Doraemon (1986)

Doraemon (1986)
3 in 1 genre in the Doraemon style
Genre(s): Action Platform Shoot 'em up Platform(s): Famicom Release: December 12, 1986 Developer(s): Hudson Soft Publisher(s): Hudson Soft Country: Japan Series: Doraemon Predecessor: Doraemon: Nobita no Time Machine Daibouken‎‎ Successor: Doraemon: Giga Zombie no Giakushuu

Doraemon (ドラえもん) is a video game developed and published by Hudson Soft on December 12, 1986. It is the first Doraemon game on the Famicom, and it is based off the 1979 anime series by Fujiko F. Fujio.

Summary

Doraemon's friends have been kidnapped and Doraemon has to go to each world to save them. The game was based on the first three movie. The first stage was based on the 1981 movie: Doraemon: The Records of Nobita, Spaceblazer. The second was based on the 1982 movie: Doraemon: Nobita and the Haunts of Evil. The third and finale stage was based on the 1983 movie: Doraemon: Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil.

Good Qualities

1. The gameplay is fun, despite the first and third levels being labyrinths.
2. The game difficulty is quite challenging in a good way for most parts; it's also one of the things that makes the game fun.
3. There's one different genre in all the levels, which is:
   • An action (and exploration) genre in the first level, this is the most fun level of the game despite being a bit confusing.
   • A shoot 'em up genre in the second level; this is a pretty fun level if you don't mind the horrible difficulty, though not as horrible as the third level.
   • An exploration genre in the third and final level of the game; unfortunately, this is the worst level of the game.
4. The controls are responsive, despite being a little stiff.
5. The soundtrack is really awesome, like most Hudson Soft games, despite the loop being short and can be annoying at times.
   • Most of the BGM that plays during the game is based on bold arrangements of songs from ``Doraemon's Song, and the songs are generally familiar and well-received. In particular, all three BGM songs in the Makyo edition are famous as masterpieces.
   • The original BGM in the story also has a Doraemon-like feel to it and is very popular.
6. The box art looks decent, even if it is reused.
7. Awesome presentation, especially for the 1986 standard.
8. Great commercial that is fun to watch and is probably the reason why the game sell so well.
9. The power-ups are fun, even if they are a bit overpowered.
10. You can continue if you press A + B + Direction of d-pad and start, and even better, if you restart at a checkpoint.
11. The graphics, except for Doraemon's friends and Dorami, are decent for 1986 standards.
    • Although the character chips are small, they capture their characteristics well, and you can tell at a glance that they are from the Doraemon franchise. As a character game from the early days of the Famicom, it falls into the category of quite excellent.
    • The stage backgrounds and enemy designs are also highly great. Although it is not exactly the same as the original, the world view has been successfully reinterpreted and incorporated into the game.
    • Rather, it stands out in the sense that, despite the rather bold arrangements, it manages to make you feel like you are adventuring through the world of each Doraemon movie.
12. The world view of Doraemon is well incorporated into the game.
    • It incorporates various weapons, essential items, and secret tools such as "air cannons" and "passing hoops." By the way, the life recovery item is Dorayaki, Doraemon's favorite food.
    • In addition, the tricks are detailed, for example, when Doraemon receives an attack from an enemy while holding a "Hirari cloak", Doraemon does a motion of dodging the attack with the cloak, and Nobita who appears in stage 3 does a floating ring based on the setting that he can't swim. Chummy and Dorami-chan from ``Space Development History appear as hidden characters.

