I thought I was good at side-scrolling games until I played this. Anyone who thinks they kick ass at side-scrollers needs to play this and be forever humbled. It’s hard. Incredibly hard. This game is difficult to the point of Unfair. However, it still manages to be fun to play. There’s a basic overworld, which consists of your Hero moving along predetermined paths to event squares, where you can have some fortune-telling old hag laugh at you, or buy items from a guy with Tourette’s Syndrome, or go and get your ass kicked in one of the side-scrolling stages. I wish I knew what the items did, but I’m too lazy to find out. Well anyway, I guess this is your standard NES game in the same vein as Castlevania - you’ll die frequently, hurl your controller at the TV and swear to never play the game again, and then you’ll just try again the next day.