[Playing…] Abobo’s Big Adventure

I suppose many of you remember Abobo, the big guy who appeared by surprise in Double Dragon breaking the wall and that could quickly eliminate our lives if we did not plan our strategy against it well. If not, you should play that game or ignore the one I'm going to comment on below, since much of its charm lies in its brute protagonist, as indicated by the game's title: Abobo's Big Adventure.

This game was created in 2012 by Roger Barr and Nick Pasto (PestoForce) to pay tribute (and parody) the veteran NES, so that practically everything we will see in the game comes from legendary 8-bit Nintendo games, something that is indicated by the subtitle of the game on its website (The Ultimate Tribute to the NES).

The story of the game tells us that Abobo's son has been kidnapped by Double Dragon's thugs, so our protagonist goes crazy and decides to unleash all his anger to brutally destroy everything that gets in his way until he finds the person responsible and recovers his beloved son.

Abobo's Big Adventure yesand can be downloaded or played online for free from your website.

Abobo's sprite comes from the NES version, but features many brand new animations and attacks. As for the enemies, most also come directly from 8-bit games as diverse as Super Mario Bros, Double Dragon, Megaman, Baloon Fight, Punch-Out!, Donkey Kong, Kung Fu Master or Legend of Zelda and many others. The enormous variety of enemies and the fact that each one has its own portrait in the life bar and that details and new animations have been added to some, demonstrates the time and effort that has been put into them, despite the constant recycling of sprites.

Exactly the same thing happens with the scenarios, they will all sound familiar to us from other games, but something new is always added that will seek to surprise us. On many occasions that novelty will be the final boss of the level, which on more than one occasion can make us laugh out loud. If it is not because of his appearance, it is because of how he will end up after facing Abobo.

The fact that Abobo visits other console games and turns into weird characters (like Abobo Megaman) is very funny. The level bosses are quite surprising and the sense of humor is present throughout the game, which will somehow try to link the crazy levels with the story of the kidnapping of Abobo's son.

The best thing about this game (in terms of graphics) are some bosses, Abobo's illustrations and special attacks, his brutal sense of humor (heads will roll...) that will permeate the games, the scenes between levels and especially the end of the game.

The sound section is also “borrowed” from classic games, so those of you who are veterans will recognize practically all of them, even though the variety is quite large. The music comes directly from the games that are parodied in each level (Double Dragon, Megaman, Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Contra…etc) so we find a selection of classic 8-bit Nintendo themes.

The controls are very simple, since we will move Abobo with the directional arrows and we will use the A and S buttons for the actions we can do (which will vary depending on the level). When Abobo's rage bar is full we can press both buttons to make a devastating super attack.

Its variety of levels is even greater than what has been seen in Battletoads, which means that we have to get used to the gameplay and controls constantly changing, since the levels are very diverse (beat'em up, platforms, wrestling, boxing...), although practically all of them have very simple and easy to guess controls, especially if you have already played the parodied games.

The difficulty is extremely variable for two reasons. The first is that each level has its own rules if we lose a life (in some we continue in the place where we died, in others we will have to replay from the last checkpoint), and the second is that the variable gameplay of levels can make one in particular choke you (for example, those who are not fans of Megaman They may have a bit of a hard time at the Abobo-Megaman level, but those who have experienced playing their games will have no difficulty).

Overall, though, the game is pretty kind to the player. Abobo's rage bar fills up relatively easily and that will give us the opportunity to destroy all the enemies. In addition, there are infinite continuations to repeat the levels that cost us the most (although if we continue we will have to complete them all).

If we have completed the game, we may want to play again to complete the medals. There are many and they give them to us for very diverse reasons, some easily guessable (eliminate specific enemies) and others a bit more cryptic (such as those that give us to die in specific places).

In short, if you have a little free time and are NES fans, try Abobo's Big Adventure. YesThe variety of levels and its constant sense of humor (incredibly crude) will make you have a good time and laugh more than once.