Written Review
Banana Prince is a Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System that was released in 1991 in Japan and in 1992 in Germany. I had never heard of this game until the day before I wrote this review. I decided to give this a try, but as there’s no English language version I used a ROM hack to get a translated version of the game.
Banana Prince is an action platformer, that sees you the Prince in his quest to regain lost weapons that the Pepper Dragon stole. There are in total 7 worlds each with 3 levels and a boss. It’s not a very difficult game but does offer a nice challenge with what appears to be unlimited continues and the continues carry on from the last checkpoint you activated and not just the start of the levels, or worlds. When you begin your journey you start off with what looks like a tiny club to hit enemies with, but the range isn’t great, as you progress and get to shops you are able to purchase new weapons, that add some projectiles to your attacks, it starts off with 1 small projectile and you end up with 3 very large projectiles that have a much better range.
Not only are there shops there’s a gambling game where you bet 30 rings and have to guess if a dice roll is higher or lower than a 5, that sounds like easy money but the dice have 9 sides. Not only that I did win once, but I only had 20 rings back. There’s also a woman who heals you with a kiss recovering all health back to 3 bananas which are 6 hits. Lastly, there’s a bonus world and you get to explore a board via dice rolls, I managed to beat the boss and got the banana sword for it. The gameplay is enjoyable, the platforming is accurate but tricky, and while the combat is relatively basic, as it has a basic attack and that’s it, though you can grow trees which you can climb and launch off which if you hit an enemy you will likely kill them. as the jump does an attack in the form of a somersault.
The game looks nice with nice sprite work, though the characters you see have more detail when entering shops or similar areas, there’s plenty of detail in the stages too with a nice variety to the stages themselves and what is in them, for example, you start off in an area with some trees around, similar to palm trees and the background is a skyline with buildings, you then go to a forest, a swamp-like area, to climbing a tower and more. Musically the game’s got a really upbeat soundtrack for the most part, there’s slower-paced music to fit some themes, like the forest, and the boss theme is frantic. Overall it is a well-balanced OST and is very catchy too.
Now the biggest issue for the game for me isn’t really an issue of the game itself, because I played a fan-translated version of the game some things didn’t really make sense, for example, there are quizzes in the game and sometimes I just got confused by the questions, and with no manual, I had no idea what many of the things in the game were. You get an, well I say item, but it’s an old guy who floats above you and I have no idea why even after finishing the game, and you can collect him more than once, but I have no idea if that does anything. I don’t think it’s explained in-game, so that is one fault of the game, but I guess it would have4 been in the manual.
Overall I think this is a good game, and worth trying out if you have an interest in retro platformers and with that, I score this game 7 Pugsleys out of 10.