Venture Kid is the ultimate love letter to 8-bit NES platforming games. Developers Per Aasland and Even Rusten decided to showcase their game development abilities by making a game honouring what they love: The original Nintendo Entertainment System and its platforming games. What started out as a hobby, eventually ended up in a full grown game with a 2016 release on PC and iOS. Now Nintendo Switch owners exclusively get the chance to play Venture Kid on a console.
Andy Knight
In Venture Kid, the evil Dr. Teklov is secretly building a weapon of mass destruction disguised in his space fortress. Andy Knight finds out about these plans and steps up to be the hero to go on a dangerous mission to foil Dr. Teklov’s plans. Along the journey Andy needs to traverse different areas filled with Dr. Teklov’s minions. As if areas filled with enemies isn’t enough, the route is filled with dangerous jumps and hazardous spiked pits to hopefully not fall prone to.
A true homage
For Venture Kid the developers wanted to create a true NES 8-bit game. This meant that they set themselves the same limits as the original hardware had. Staying true to these limits makes Venture Kid feel right at home amongst the NES library. The art style is in true 8-bit style with all the rough edges you might remember from those days. Working with less colours and big pixels but still managing to make a great looking game is hard to do. Many have failed but Venture Kid truly captures the 8-bit style like some of the greats back in the late 80s did.
Mega Man meets Ducktales
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Venture Kid does a lot of imitation. Andy Knight is obviously based on Mega Man. His pea-shooter gun works the same as the Mega Buster. Power-ups you get after defeating each stage boss and the pellets you need to collect to use these power-ups is the same mechanic used in Mega Man. The level design feels like a mix of all the great Capcom platformers like Ducktales, Darkwing duck and again Mega Man.
The stages range from the straight-forward winding path to the boss. While others have more diverging paths for you to explore. It pays to explore beyond the beaten path because often you’ll find extra health and orbs, the game’s currency, in these hard to reach parts. Like in Ducktales, each stage has an optional treasure to collect. To get to these treasures a clever use of the power-ups in combination with some special items is mostly needed. Getting all the extra treasures really tests your platforming ability.
Different modes and difficulties
Getting through the eight initial stages and the ninth boss stage does offer a challenge. Although the term NES-hard doesn’t quite apply here. I found the difficulty just right to keep the enjoyment factor up and the frustration (remember Mega Man 1) factor down. Some hardcore veterans of the genre might want to go straight to the hard difficulty if they want a challenge. Venture Kid can be played in classic and adventure mode. The classic mode forces you to complete the stages in a predetermined order while the adventure mode lets you go wherever you want. The survive mode challenges you to go from point A to B of a certain stage with just one health. To top it of completing the game unlocks a boss rush mode.
Chiptune
The limitations the NES had meant composers had to really think differently to make great scores for the games. Nevertheless there are great examples of NES tunes that that people older than 30 can still hum perfectly. Nowadays 8-bit music has even become a thing. Venture Kid went with quality when they choose who to compose their chiptunes. None other than Matt Creamer, who you might know from Retro City Rampage among others, was asked to provide each stage with a fitting 8-bit soundtrack.
Conclusion
Venture Kid could fit right in with the rest of my NES games. Its obvious Venture Kid doesn’t do anything new but what they do, they do extremely well. The whole homage thing they went for just works and adding the epic soundtrack by Matt Creamer is just the cherry on top of the 8-bit pie. Venture Kid is a must have for any 2D platforming fan old or new.
