{"id":67754,"date":"2025-01-23T23:53:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T13:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/?p=67754"},"modified":"2025-01-23T23:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T13:53:32","slug":"review-gimmick-2-review-nintendo-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/2025\/01\/review-gimmick-2-review-nintendo-switch.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: Gimmick! 2 Review (Nintendo Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent passion for retro remakes has seen a whole host of titles updated and refreshed, though with mixed results \u2013 I\u2019m still stinging from the disappointment of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends<\/a> and maintain that Snow Bros Wonderland<\/a> isn\u2019t much of an upgrade over the original, really, even though clearly DDNet editor Matt and I have to agree to disagree on that score.<\/p>\n

As such, I approached Gimmick! 2 with a fair degree of trepidation.<\/p>\n

The original Gimmick! is infamous for its difficulty and insanely high price if you want an actual physical Famicom cart version of it. Thankfully the Special Edition released a few years back made it a whole lot more accessible.<\/p>\n

Could developers Bitwave Games \u2013 who also handled the Special Edition \u2013 keep that delicate balance of challenging gameplay going for a second time?<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The short answer is yes, though Gimmick! 2 won\u2019t be to everyone\u2019s taste.<\/p>\n

Gimmick!\u2019s gameplay has always rested on a quite simple platform gameplay mechanic; you play as Yumetaro, a deliberately cute green jumping blob with a single superpower.<\/p>\n

At will, Yumetaro can summon a star that can be lofted above your head and thrown at enemies and environmental hazards\u2026 and that\u2019s all.<\/p>\n

That sounds simple, and even back in 1992 when Gimmick! released it was on the less-complex side, but where Gimmick! 2 gets its hooks into you is in the ways that you have to puzzle out just how you\u2019re meant to use your single star power.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

You\u2019re rarely tasked with defeating the simpler enemies, and sometimes they\u2019ll even form parts of platforms letting you get to more obscure parts of the game map, but getting that right is rarely simple.<\/p>\n

Like the original, Gimmick! 2 requires pixel perfect jumping and an understanding of Yometaru\u2019s momentum to proceed, mixed in with puzzle elements that challenge you to work out the ideal way to jump, avoid and bounce your star to hit star switches, change platform locations or just avoid falling onto deadly spikes.<\/p>\n

The puzzles themselves aren\u2019t total brain twisters (mostly), but getting the coordination together to get everything to click is genuinely tough.<\/p>\n

Get it wrong and you\u2019ll get hit and most likely die, although the use of more health points against enemies does make Gimmick! 2 rather more forgiving than its predecessor. Still, you\u2019re going to die a whole lot, and whether you\u2019ve got the gaming patience for this kind of grind gaming is a rather personal taste decision.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

It takes time for Gimmick! 2 to get its hooks into you so that you find yourself dying over and over again, but determined to reach the very next checkpoint no matter how many times Yometaru has to perish in the process.<\/p>\n

If you do let Gimmick! 2 slide its hooks into you, you\u2019ll start to have those moments where after failing and dying a dozen times, you make it to the next checkpoint and your brain releases all those funky endorphins that make you feel like you\u2019ve achieved something real.<\/p>\n

Of course, you haven\u2019t, this is a video game, but that satisfying sensation of beating a small portion of Gimmick! 2\u2019s layout is what keeps it interesting and challenging and satisfying all in one.<\/p>\n

Some gamers will bounce hard off this approach, because they\u2019ll find the rather brutal difficulty too much of a ledge to climb over, especially given Gimmick! 2\u2019s bright visual style and jaunty soundtrack, which suggests a completely different and much easier style of game.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

That\u2019s fine too \u2013 gaming can and always should be a broad church \u2013 although in saying that Gimmick! 2 is hard, it\u2019s actually nowhere near as unforgiving as its predecessor. You\u2019ve got infinite lives, and while individual challenges can be stiff, the distance between checkpoints is never all that far.<\/p>\n

With enough grim determination, you could grind your way through Gimmick! 2 in relatively short order, though it\u2019ll take a whole lot longer to reach all of the game\u2019s even more challenging hidden bonuses that are required to get the game\u2019s best \u201ctrue\u201d ending \u2013 another touch that harks back to Gimmick! 2\u2019s retro roots nicely.<\/p>\n

As a modern take on a classic game, Gimmick! 2 does change up the visual style from the best-the-hardware-could-do approach of its Famicom forebear to a gentler but quite nice hand drawn animated style.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not too much in the designs that you won\u2019t have seen in just about every single platform game out there, so you get your requisite forest levels, ice levels, factory levels and so on \u2013 but it all hangs together well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Support<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent passion for retro remakes has seen a whole host of titles updated and refreshed, though with mixed results \u2013 I\u2019m still stinging from the disappointment of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends and maintain that Snow Bros Wonderland isn\u2019t much of an upgrade over the original, really, even though clearly DDNet editor Matt and I have to agree to disagree on that score. As such, I approached Gimmick! 2 with a fair degree of trepidation. The original Gimmick! is infamous for its difficulty and insanely high price if you want an actual physical Famicom cart version of it. Thankfully the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":67760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,104,17],"tags":[12763,12935,12764,12799],"coauthors":[12840],"class_list":["post-67754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nintendo-switch","category-platformer","category-reviews","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-platformer","tag-reviews","tag-switch-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67762,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67754\/revisions\/67762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67754"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=67754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}