Nemo (Capcom Arcade Review)

Nemo
Platform: Arcade
Released November 20, 1990
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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In December, I reviewed Capcom’s arcade anti-classic Willow. A terrible game that everyone goes gaga over that’s directed by Yoshiki Okamoto and based on a middling movie. Six months later and I’m reviewing Capcom’s Nemo. A wonderful game that nobody ever talks about that’s directed by Yoshiki Okamoto and based on a middling movie. When people think of “Capcom” and “Nemo” they likely think of the NES game Little Nemo: The Dream Master. I’ll be doing that one next. Both the coin-op and the NES game beat the film to the US market by a couple years, not that it matters. This is one of those licenses where people should have known the film was going to bust. The joint Japan-US production with a script from Chris “Goonies/Home Alone/Harry Potter” Columbus spent years in development hell, then released four days after I was born in 1989 only to become a historic box office bomb, losing about sixty million bucks (adjusted for inflation). Like Krull before it, this is one of those situations where the coin-op is the best thing to come out of the whole fiasco. Actually, I’d call this easily Capcom’s best arcade platformer from this era. It’s also the rare Capcom coin-op that doesn’t feel like a quarter shakedown. I’m sure the two things aren’t related and it’s a complete coincidence. Uh huh.

If Capcom ever does release this, I hope they restore the two deleted levels that are still there, in the game code. This one especially, where you slide across a rail, is both original and has a sense of childlike wonder about it that few games from the cynical early 90s achieve. I really had a good time playing Nemo. This is exactly the kind of lost classic I started covering retro games for. If you want to play the deleted levels, Cutting Room Floor has the instructions.

Nemo is such a blast, and I say that thinking the movie is BORING. It’s a favorite of my father, who loves anime feature films, but for me, I was like.. man, this ain’t no My Neighbor Totoro. Imagine the degree of difficulty Capcom had in adapting THAT to a viable platform game, but they nailed it! Unlike the NES game, there’s no animal shenanigans this go around. Instead, most enemies can be killed by jumping on them. That old chestnut. If that’s not to your liking, you can also use the scepter from the movie as a weapon that functionally works like a sword. It’s satisfying enough by itself, I guess. It’s not an amazing weapon or anything, but it can be. It can be powered-up by grabbing the famous Capcom pinwheel, turning Nemo red and letting you create a chain reaction with the enemies, IE hitting them back into each-other. Now THAT’S the good stuff, and my only regret is that they didn’t build the game more around this. A couple bosses are, though. Bosses where you can hit them directly, but it’s more efficient to knock smaller baddies into them. During these fights, the pinwheels might even continuously spawn for players. Collision is pretty good all around and the enemies are fun and imaginative. For the thirty to forty minutes or so you’ll need to finish Nemo Arcade, fighting the basic enemies never gets boring. That’s half the battle right there!

You can also pick up and throw crates and barrels. I threw one once that rolled so far that I was racking-up points for a solid 10 seconds even though it’d scrolled off the screen. I LOVE THIS GAME!

And the level design is pretty impressive too. Capcom took a very high risk by not starting off with a basic “move right, jump over pits” type of design you’d expect from a first level. Instead, it’s an auto scrolling train. I hate auto-scrolling, but I loved that stage, and I loved that Capcom took it on faith that players understand the concept of a platform game at this point. After that, Nemo relies on spectacular set pieces, including a memorable haunted forest, a sinking steamboat, and adventures in the clouds. Even when the level design devolves into straight corridors, the enemies are spaced out and fun enough to do battle with that it never gets boring. To further break-up the action, there’s hidden chests all over that reveal themselves after you step on their platform, and unlike many Capcom games, there’s no whammies in them! How come nobody talks about the coin-op Nemo? I hear about the sucky NES game all the time, but this? It’s great! It’s such a shame that Capcom didn’t roll the dice on porting this to something like the Genesis, which could have used a marquee arcade platformer.

I hate that it’s unlikely this will get a re-release. Capcom should just reload the license and then release this with the NES game in a 2 for 1 pack for $14.99. People with fond memories of the NES game will be burned thanks to being drunk on nostalgia. BUT, they’ll have a hell of a surprise by what is the REAL reason to own such a package.

If I have to complain, it’s that there’s not enough upgrades to the scepter. Get this: I didn’t even realize until my second playthrough right before going to press on this that there WAS an upgrade to the scepter. In fact, judging by the screenshots, I even picked it up without realizing it. It gives a subtle, nearly imperceptible electric effect to your attack that doesn’t functionally feel stronger, more energetic, or whatever the hell they were going for. Obviously, since I didn’t even realize I was doing it when I did it. I also think the bosses are too spongy. It’s a Capcom coin-op, so if that wasn’t the case, I’d be shocked, frankly, but it does matter quite a bit. Your scepter often needs several wacks to even cause the boss meter to drop a tiny sliver. For many bosses, hit points are weighed too heavily on extracurricular hits, IE throwing crates or using the red-Nemo power to knock enemies back into them. This is a little troublesome because there’s a learning curve to picking up the objects you can throw. Your sprite might be physically on the object’s sprite, but you’re still not able to pick it up because you’re not ALL the way on it. As a result, some of the bosses cross the line into being.. gasp.. boring. In the case of the 4th boss, a giant gear, really boring, actually. F’n thing took me probably 20% of the playtime by itself. When I noticed the stage timer stopped working on bosses, I literally LOLed because it’s a genuinely laughable solution to the problem. “Well, we can’t get rid of the sponge. We’re Capcom! (shrug) Just stop the timer!”

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On one hand, I’m grateful the basic enemies weren’t also damage sponges since they pretty much sealed Willow’s fate, but on the other hand, balancing bosses is a big deal too. The sponge might also be because Nemo is a co-op game, but I didn’t get a chance to test that. I will update this review if I get a chance to play with someone else, but I can’t imagine it would be any better even with two players. And nothing I just complained about is a deal breaker because most of the bosses, spongy as they are, still manage to be fun. Only the third and fourth ones really feel sloggy, which happen to be the two bosses based mostly around throwing stuff at them. So is the giant tree but the means to do it isn’t something you have to work hard at. It’s such a shame that Capcom didn’t roll the dice on porting this to something like the Genesis, which could have used a marquee platformer in 1990. In fact, Nemo vanished from gaming’s collective memory. I’ve found it on Capcom arcade lists a couple times and immediately forgot about it. Nobody talks about this one, and I don’t get it. After playing both the NES and arcade versions of Nemo, I think the wrong Capcom Nemo game is the famous one.
Verdict: YES!