Beetlejuice (NES)

Beetlejuice
IT'S SHOWTIME. Or is it?
Protagonist(s): Beetlejuice Genre(s): Action Adventure Platform Platform(s): Nintendo Entertainment System Release Date: May 10, 1991 Developer(s): Rare Publisher(s): LJN Country: United Kingdom

Beetlejuice is an action-adventure platform game developed by Rare and published by LJN on May 10, 1991, for the Nintendo Entertainment System only in North America. It is based on the movie of the same name.

Why It's No Ghost of the Most

1. As expected from other of LJN's movie-based games, this game barely represents the movie, with sometimes having parts that never even happened in the movie, such as Beetlejuice having to get the cloud to move by destroying a beehive.
2. If Beetlejuice jumps on the enemies, not only the jump stuns them, but it also tosses him away as if he was launched from a catapult. He also bounces from every enemy/hazard when hit, which pretty much means you can bounce all over the place if there are too many enemies.
3. For whatever reason, every wall is not solid, meaning you can fall by an accident when attempting to jump after hitting a wall. Sure, Beetlejuice is a ghost, but that still doesn't excuse the fact that this can lead to cheap deaths when falling after attempting to touch a wall.
4. You cannot make the screen scroll down when you jump down normally; if Beetlejuice jumps down to normally make the screen scroll down, the camera will still be locked, and if Beetlejuice touches the bottom, it's instant death. To make the screen scroll, you have to stand on something below, which will make the screen scroll down. Even games like Contra allow the screen to scroll down if you jump down, and yet Contra itself is a very great game.
5. Despite looking like they were a part of the background, the torches placed in walls hurt you no matter what, which looks as if Beetlejuice is standing too close to the wall, which itself looks like in Apache, one of the games in the Genesis version of Action 52, where the rocks also kill you even though they look like they were part of the background.
6. The power-ups run out within seconds, basically forcing you to rack up on points by stomping tiny bugs to buy a lot of them, mostly the skeleton power-up.
7. There's no point meter unless you go into the store, which can be difficult to tell how many points you have until you go into the store to find out how many you have. To know how many points you have without constantly going into the store, you have to keep track of your current points.
8. Certain parts make absolutely no sense; there's one part where you have to get a cloud to move, but it won't move unless you destroy a beehive by shooting a fireball at it, but you need the skeleton power-up to do so.
9. Too much at once: To get points, you have to stomp the tiny bugs, but you have to be precise to do so. However, a larger bug will try to interrupt your stomping, meaning you have to jump to avoid it. But what's worse is that you can easily fall by accident if your finger slides across the D-pad when trying to go to the other side.
10. The first boss is probably the most unfair and unpredictable first boss in the history of NES games; the only way to beat it is to use the skeleton power-up and get it to the other side, but the boss shoots his projectile very frequently, meaning you can only fire only one projectile of yours before jumping to avoid the boss' projectile. Not to mention, if you get to the boss without the skeleton, it's an instant game over where you have to die until you get the game over, but even if you use a continue, it still sometimes puts you at the boss, forcing you to restart the whole thing, which is just ridiculous.
    • The only way to win this boss fight more easily is through a glitch where you have to do it real fast in the beginning while you're blinking by shooting a fireball at the boss just before he moves towards you too much, which makes the boss fight just unpredictable in a very bad way.
11. While amazing, the soundtrack doesn't fit the tone of the game as it sounds way too happy and cheerful instead of mischievous and dark.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The graphics are fine for 1991 standards, with decent color choices.
2. As expected from David Wise, the soundtrack is amazing and very catchy, despite not fitting the source material.
3. The Game Boy version is an improvement.

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"What were they thinking?"The Shit Scale Games that are debatably bad High level of shit contamination The very high category The severe zone Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Major code red 👆 This product belongs to the "Very High Category" category of the AVGN's Shit Scale.