Felix the Cat

" Felix The Cat is a very unoriginal game, and although it's very easy and brief it's good fun anyway."

It’s beyond obvious right from the moment you begin playing Felix The Cat that the developers of the game, Hudson Soft, have ‘heavily borrowed’ a number of gameplay elements from a certain other series of wonderful NES platform games… starring a tubby plumber. Put aside the fact that the game is far from original however and you’ll discover that Felix The Cat is actually a pretty decent game.

Gameplay wise, the game plays out almost every other standard 8-bit platform game. Run, jump, run jump.You’ve got things to collect, enemies to deal with, floating platforms to navigate and treacherous drops to avoid falling down.

A load of the gameplay features of Felix The Cat are almost completely identical to Super Mario Bros. Levels look and feel very similar, as do the enemies. You collect tokens that will upgrade Felix’s weapon from a punch glove, to a magic attack and eventually a tank. You’ll play some flying levels as well, where Felix begins the level floating on an umbrella. Bump that up a couple of notches with some tokens and you’ll end up controlling a hot air balloon. The game also features underwater levels among others. Oh and did I mention the game has warp handbags? Jump on one of these and press down and you’ll be off to a mini-game or secret area to collect more tokens. How ****ing original. You’ve basically got 3 levels to a world..then a boss fight at the end of each. The levels are good fun to play, but not only are they excessively easy, but they’re really short as well. That’s to be expected from a game that is clearly aimed at a younger audience though.

Gameplay is broken up in between worlds with some dialogue to help the story along but quite honestly it’s a waste of time really. Felix’s catfriend has been kidnapped and he’s off to rescue her.

In terms of Graphics, the game looks fairly nice but doesn’t exactly push the NES to its upper visual limits. I can’t help but have flashbacks to Mario Bros now and then through the various levels, and I half expect a mushroom to come bouncing down from above..

The music featured in the game is happy, catchy and overall very suited to the game and it’s younger target audience. My only real complaint as far as the music goes is can all seem very similar, and thus does get a bit repetitive after you’ve been playing for a while, thankfully however beating the game shouldn’t take more time than the average gamer could stand listening to the music before it got too much to bare anyway.

Felix is definitely a fun game to play, which speaks volumes for a cartoon licensed based games, and the fact that it is actually enjoyable comes as a bit of a surprise to me. While the game isn’t great, nor is it the most original game, nor is it in any way, shape or form a half decent challenge for any gamer whose age reaches double figures, I’ll give it credit for still being pretty fun to play. It’s good to see that if a developer is going to rip-off a good game, they at least do a decent job of it.

I wouldn’t suggest buying Felix The Cat unless you get it really cheap (who knows though, these days you can pick up a lot of NES games for next-to-nothing if you’re lucky), but if you know someone who has a copy ask to borrow it and set aside maybe an hour, hour and a half maybe to have a romp through and beat it. It’ll be worth your time just for the sake of it and if you’ve got a few ankle-biters running around the house they might really enjoy Felix The Cat and get a good challenge out of it too.

6.5/10 (Rounded to 7/10 for GameFAQs)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/03, Updated 12/05/03