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Little Samson
Nintendo (NES)
Rare Doesn’t Mean Amazing
3.5/5 stars
In late 1992, nearly two years after the launch of the SNES, Taito released a new 2D Platformer on the original NES. Taito seemed to love releasing NES games even after that console’s official obsolescence, as there were a number of these titles, including both “Bubble Bobble Part 2” and the game in question: “Little Samson.”
Because of its post mortem NES release and naturally limited print run, “Little Samson” is an incredibly rare cartridge, typically going for well over $1,000 second hand, even without the box or instruction manual. In this modern era of reproduction cartridges, however, it is simple to find a bootleg copy for around $20-30. I didn’t bother going that far, as I have no particular infatuation with the original NES hardware (in fact, I actively hate the original controller), so I simply enjoyed “Little Samson” via emultion thanks to Archive.org and RetroArch. Unfortunately, ‘enjoyed’ might be too strong a term as, despite a strong first impression, “Little Samson” isn’t as special as its high price would imply.
Presentation
As a late NES game, “Little Samson” looks about as good as an NES game can look. Still, it suffers from that console’s limited color pallet and the traditional flickering that occurs when too many sprites are on-screen and lined up on the same row of pixels (this doesn’t happen often, though). Environments have about as much detail packed into them as the NES could handle, and enemies are distinctive, though rather limited in variety. The four sprites for the playable heroes have a lot of personality and character, though nothing in the game is particularly well animated.
The soundtrack is what one would expect of NES 8-bit chiptunes. Some of them are quite catchy and pleasant, and there are never any particularly grating noises that come out of the game.
Story
“Little Samson” tries to push a stronger narrative than most NES action games. Unfortunately, it mostly fails in this regard due to being ENTIRELY WORDLESS. Nobody says anything in “Little Samson,” and the events in the game’s opening cinematic are entirely pantomimed.
It seems that an evil force is up to no good in some sort of floating island/castle complex. The king of the land (who looks surprisingly undead, with his large, hollow eyes) sends out a group of guards to deal with the situation, but the island/castle’s new inhabitant – some sort of evil robe-wearer – appears out of nowhere and obliterates the guards before they even get out of the courtyard. As a last resort, the king attaches messages to four carrier pigeons and sets them loose to find heroes capable of saving the land. The pigeons find a little kid in a green tunic (apparently named Samson), a large Stone Golem, a cantankerous Dragon, and… a … Mouse.
After a short tutorial section with each of these characters, the player unites them in the king’s audience chamber, where the king masturbates furiously while providing the quartet with some sort of magical bell that will unite their powers against evil. In a way, “Little Samson” almost feels like a precursor to FrozenByte’s ‘Trine’ series,
And that’s all there is until the player sees the credits and the ‘The End’ screen. I will give “Little Samson” credit for trying to put together a decent excuse narrative for this disparate group to go Platforming together, but ultimately the complete lack of text and reliance on audience intuition comes off just as bad as a typical Engrish script from the same time period.
Gameplay
“Little Samson” starts out strong, and seems like a breath of fresh air in a sea of samey, tedious 8-bit Platformers that relied a bit too much still on the Arcade mentality of killing players off and forcing them to repeat content over and over. “Little Samson” uses a password system similar to ‘Mega Man’ or “Metroid” (though significantly easier to write down and remember due to the short length and simplicity of the passwords), but like most ‘Mega Man’ games, only hands out passwords up to a certain point, after which the player gets to repeat a bunch of boss rush content if they run out of lives and decide to take a break.
The general gameplay in “Little Samson” also starts out seemingly strong and original, but is quickly revealed to be fairly one-note. Each of the four characters – Little Samson, Dragon, Golem, and Mouse – have different attacks, health meters, and jumping capabilities. Samson attacks by throwing bells horizontally and can climb on walls and ceilings. The Dragon can fly/glide for a fairly long time and shoot fireballs horizontally that rise into the air as they travel. The Golem is big, heavy, and has a huge health bar, plus he can throw a short-range punch in any direction. The Mouse is small, and can fit into tight areas, plus he can drop bombs that explode after a couple of seconds. Taking an early taste of “Little Samson” and experiencing these four characters – which the player can freely swap between at any time, much like how Mega Man swaps between sub-weapons – gives the impression of a game that has a little bit of “Metroid” in its DNA. This impression is strengthened by the fact that enemies sometimes drop health upgrades that permanently increase one of the heroes’ health bars, as well as health potions that act like the Energy Tanks in ‘Mega Man,’ allowing each of the four characters to refill their health mid-stage.
Unfortunately, all of these seemingly deep mechanics are actually just a shallow illusion, as “Little Samson” is an entirely linear platformer with few to no secret goodies to find via exploration. There’s no backtracking to revisit previous stages. There are no puzzles. The entire game is just linear A to B traversal with a pattern-memorization boss fight to break things up every now and then. The closest “Little Samson” ever comes to “Metroid” is in the tiresome post-final-boss escape sequence.
Despite being a fairly generic platformer disguised as a more in-depth platformer, “Little Samson” does, at least have tight controls and clear objectives. The presence of these minor details that should be expected of all games still puts “Little Samson” ahead of most other NES Action titles.
Overall
It may be rare, it may be horrifically expensive, and it may be a holy grail for collectors, but ultimately, “Little Samson” is a fairly generic 8-bit platformer that takes plenty of inspiration from the likes of ‘Mega Man’ and “Whomp ‘Em,” but doesn’t do anything to revolutionize 2D Platforming. Fans of those games should definitely see about emulating this title or buying a repro-cart, but nobody should feel obligated to spend a ton of money on it. “Little Samson” is the type of NES game that makes a strong first impression, but ultimately becomes less interesting the longer one plays through it.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
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