//

Review: Gimmick! 2 Review (Nintendo Switch)

A game with only one gimmick – but it’s a good one.

6 mins read

The recent passion for retro remakes has seen a whole host of titles updated and refreshed, though with mixed results – I’m still stinging from the disappointment of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends and maintain that Snow Bros Wonderland isn’t 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 Special Edition released a few years back made it a whole lot more accessible.

Could developers Bitwave Games – who also handled the Special Edition – keep that delicate balance of challenging gameplay going for a second time?

A screenshot from Gimmick! 2 Review.

The short answer is yes, though Gimmick! 2 won’t be to everyone’s taste.

Gimmick!’s 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.

At will, Yumetaro can summon a star that can be lofted above your head and thrown at enemies and environmental hazards… and that’s all.

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’re meant to use your single star power.

A screenshot from Gimmick! 2

You’re rarely tasked with defeating the simpler enemies, and sometimes they’ll even form parts of platforms letting you get to more obscure parts of the game map, but getting that right is rarely simple.

Like the original, Gimmick! 2 requires pixel perfect jumping and an understanding of Yometaru’s 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.

The puzzles themselves aren’t total brain twisters (mostly), but getting the coordination together to get everything to click is genuinely tough.

Get it wrong and you’ll 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’re going to die a whole lot, and whether you’ve got the gaming patience for this kind of grind gaming is a rather personal taste decision.

A screenshot from Gimmick! 2

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.

If you do let Gimmick! 2 slide its hooks into you, you’ll 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’ve achieved something real.

Of course, you haven’t, this is a video game, but that satisfying sensation of beating a small portion of Gimmick! 2’s layout is what keeps it interesting and challenging and satisfying all in one.

Some gamers will bounce hard off this approach, because they’ll find the rather brutal difficulty too much of a ledge to climb over, especially given Gimmick! 2’s bright visual style and jaunty soundtrack, which suggests a completely different and much easier style of game.

A screenshot from Gimmick! 2 Review

That’s fine too – gaming can and always should be a broad church – although in saying that Gimmick! 2 is hard, it’s actually nowhere near as unforgiving as its predecessor. You’ve got infinite lives, and while individual challenges can be stiff, the distance between checkpoints is never all that far.

With enough grim determination, you could grind your way through Gimmick! 2 in relatively short order, though it’ll take a whole lot longer to reach all of the game’s even more challenging hidden bonuses that are required to get the game’s best “true” ending – another touch that harks back to Gimmick! 2’s retro roots nicely.

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.

There’s not too much in the designs that you won’t 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 – but it all hangs together well.

Support 4

Alex Kidman is an award-winning Australian journalist with more than 20 years games and tech writing experience under his belt. Critics have accused him of being a heartless and relentless word-writing machine, but this is clearly false. Alex will deal with those critics once he's finished his latest software upgrade.

Previous Story

Review: Love Too Easily (Nintendo Switch)

Next Story

The catch-up coffee: January 27, 2024

Latest Articles

>