Weekending 7/2/16: The Holy Grail that is…Little Samson

 

• Introduction:

Wow! This one’s a big one huh? Little Samson, For those of you who don’t retro collect this is one of the most sought after titles on the NES. It is extremely rare for it wasn’t very popular when it came out and it also came out around the end of the NES’s life cycle in the USA, it came out in 1992. The SNES launched in 1991 so at the time people were focusing on getting that and the NES was falling out of the limelight. Also a lot of people didn’t show interest in the game because of the title. Even when I mentioned this game to friends they all said the same thing. “I’m really not interested in playing a bible game” For the record…..this game has nothing to do with the bible. This game is an action plat former similar to Mega man as you do through the levels fight a boss at the end get to the next level. There are no powers you receive however, you get to swap between 4 different characters who have different abilities. The first character I’m assuming is Little Samson. He is an overall average character. Decent attack (he throws bells) and he can climb on walls and ceilings. Then there is this Dragon character you can be who can fly and shoot fireballs. Also he can charge this attack and shoot out 3 huge fireballs. The next character is a huge Rock monster that looks like thing from fantastic four. He’s really strong but slow and can’t jump well. However he can walk on spike hazards and takes a lot of damage. Then last there is……a mouse….a mouse character. He does have his specific ability you need to get through the game but I rarely use him. He can cling to any wall run fast and get through small corridors in the game he also drops bombs to attack foes but they are kind of worthless in my opinion. All in all you need to use all 4 to get through the game it’s a very interesting strategy. so without further ado Let’s get to the game.

 

• Day 1

Just like Last week, haven;t picked out a game. I was still in awe from Too many Games and….I HAVE TOO MANY GAMES. So as I was mulling it over I decided that I would take the extra day and start loading up TG-16 roms to my everdrive so I can start playing that bad boy. Still at the end of the night I had no idea what I was going to do and I kind of wanted a little break so yet again I was thinking about skipping the week because I figured I wouldn’t play the next day for it was my late night and I had to get up early the next day which is exactly what happened.

 

• Day 2

Preparing for the holiday weekend which is always the worst. Working in retail is always the worst during these weeks because people forget that you are human too and trample all over you and act rude. No matter what you have a job to do and it’s never enough especially when the store gets crazy busy. The disadvantages to working in a shore area is that it gets this way however I know I always have a job and being busy isn’t a bad thing. So I came home and immediately went to sleep. Raymond has been doing much better as of late with his sleep but he still isn’t the best sleeper. He still wakes up at least once a night. I can’t complain though it used to be much much worse.

 

First Stage as Little Samson

• Day 3

The morning at work I decided I could try to take a crack at the famous Little Samson. I do have a copy of this game like I said, it is a very rare game and if you can find it will run you as of this writing over 1000 dollars. This is not a joke, this is a serious collectors item. The only reason I have a copy is because I purchased a pirated reproduction cartridge for around 35 dollars. As a collector I don’t care about value. I just want to play these games on their original hardware. A lot of people frown upon this but I don’t I’m not going to try and scam somebody with it, I know it’s a fake…it works I would never try to pull a fast one on somebody or on a video game store, I also don’t believe I should pay 1000 dollars for any video game, that’s just absurd. This collection is mainly for my son in the future for him to have and hopefully I will raise him to be a good boy and not try to swindle others.

 

This was the rock monster I was talking about.

After the little guy was put to bed I decided to start. I’ve only played around with this game a couple of times, I had picked up this game right around the time my son was born. In the beginning I had absolutely no time to play any video games whatsoever. I was always worn out and tired and just wanted to sleep when I could. As he got older it got easier which is what leads me today. He sleeps snuggled in his crib every night…(for the most part). So today I started. This game does have a password save and 2 difficulty modes, Easy and Normal. The default cursor points to easy so I started with that. As I played through this game I realized that this game was an incredibly fun game. It’s sad that it never got popular. It’s a beautiful game as well. There is only one problem I have and that the soundtrack. I know one of my fans is going to hate hearing this but, the game really only play 4 songs for most of the game and it depends on which character you are. So if you are little Samson you here they same song loop over and over again. I doesn’t ruin the game at all however the same songs just get to you after a while and you just want to hear something different. The only time the music changes is when you get to the final area of the game. Which I did this night. I didn’t realize how much fun I was having and I had flown through the entire game. The bosses were a bit of a challenge but nothing I couldn’t easily get passed. Once I took down the final boss I was watching the ending and it looked like it hinted towards a sequel that I suppose never came. It had shown a pink wizard type guy resurrecting all the bosses I had previously fought. didn’t think much of it and just went to bed. Wow I had completed Little Samson, even Billy from the Game Chasers had told me back in 2014 when I met him it was a hard game, but it didn’t seem that hard to me! I was done…..Or so I thought…

Dragon guy he’s probably my favorite to use.

• Day 4

So fresh off the finish I decided that I was going to look up if there was any possible sequels or what was going on with this game…turns out..I DIDN’T REALLY BEAT IT. Damn it I thought I had it done but apparently I was wrong. You have to go through the game on Normal to see the true ending of the game and you know what that means. The harder difficulty must be real hard. I worked at Gamestop till about 9:45 pm this night and knew I was going to go through a lot of crap tomorrow at my real job, so I decided to take a break and rest. Tomorrow I will try again.

 

Mouse……yeah the mouse….

• Day 5

So, the final wire here it was.  Raymond for some reason had taken an extra long time to put town tonight. I think he was extra gassy because he couldn’t get comfy when I put him down. So after I finally got him down and I put him to bed I ate and then went right to it.

Crazy looking Final Stage on Normal

I don’t normally do this but I was tired and I had known that all the stages were the same except for the last couple stages. So I looked up a password to get me there and just tried my luck. The first 2 stages you had to fight all the big wizard bosses that were resurrected in that easy ending. This really reminded me of Mega man for sure when you had to do those boss rushes. It was fairly hard to get through to the final boss but the game really didn’t seem that much harder. The final boss was difficult though and he took me a few tries. He wasn’t overly hard once you figured him out he was cake. The problem was he had this attack that he would use where he threw a sword at you and if it hit you it would do a lot of damage and replenish his health. So you had to make sure not to get hit by that damn attack which I did, several times. Ugh. The Dragon’s flying ability really helped in this one.Sure made that attack easy to dodge.

Final Boss.

Once he’s finally defeated a sequence like Metroid happens where the castle is fallen apart and you have to escape before it collapses on you. In this segment you literally have to use everyone. Thing for the spikes, The dragon to fly over the spike and give thing a break, and mouse to jump through holes, and little Samson just to do most of the plat forming. Once you get to the top you get to see the final ending which is pretty cool and definitely doesn’t ope up the game for a sequel! Lol So I had really completed it this time and was able to right the blog a day early! Bonus.

 

• Conclusion

THIS GAME IS AWESOME! it’s worth a try but….It’s not worth a 1000 dollars to try. I would suggest doing what I did or just download a rom and play it on an emulator. I’m glad I was able to finally play this game and see what the hype was. If I were into collecting earlier I would have definitely picked this game up before it went up in price. It’s absolutely insane that the market is where it is at. Some collectors hold these games hostage and just shelf them but I never believed in that. I always wanted a library so I could never be bored and play whatever I wanted when I wanted. I also want my son to have that luxury if he so chooses that he wants to be a gamer.

Anyway, the game is beautiful and really a lot of fun. There is a reason this game is so sought after. I highly recommend it and if you happen to run into it a garage sale or yard sale or flea market dirt cheap…GET IT!

 

Thanks as always!

 

-Ray