Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Good
If you're the sort of person who enjoys "creative re-imaginings", or "modern re-tellings", then baby, this game is for you.

If you think reading "boring old classic books" need a modern shot in the arm to invigorate them with peeing statues, fireballs, unintelligible looking monsters, and the removal of trivial details, like say, the overall plot, again, this is your lucky day.

And to the game's credit, when you place the game in a NES and power the system up, the game comes on. Whether or not this is truly a "good" thing is subjective on the player's perspective.

The Bad
It's hard to pinpoint which area is the most outstanding, much less where to even begin on this game.

For starters, every living creature that exists in London absolutely HATES Dr. Jekyll with such intensity, it makes one wonder why he would dare leave his house, much less have found anyone willing to marry him. Seriously, dogs attack him, well-to-do women and vagrant children make every effort to hurt him, birds drop so much poop on him, you'd think they'd die from rupturing their colons or from dehydration. Gravediggers and opera singers hate him, sharply dressed men will risk the safety of anyone within proximity of Dr. Jekyll just to casually drop bombs at his feet. Bombs that have magically random blast proximities, no less.

Dr. Jekyll himself is fairly useless, with a weak jump, and his only offense/defense being a cane that does nothing. Poke at your enemies, it goes right through them, and the enemy gets off their intended potshot. He walks, he suffers... there's no way he can take on the entirety of London, and he doesn't.

That's where Mr. Hyde comes in.

While Mr. Hyde is more "game" than Jekyll's part, it's completely undesirable to be in this role. Not only does Mr. Hyde fight generic demon-like creatures with his fireball attacks (I must his skipped this particular chapter), the game treats this section as a punishment for the player. If Jekyll and Hyde end up in the same spot as each other despite their worlds, lighting strike Hyde, who dies instantly. Boom. Dead. Game over. No checkpoint. Even more comical is that Hyde moves WAY faster than Jekyll, and the screen is forced scrolling, so basically, you're kind of in deep bird poo the second the Hyde play starts.... if you even still care at this point.

On the same token, surviving puts the player back into the Jekyll gameplay, a prospect that is about as appealing as hiring a midget to kick you repeatedly in the crotch.

The Bottom Line
After playing this game, one would question if the developers of this game ever actually READ the novel at all. A comic book, trading cards with gum, something, ANYTHING. This is probably why a series of games based on Jane Austen or "The Bridges of Madison County" weren't attempted by even the most notorious of NES publishers who would attempt to make a game out of anything.

This game redefines "illogical". Of all the subject matters to choose from, why Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a book from 1886) was suddenly screaming relevance to be an action platforming video game a century after publication is a greater mystery than connecting the evil behaviors of Mr. Hyde. Why does everyone hate Jekyll so? Why does Hyde enter a demon world? Is there even a reason to care?

With all of its "Seal of Quality" mantras, the NES still put out some real stinkers, and this was one of them. It's an unplayable mess that is too hard and unforgiving for its own good, and provides no logic to its actions, or even a means for the player to defend themself in the Jekyll persona. Turning into Hyde meant instant death if the character moved too far in the level, so either form was unappealing, much like this game.

This game is about as stupid as it gets. Avoid it at all costs, unless you just want to experience first-hand the level of Hades that is this game.

The Good
The only saving grace in this game is that you have unlimited continues, so if you die, you don't have start all the way back to the beginning of the game and you should be thankful for that. Also, if you regain your anger meter as Mr. Hyde, your health bar almost fills back up again, which will help you a lot in the later levels.

The Bad
Where do I begin?

First of all, you start out as Dr. Jekyll. You need to walk through 6 stages from point A to point B. You walk so agonizingly slow and the staff dies not do ANYTHING. try to poke it at some one, you actually get hurt. Every single person, projectile or fiend you can imagine is out to kill you-- kids with slingshots, ladies charging at you, birds dumping poop at you, some blokes in business suits dropping a bomb which blows out in a few seconds, and the worst of it all, the barrels that hit you in the final stage and the annoying opera singers that are impossible to get by without any money (you earn coins when playing as Mr. Hyde).

The bombs have an incredibly long range. The moment you see it, either run back or forward for about 2 seconds and jump in the same direction. If not, the splash damage hurts you A LOT, and you almost automatically turn into Mr. Hyde. If you lost both all your health metre and Jekyll-Hyde meter, you're brown bread and you start back at the beginning of the stage.

Sure it is a little better when you play as Mr. Hyde, but you can only move up to the centre of the screen, you throw fireballs that shoot like boomerangs, and you cannot fire more than one shot at a time.

The graphics are decent at first, but they get repetitive as it goes along. The music is very monotonous and repetitive as well.

Besides the game being filled to the brim with glitches and other technical that make the game punishingly difficult and frustrating, it doesn't even follow very well the novel or the movies that it is based upon.

The Bottom Line
Anybody who has beaten this incredibly difficult game will actually feel guilt and regrets of having played through this mess. It is flawed on every fundamental level, from graphics, to sound, and especially the gameplay. Yes, you have unlimited continues, but if you die, you start at the very inception of the stage where you left off. The game's difficulty is in large part to Jekyll's painfully slow walking pace.

Play at your own risk. But I warn you: no matter how rare and terrible this game is, play it once and you'll be haunted for life.