Tail'Gator

The Good
Tail'Gator is an action platformer developed and published by Natsume exclusively for the Game Boy.

The original Japanese name is Shippo de Bun! which translate as Boom with the Tail! and as the title in both releases suggest you control an alligator that uses his tail to attack enemies, the objective is to open all boxes from a stage to be able to collect a key to the exit door from the final box. In the meantime you grab power-ups, six of them will grant you a projectile for your tail attack so you can do it at a distance. Occasionally you can find a Bomb that clears the entire screen of enemies; there are also hearts that extend your H.P. bar, and extra points so you can brag about your score with your friends... The fun comes from the challenge, not in the first few stages, but soon enough the screen will be crawling with a huge variety of enemies - it's very impressive how many you see at the same time - all of them behaving in different manners, and you need to think fast, have perfect timing and be quick in your reactions through different types of platforms: that move, disappear, force you in different directions, throw you upwards or down, etc. Sometimes you'll be begging to find the wipe screen bomb... to have some rest, just for a brief moment: cause enemies infinitely respawn, and most of them require more than one hit to kill - It sounds way worse than what actually is - There are four areas sometimes with four stages each: a water level, land, cave, and an air level, and randomly at the end of one of those you could get to fight a Boss, these are some of the most fun this game has in store for you.

The Bad
The graphics are acceptable... and the music was made by Iku Mizutani - of Medabots fame - in the style of jazz ragtime, very repetitive and tiring after a while.

Probably you won't like Tail'Gator if you are not into the 80's arcade style of platformers. And the style was old and practically dead even by 1991. It gets boring pretty fast, but you can give it a rest after saving your progress with the password system. You won't need it for anything else though, the game has unlimited continues.

The Bottom Line
A very simple but cute and well done game, from another era for sure, one dominated by the ones like Solomon's Key, Mappy, Bubble Bobble, and Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle... If you are into that type of platformers you surely gonna enjoy this one.