Everyday Spelunker (iPad)

SPELUNKER_BOXSpelunker was a classic 8-bit NES game where you explored a cave to collect treasure and avoid obstacles. It’s become a very nostalgic game, especially in Japan, because it’s notorious for its difficulty. Mainly because your little man dies so easily. Even the tiniest of falls can wipe him out. But for some reason, fans have embraced the high challenge level of this classic and love the little cave explorer despite his weakness. I think they even directly poke fun of that in a Japanese anime. Anyway, now you can play this classic on iOS devices and Google Play (reviewed here on iPad).

The game is exactly how you remember it on the NES. Collect treasures to boost your score and keys to unlock doors. There is a button for jumping and another for other actions. Holding up and the action buttons makes your character shoot a flare upwards, handy for defeating flying bats. Press down and the action button and you’ll place one of your collected bombs, which you’ll need to blow up rocks in your way. Just make sure to step back from the bomb after you place it so the blast doesn’t kill you. And pressing the action button without any other direction will make you shine a flashlight, which is used to ward off ghosts. You can tell a ghost is coming because the music will change.

Not only does this version have the NES classic, but for a couple of dollars more, you can download brand new level layouts, too. There is also a ‘rope assist’ feature that makes it easier to grab onto ropes to climb. Only problem with this game, aside from the maddening challenge, is that the buttons are mapped to the touch screen, and aren’t as responsive. And that makes a hard game even harder.

SPELUNKER_SCREEN

Kid Factor:

Even though your character dies easily in Everyday Spelunker, violence is very minimal. If you get hit or fall too far, your character just flashes while the death music plays. Reading skill isn’t needed to play, but younger (and even older) gamers may get frustrated at the high difficulty.

One Response to “Everyday Spelunker (iPad)”

  1. That just sounds like a pain. I know the Japanese like their difficulty, though. There is a song about not being able to defeat Air Man from Mega Man 2 in Japanese. I thought he was easy when I played MM2, but then again, I played on “Normal” mode, and I think they pretty much only had “Hard” mode.

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