Micro Mages

Incredibly underrated. The game is an NES game made with the same assembly language and restrictions as original NES games were, in fact, you can buy a Cartridge for the game! Morphcat have a wonderful video on their Youtube Channel talking about some of the limitations and techniques they used to make the game. But aside from that, the game itself is fantastic! It's got several worlds, each with a bunch levels and a boss, great gameplay and movement, some secrets, passwords for "saving" progress a Hard mode with level changes and different enemy attacks (Wild for what this is!) It also has a ROM for a Second Quest in the files, haven't played it but I imagine it's pretty good.

Installed an NES emulator and played it on my PSP, based game.

Good game, simple but good. It's one of those games I'd pick up and play for like 5 minutes after a rough day of work

This game is basically a technical showcase rather than an entertainment product, which is incredible, because it's somehow entertaining enough to have been an actual beloved NES game, something very very few homebrew games can say for themselves. But for all the zoomers wondering why something like this wasn't made "back in the day", it is not because 80s programmers were stupid. Most modern programmers are at the intellectual level of rocks compared to 80s programmers. The real reason is something you would never intuitively understand after hooking up your NES to your flatscreen or your CRT from 2003: Many gamers back in the NES era were using extremely old TVs with very blurry pictures that would make it very hard to see an 8x8 sprite as a recognizable character, which is the main trick this game uses to pack so much into 40 kilobytes. Your 2003 CRT you found on the curb and the 1971 model used by a normal family in 1987 who just aren't the upgrading type are not cut from the same cloth. This game is still fun, but it's not as impressive as you think it is.

Six years ago, I watched an enthralling YouTube video from Morphcat Games that described their process of creating a brand new video game that could still fit on the hardware for the original Nintendo cartridge. Of course, this was in itself an advertisement for their game, Micro Mages. Since I still owned the hardware to run an original Nintendo game, I backed their Kickstarter and eventually received my game. Now I show this game off to my friends at regular intervals and let them in on the secret: it came out in 2019. The game itself is fairly simple, but with just enough difficulty to require a few play-throughs to get a hang of it and beat the last boss. Its vertical platformer layout is unique for its genre, but it’s even more unique in its ability to support four players simultaneously (assuming you have the adapters for the Nintendo to expand the controller spots from two to four). As for the controls, these characters have really smooth movements that are easy to control and are satisfying to use. While Micro Mages provides the player with many chances to increase the difficulty of their climb up these towers via alternate routes and areas that are challenging to reach as the level scrolls slowly upward, the easiest path doesn’t provide too much of a challenge once you figure out the enemy attack patterns. If you know what you’re doing, you can easily get through the game in a half hour. Probably even less if you’re playing with equally skilled friends. Still, I have to hand it to Morphcat Games for creating an iconic retro experience that one can still play on retro hardware. A modern retro platformer, I give Micro Mages 3.5 stars out of 5.

Hay una copia del juego para NES escondida en los archivos del juego. De nada. Le he dedicado más horas de manera portátil en mi Anbernic que en Steam.

It's not clunky like other NES games.

Masterfully minimalistic piece of art. Truly an excellent exemplar of subtractive game design! The way the super attack is used as a double jump is incredibly clever! And of course the fact that it is coop is amazing. I also love how 1 of the items just exists to troll your friends >:3c

Micro mages is a really tight action platformer in the spirit of Kid Icarus, in that you climb up instead or right. I love the aesthetic, controls, and gameplay of this little gem. I play this one far more often on another platform, so my review has a bit more time than Steams time played stat would suggest. If your into perfected 8-bit action platformers, this one is as good as it gets, highly recommended!

Really well engineered platformer. Smooth and very responsive. Cute level + enemy design, difficulty curve that stops short of being frustrating, but provides a good challenge.