Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthough of Capcom's 1990 license-based action-platformer for the NES, Little Nemo: The Dream Master.

In the late 80s Capcom was already well known for their arcade hits and the Mega Man series, but like Konami, around the turn of the decade they began to shift their focus toward producing games based on famous IPs.

By the time they had fully shifted into Disney mode, though, they had already made a number of excellent licensed-based games, however under-recognized they might have turned out to be.

Little Nemo: The Dream Master is one of the earlier titles in the chain, and it was developed concurrently with the CPS1 arcade platformer Nemo (https://youtu.be/Fv-ghjDQ-Zs​ ).

Based on the anime Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, both games were meant to be part of a multipronged marketing approach working in tandem with the film release. (Anyone remember a similar story about the Strider games?) In a bit of bad luck, though, the movie completely tanked in America, throwing an unwelcome spanner in Capcom's plans.

The arcade game Nemo was a fantastic platformer with some real head-turning graphics and sound for a 1989 game, but from its sales, it seems safe to assume that everybody was too consumed with things like Final Fight and TMNT to pay it any attention.

Little Nemo: The Dream Master didn't fare quite as poorly in sales as its arcade brother had, but it didn't do much to disrupt the pecking order in the sales charts, either.

I had this game back when it was relatively new, and for awhile, it was one of my favorite games. It was one that I had played so much of that I could tear through it without losing any lives in abour a half-hour, and upon reaching the ending, I'd just hit reset and do it all again. I'm not sure what grabbed me particularly about Little Nemo, but I had a hard time putting it down.

The game plays out across a series of Nemo's dreams. Running around in his jammies, Nemo has to search each of the levels for the keys to the exit. Since he's so small, though, he must rely on the wild animals to help him out.

There's a fair range of these animals: Nemo can ride a lizard to climb up walls, a mole to tunnel through sand, a bee to fly over hazards - there are lots of possibilities. Just feed any of your potential partners a fistful of candy and they'll let you hop on for a ride, making the gameplay far more interesting than the typical in hop-and-bop games.

It's also far harder than your usual hop-and-bop games. While the stages are neither huge nor maze-like, the enemy placement is often clever (and sometimes insanely cheap), and the bad guys are good at tracking and following you, the whole exploration element remains a lot of fun without anything become overwhelming or confusing. It's balanced well, but it won't give up its ending without some real work.

And finally, the graphics and sound are some of the most impressive that Capcom had done up till this point on the NES. The stages are all look like they were pulled from children's books (makes sense, since the levels are an eight-year-old's dreams) with the cute animals, the mixture of soft pastel colors with bright, vivid ones, and the sheer amount of detail in everything - I especially loved all of the different animations you get to see when Nemo assumes a new form. The music is right up there too. It's not quite as dramatic and action-oriented as Mega Man's - the tunes are generally more mellow, or "dreamlike," if you prefer - though the theme from the final stage would fit right in at any of Wily's castles.

It didn't benefit from a high profile license the way Little Mermaid or Chip 'n Dale did, but Little Nemo is arguably better than either of those games, and better than most of the classic titles in the Capcom Disney NES lineup.

(And if you like this one, you really should check out the arcade game as well. They're both excellent.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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