"I can't think of anyone I'd rather not play Nintendo with."

With lightening quick action and blistering agility, he swings across a courtyard, his rope like a knife cutting through the blackened skyline and over the oblivious buffoon guards below, and lands gracefully upon a ledge. With a smirk and a nudge, he's through a window and stands before his prize. With a song in his heart and a spring in his step, he nabs the loot and makes a hasty retreat to the night's sky again. Can you catch The Hawk?

First things first, when I first went to see Hudson Hawk, I was excited. How could you not be? It's the early nineties, Bruce Willis is at the top of his game, climbing the ranks of Hollywood after having made his move from playing fast-talking David Addison on the hit TV show "Moonlighting", to iconic wise-cracking action hero John McClane in both "Die Hard" and "Die Harder." Big stars are always a must to draw in the crowds. What else made me squeal in delight as I waited in line to see the movie? The character! Who could not love a cheeky, globe-hopping cat burglar who goes around singing show tunes and rattling off one-liners? He even had a fedora! That's like, Indiana Jones, but ten times as awesome (if it's even possible to best Indy, that is.).

...

Alas, how very wrong I was. The movie blew chunks, not to put too fine a point on it. It was a vanity project, like that cinematic car crash "Battlefield Earth" (I still have nightmares about John Travolta's codpiece), or the giant turkey ("gobble gobble") that was "Gigli." The movie was rightfully slammed and it was fair justice to see it bomb. The movie, and indeed the game (yes, yes. I haven't forgotten about that. Keep your hats on, or else you won't be going to that hat convention in July.) see Hawk whisking his way across Europe to pilfer works of art. If you could decipher the haphazard plot I'll gladly pay you a thousand bucks, but the bare knuckles essentials of the film is that Bruce Willis must steal a series of Da Vinci's artworks to find hidden parts to good old Leo's gold-making alchemy machine-thing.

It sounds simple and fun enough. How bad could it possibly be on the NES? Well, I'll give you three guesses, but you're only going to need one (thankfully they didn't make an "Armageddon" video-game.). The game stinks. Everything. From sound to gameplay. It's actually embarrassing to think that such a game was not only conceived, but programmed and released as well.

Remember my opening paragraph about the graceful, silent Hawk? That's what the game should have been like. A stealthy cat-burglar game. Now I know we wouldn't get to see the likes of "Splinter Cell" or "Thief" for several years, but why does the game resort to being a tired, uninspired and lazy platformer?

The question is not whether you can catch the Hawk, but whether you'd want to. Everything about it feels wrong. For starters, the game's short at only 3 levels, but this'll be stretched about by the infuriating controls and tedious, cheap gameplay. Hudson doesn't make leaps or bounds over rooftops, but tiny little hops that barely get him anywhere, and for a game that relies heavily upon jumping boxes and crates, it doesn't bode well. You'll probably find out just how annoying the jump really is on the first enemy in the game; a pissed off guard dog. You can't jump over him, so you'll just end up being bit on the ass, and if that's not all, you'll be dragged and thrown off the rooftop. Luckily, you land on a springy, awning and it cushions your fall and you don't lose a life, but still. It's annoying as hell to be dragged around like that since you can't stop it.

Thankfully, Hudson is not defenseless. He has in his hands a baseball, or what appears to be a baseball since one can never be too sure when we're dealing in 8-Bit, and with a tap of the B Button, he'll launch it. It's tricky to use, since you can only throw one at a time, and since they bounce like mad, you'll have to get used to using them early on or face major ass-whoopage in the later stages. Enemies you'll face include: angry dogs, museum guards, photographers, monkeys on bikes, midgets with wheelbarrows and a whole lot more. They sure were a little creative when it came to adapting the source material. Oh, and if Hudson wants to get up close and personal, holding the B Button delivers a weedy punch, and since it has zero range, expect to get damaged in the process.

As I was saying earlier, the game is really about Hawk reaching a certain platform, and to do so, he makes use of ladders, elevators, overhead wires and boxes. Can't jump over those crates? Push a smaller box against them and use that. It sounds simple, but believe me, it's frustrating. It's a simple thing to push them, since you just run into them, but it's getting them next to the box that's nigh impossible, since if the two touch, the box will "respawn" back at its starting point. I guess it's so that if you mess up and you get the box stuck in the wrong place, you can use it again. Problem is, there is no wrong place. There's never more than one place where you can use the box, so what's the deal? It's annoying and will get you very mad very, very easily. Other things you must watch out for when sneaking around are the alarms. If you touch just one, all the surveillance cameras in the room go berserk and increase in speed greatly, making it tricky as hell to get by. If undisturbed, the cameras are a breeze, since you just need to move when it's not projecting a beam of light, or else you'll be zapped by it and sent to the start of the stage. Yeah. That's about the depth of the puzzles you'll find in this game - find box (which is just inches away), push into place. Repeat ad infinitum. The only time you'll be stumped is on really stupid things like the end of Level 1. Your goal is to collect a statue behind a painting. How do you do it? Collect all the coins in the room to make the statue start flashing and then...are you ready?...punch it. I was tapping every button and pushing every direction I could for ten minutes until I figured it out (dumb stroke of luck more like). Would you honestly have thought of that?

Graphically, the game is a let down yet again. Inanimate backgrounds, and rushed, blocky sprites in singular colors presents the gamer with a bad eyesore. Bruce Willis' sprite is incredibly undetailed and goofy. His head is enormous, yet has this tiny body. I can't really find anything wrong with them, since they look like they're supposed to look, and you can guess what they are pretty easily, but the sheer lack of detail hardly makes them the game's strongest asset.

If you ever saw the movie, you will no doubt remember the "Swinging on a Star" duet between Hawk and his friend Tommy Five-Tone. I'm not sure whether it's socially acceptable or not, but I do have their version of the song on my iPod. Do we get anything remotely catchy or noteworthy? No. I can't remember a single tune to any of them, despite the fact that I just not ten seconds ago booted my NES to hear them. They're short, looped and grow increasingly annoying the longer you play. The sound effects are of a similar nature; unvaried and tedious. Just the same "boop" noise every time you dispatch any enemy. The same "whoop" every time you jump. I recommend drowning them out with your own rendition of "Swinging on a Star."

In conclusion, we have both a bad movie, and a very, very bad game. Both had potential, but both fall flat on their arses. The movie license wasn't that strong anyway to make a decent game about, but they could have had a great stealth game if they'd just thought outside the box for a moment. Forget a cheap cash-in with the movie, try something new. "Metal Gear" had already been out for a few years and proved pretty popular. Why not go for a stealth game in that line? Oh well. I guess it's a bit futile to complain about a game that's more than fifteen years old now.

My final words on the game are this: Avoid it. Do not even attempt to catch the Hawk. There are a billion and one games out there are surpass it in every way. If you're curious about just how bad it is (it's not even "Haha, so bad it's good" bad), you could probably pick it up for a dollar, but somehow I suspect at even that price you'll feel robbed. The Hawk strikes again.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/07

Game Release: Hudson Hawk (EU, 1991)