Next up in season 6 of The Angry Video Game Nerd we have a much more traditional episode than the previous one — this time an 8 minute look at the NES game “Kid Kool.”
Of note is right at the opening we have the “new” Nerd intro for widescreen episodes, where 2 separate panes of clips play instead of the usual single clip montage. It keeps the look of the classic episodes, but takes advantage of the 16:9 aspect ratio.
Getting to the episode itself, James doesn’t mince words — he points out just how terrible the game is right at the start, bringing up how this game and two others created by the same developers were basically similar, but that this one is truly bad. It’s a pretty basic looking game, but it uses somewhat unique mechanics which, while a good idea on paper, don’t work out so well in actual gameplay.
He goes over the basic plot and the usual set of complaints about the controls, difficulty, what have you. He does point out how the relatively unique way the game addresses the character dying, but then goes into a 7 point breakdown on just how horrible Kid Kool is.
The insane controls, the strange scrolling, the hidden blocks which can ruin your jump attempts, mystery jumps and more — this one has it all, and the Nerd’s end-of-video rant on these flaws is just great — a combination of being very well delivered (with a joke game thrown into the rant to boot) before he chucks the game into the trash without looking, all in one take. Ya gotta love it when it all just works out.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
This is just a solid one. Short, certainly, but a nice quality old-school Nerd episode. I feel it’s somewhat underrated by fans — it’s not really mentioned much, but I feel it was the first in what I consider the “modern” Nerd episodes, still familiar but clearly showing an evolution in the feel of the show, even in an episode as basic as this one.