhood right before mine and an interesting NES shmup that should still be considered among the NES shmup lineup.
That said, Baloo's status as a goofy pilot adds to the gameplay: The main gimmick of being able to turn your plane upside down to fly (scroll the screen) in the other direction as well as fire behind you is an interesting one. It allows you to do your own interesting maneuvers, but on the other hand it's an NES game so you can easily just make the enemies respawn if you're not careful. You can also shoot at angles but only if you're moving exactly up or exactly down so it's really finnicky to work right but you can do things with it too.
The levels are interesting but feel completely out of order: The early stages can be brutal, with the Stage 3 (Sky) boss and stage 5 (Haunted Mansion) in particular feeling really brutal, but the final few stages are laughably easy as if they were meant to be played first. You do upgrade your ship inbetween levels, but the most you get are more shots out at a time, aspeed boost and an extra hitpoint, so it really does feel like the level design becoming easier as the game goes on, or not properly scaling with the capabilities of Baloo's plane.
I'm glad this game exists to give me another game based on the childhood right before mine and an interesting NES shmup that should still be considered among the NES shmup lineup.