The entire concept of this hack is so awesome. While the various communities around Mega Man, Mario Bros., Zelda, etc. have made some great hacks over the years, there are over a thousand other games that are ripe for fresh takes and fun new experiences. Layla is an obscure Japanese-only release (that I too only learned of from GCCX); choosing it for such an in-depth and complete hack is really refreshing. It functions not only as a upgrade built off the original, but could be its sequel as well. It irons out all the flaws with the original (one-death to title screen, pointless bonus game, harsh ammo system). It’s an ambitious goal and realized well.

We can just begin with the music. As everyone is saying, it is fantastic. A few of these tracks are mixtape worthy. The nods to both the original Layla soundtrack and videogame composers like Tim Follin are excellent.

The movement is true to the original Layla. Iris has an unusual momentum and jumps in the most un-Mario ways you can imagine. But you start to understand it and eventually you can get her where she needs to go. Her fast running speed gives it a kind of Sonic the Hedgehog flavor at times. A big discovery was that you can press down no matter how fast you are going and she instantly stops. This makes some later jumps much easier to execute.

Although the movement and graphics come from Layla, playing through the original again reminded me just how much the Iris Mission fixes. The original Layla limits your ammo harshly, the mazes get very confusing, and the tornado pseudo-time limit of only 30 seconds without advancing is really cruel. After playing the Iris Missions now I see the potential of these kinds of hacks and changes to so many other games.

The platforming and puzzles increase in challenge and introduce new mechanics and gimmicks as the game progresses. What I really liked is that when it was time to introduce something new, the player is given hints from NPCs, background graphics, or game cues at what to do. This lets you explore and feel out the game and discover the answer for yourself. I beat this without even knowing there was a README with hints or watching playthroughs.

For example, you’re stuck early until an NPC tells you that you can hold down to jump higher. Later you must run across an open pit with tiny platforms at full speed; background exclamation marks pass by that you eventually figure out are where you need to jump from to clear obstacles far ahead of you, like a rally car. I had to stumble into finding out you could backtrack levels, but getting stuck without grenades so early in the level pushed me to find that out (by exiting the level with the push-all-buttons command). I don’t want to spoil the maze level, but seeing the available letters and getting the hints from the NPCs was a very fun discovery to put 2 and 2 together. Earlier in the game I died and came back to life when a powerup bumped into me, so when I found the NPC that hinted at this later I knew exactly what the trick would be. For such a specific trick, the setup is created to make it easy (the powerup sits in a little pit, the harming block is directly under it). It’s a very smart little gimmick; one of many this hack has.

My only real gripe about this game comes in the first section of the last level. I wish we, the very small community of hackers and hack-players of old games, could put our foot down about levels where everything is just black and you have to wander around bumping into things until you die over and over. It is simply the most braindead thing you could possibly put in a video game and it appears more often than it should in otherwise quality work.

A previous version of this review was much more harsh about that stupid dark level, but after playing through a few more times I can’t leave it like that. This is really one of the finest hacks I’ve ever played and it’s a must download. I do still hate that dark part, but the quality on everything else is absolutely top tier.