Hello Kitty World Review by: golgo 14 - 7/10
REVIEW: HELLO KITTY WORLD!!TITLE:HELLO KITTY WORLD SYSTEM : NES REVIEW BY: GOLGO 14
ARE YOU TOUGH ENOUGH FOR THIS GAME?
First, I have to be honest, I was ready to tear this game apart but what actually happened was quite surprising.I know Hello Kitty World must've been marketed for little girls, I get that, but sometimes a game comes along that surprises this old gamer with some fun gameplay and interesting qualities which I'm man enough to admit are present here...
GRAPHICS: 7/10 Hello Kitty World is not going to set the world on fire with its graphics, but it is certainly not an eyesore either.Each level has a sort of colorful charm to it.Bright,simple textures carry Hello Kitty World throughout it's playtime and leaves a pleasant impression.Taking some obvious, stylistic touches from Super Mario such as, bonus stages that consist of those iconic warp pipes, which here, shoot balloons into the air drawing you're eyes to a starry, dark blue sky, to giant deadly fish that spring out of the ocean if you get too close, Hello Kitty World does seem unoriginal in it's graphic design but it still works well here because of it's comforting familiarity.
SOUND/MUSIC: 6/10 The music in Hello Kitty World has a light, peppy sort of bounce to it that intensifies when there is danger or when you power up, but my favorite, is a certain familiar "theme song" that plays when you encounter a miniboss reminding this gamer it is not safe to go swim!The sound effects however, are kind of disappointing.At times, the game would sound like the Nintendo had a cold with strange,muffled growls that kind of grate to weird, tinny,( what I would assume are) wing flapping noises, the designers seemed to have dropped the ball in the sound department on this one
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ADDICTIVENESS: 8/10 No, the "8" is not a typo. I actually really enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay in Hello Kitty World. It plays like a side scrolling version of Balloon Fight for the NES though you can only really fight when you aren't hanging onto you're balloons.The gameplay revolves around collecting as many Balloons as you can while making it through the many dangerous environmental hazards such as campfires,rotating metal spikes and some clever enemy placement.Each stage has nice variety to it and there are lots of hard to reach power ups or free men to collect and as mentioned earlier Bonus rooms are indicated with a strawberry door that give you the opportunity to collect valuable 1 ups by collecting the required amount of balloons.The addictiveness of Hello Kitty World comes from it's mix of sidescrolling Ballon Fight type gameplay with a dash of Mario that also turns out to be, dare I say ..challenging!
CHALLENGE: 8/10 I'm not gonna lie, Hello Kitty World is surprisingly difficult and I like that! Right off the bat, you really have to master the gameplay control because steering Kitty through each stage demands precision and proper timing.The challenge really adds to the gameplay well and creates that sort of old school type of difficulty where you have to almost memorize some of the stages before Kitty is safe and furthermore without the help of any continues the game forces you to really care about collecting all of the hard to reach items and balloons to achieve those invaluable 1ups.True story..I died 3 times on the very first stage alone..
DEPTH: 5/10 If you can handle the challenge, Hello Kitty World can be completed in about 30 min .There isn't that much depth to the game as a whole and after the game is complete the only reason to return would be to perfect your Balloon count for each stage.A game like this doesn't really require alot of depth because it gets by on the fun gameplay and challenge alone, but a wider varitey of power ups would've been nice.
CONCLUSION: Hello Kitty World really surprised me and I enjoyed the time I spent with it. Like I echoed throughout , it's not exactly original but because of the addicting gameplay and challenge I would actually recommend you at least try this once..if you're man enough:) OVERALL 7/10
Graphics
7 Sound
6 Addictive
8 Depth
5 Story
1 Difficulty
8