With both being superb examples of the genre, it’s difficult to say which is the more entertaining, although there’s something to be said for the 1992 game’s simplicity and brisker pace. At the same time, the original is that bit arcade-snappier, its layout offering greater room for impromptu slide negotiations, and the ability to take out most on-screen enemies fairly quickly once you have a strategy in play. Like the original, it’s not designed to be torn through: it’s a dense and strategic conflict that requires moments of digging in to clear the field lest it all get too much. The most immediate difference is that Reshrined plays a marginally slower game. You still accrue an additional life-meter heart after each stage, and there are useful secrets scattered all over, regularly off the beaten path, within enclaves and forest glades, and quite often in the guise of stray chickens.Īs we’ve played the Super Nintendo game right up to present day - and with some conviction, we might add - we’re well-positioned to draw direct comparisons. The repel attack now does a lot more work, and is better at taking out enemies by pinging their projectiles back at them. You have a rapid-fire projectile attack, a repel defence manoeuvre that protects from incoming fire, a quick belly-slide to avoid danger, and limited smart bombs that aren’t replenished after a death. Mechanically, it remains mostly the same. When you eventually make it to the once-familiar octopus boss engagement - now a nightmare-on-raft with incredible visual bombast - it’s clear that this is a whole new ball game. You battle roaming fire snakes with your repel attack, and balding, misshapen giants camped behind terracotta walls. Stage two, although thematically the same, shifts further still, its layout and enemies fundamentally different.

Then, as you find yourself roaming up little pathways and stone steps, around bends and up against cartloads of enemies, that notion starts to fade. Reshrined’s switch-and-bait is that, when you head into the first stage, it appears a straight remake.

Pocky and rocky 2 snes cart