The Little Mermaid

"Guaranteed to be %100 less cringe-inducing than any Disney sequel to the movie. Or the movie itself, for that matter."

Far back in the shadowy recesses of the late 80s/early 90s, Capcom used to make really cool Disney games. Responsibility for such products nowadays, unfortunately, has been relegated to evil behemoths like Acclaim, Electronic Arts, or (worst of all) Disney's in-house software manufacturing department. The end result, predictably enough, is that the games tend to suck. Rather than marrying a well-conceived engine to a deepened or extended story, all too often the games by these players tend to simply slavishly follow the movie or animated feature in question with an unoriginal platformer or, even more unforgivable, a series of minigames more suited to entertaining 5-year olds on a promo CD. The Little Mermaid succeeds because of two things: 1. It is not one of those games. 2. The game is cute, but nowhere near the level of amateurish girlishness as, say, Magic Knight Rayearth.

GRAPHICS: As Capcomy as Capcomy can be. Despite having only a few creatures from the movie as models, the designers effectively kept to the Disney feel( though, given the models of enemies used in series like Megaman, it seems to come naturally to them.) Evil creatures are cute while remaining menacing. The cutscenes, while nowhere near as interesting as something like Ninja Gaiden, don't do too badly as far as 8-bit movie art goes. And, as should be necessary when discussing any old NES game, slowdown and flash were kept to a fair minimum by not having too many moving things on the screen at once. More time seemed to be invested in making the backgrounds look nice and detailed than on any of the sprites, which sometimes gave the settings a feeling of emptiness, but altogether this was a well done effort, and complemented exceedingly well by the

MUSIC, abode of those happily syncopated souls who would later go on to write Chargeman's theme for Mega Man 5. Once again, rather than consigning the new gamer to a litany of inferior 8-bit renditions of music from the film, the music people very very wisely decided to stick with the type of melodies that actually sounded good on the NES's SFX processor. Eminently hummable, short without being repetitious, and shrill without being screechy-really, the music is one of the prime reasons to experience the hour or so of

GAMEPlay that this short title provides. The justification for going back 'undah da see' is rather thin-Ursula somehow revives and is now mind-controlling all the fish to do evil unfishy things. I'm really not sure what a bunch of fish could do against an intelligent underwater community of mer-people led by Mr. Trident Mega Buster(WHY isn't he playable?), but Ursula proved ''wilyer''(2 Megaman references in the same sentence! I rock!) than the old coot before, so he's sending his daughter, armed with the powerful Tail Bubble Buster(okay, now it's time for the MM refs to stop) to singlehandedly stop Ursula by, uh, fish-slapping her. Ahem. You also have to find a bunch of mystic pots for no particular reason. Despite the weak premise, the game is fun. Killing enemies with other enemies is a time honored practice from Sun Tzu to Kirby, and it doesn't lose its fun here until you forget about how evil icthyoids reappear with even the tiniest screen scrolling. You need the extra enemies, however, to smack into holes and gain forks(Dinglehoppers), pipes(Snarfblatts) and extra hearts(Fargajiggers). You use mystic seashells to kill enemies and open chests containing red and green spheres, which upgrade the strength and distance of the bubbles shot from your tail. After which you swim and occasionally flop around on land on your merry way toward defeating Ursula again. If this went on for anything more than five levels, I might have gotten tired of it; as such, it forms quite the fun diversion. So go ahead and emulate it, or buy it for your little sister who's the only one using your old 8-bit NES by now.

Nintendo Logic: Other than perfectly natural advantages given to enemies over the spacetime continuum( fish can swim through solid walls of rock, you can't ) and an honorable mention for Ursula in the halls of Stupid Video Game Villains( Instead of blasting you at pretty much point-blank range with the Trident Mega Buster(TM), she sends waves of fish-your only effective weapon against her) this game remained fairly close to Disney logic, and made the sequel in the video game world less painful than any direct-to-video or afternoon TV alternative.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/03, Updated 01/07/03