Bad Qualities

1. Artificial difficulty: In fact, Doraemon can get hit very easily; even worse, the invisibility takes 5 seconds!
2. Subpar level design: It's so easy to get lost since there's no end goal. This proves that you can struggle to find the way out to finish the level, making the game a bit too hard, mostly for newbies.
3. Cheap item placement If you want to find things, you have to shoot to find them. This can be pretty weird.
   • Some weapons are hard to find due to the linear level design; the same weapons are more powerful than others.
4. Laughable boss fights. The first boss is difficult, while the rest are very easy. This can also be confusing to people, especially since even the final boss is easy.
5. There is no other ending than a scene where Doraemon and his friends are on a raft.
6. Whenever you respawn near an enemy, there's no invincibility frame. This means you can get hit by enemies if you respawn near them. This is pretty dumb and even unfair.
7. Dorami, being one of the best and most iconic characters in the Doraemon anime, is barely mentioned in the game or even mentioned in a cameo.
8. The difficulty is a bit too high at times, even if it's make the game pretty fun.
   • In stage 1, you will have to search for hidden manholes, doors, and items everywhere, but there are no hints about hidden locations. All you can do is shoot at random and look for them. Even if you manage to make it to Planet Koyakoya, the enemy's attacks there will suddenly become more intense, and depending on the location, you will be attacked by a barrage of attacks.
   • If you hit a square with a hidden element, your bullet will stop there, so if the hidden element and the enemy line up in a straight line, your bullet will not hit the enemy, and if the enemy you were supposed to kill fires a bullet, the enemy's bullet will stop. This has led to the risk of being hit by bullets.
   • The three manholes that are visible from the beginning have initial weapons, health recovery/strengthening, and 1UP items.
   • Almost all powerful weapons and rapid-fire items are hidden items. If you don't have these things, it's difficult to move forward.
   • If you make a mistake, you will usually restart near the place where you made the mistake or at the entrance of an underground passage, but if you make a mistake in the final Gartite mining area, you will be sent back to the beginning of Koyakoya Planet, which will be quite troublesome.
   • On Koya Koya Planet, the enemy's attacks are so intense that they often fail, but when they do, they enter a slow motion state, making it easier to dodge attacks. Therefore, although the processing failure was very noticeable, it was not seen as a problem.
   • In stage 2, you cannot obtain items unless you go through a hidden passage. In Area 2 and beyond, there is a regular route disguised as a hidden passage, and if you don't go through it, you'll end up in an endless loop.
     • Even if you can get the item, you will lose it if Doraemon gets attacked 4 times. For this reason, it is easy to fall into a vicious cycle where you lose items due to enemy attacks, then even if you obtain the items again, you will lose them again due to the onslaught of attacks.
       • Moreover, when the life is low, the item becomes dorayaki.
   • You can get dorayaki at any time, but there are no hints on how to get it that you wouldn't normally think of. Also, even if you know how to do it, if you have a small light or have Gian or Suneo with you, it will be a difficult condition to hit due to the trajectory and hit detection.
   • However, there are quite a few cases where you can catch a dorayaki by accident without aiming, and many players have been surprised by the dorayaki that flew at them without any warning.
   • Dorayaki also serves as a reset of the item loss count mentioned above, so the difficulty level will vary considerably depending on whether you are aware of this or not.
   • In addition, both Zako and the boss in stage 2 have high durability, and the boss cannot be defeated even with "Small Light" unless you hit it with 32 shots, and Zako also has an enemy that cannot be defeated without "Small Light" without hitting 8 to 32 shots. Appears gradually.
   • Finally, this stage is a "return revival", and if you make a mistake, you will be returned to the beginning of that area.
   • If you complete an item, you will receive 100,000 points instead of the item. Since Player Extend is a point system, 100,000 points is quite large, but the count for item loss is not reset.
   • The toughest part is that almost all the enemies on Koyakoya Planet and Stage 2 shoot bullets at you. However, in situations where contact with the enemy causes more damage than bullet damage, there is also a technique where you intentionally hit the bullet and pass through the danger zone.
   • In stage 3, you first have to search for items in a large map, and there are 8 treasure chests scattered around the map, and which one contains a friend is random, so after finding the item, you will be busy searching for the treasure chest. It turns out.
     • Only in stage 3, there is no invincibility time when receiving damage, so it is Zara who is caught by the enemy and cannot escape, continues to take damage, and dies in an instant.
     • Of course, player-friendly functions such as auto-mapping do not exist in this era, so players must map their own maps, memorize maps, or purchase magazines and strategy books containing strategy information. It's easy to forget where items and friends are and get lost.
     • Even if you use the key to open the treasure chest, more than half of the time an enemy called a "sea snake" will appear that cannot be defeated unless you use a specific item. Until you defeat him, he will appear everywhere like Clock Tower's Scissor Man, and his erratic movements make him extremely troublesome. There's also scary music, so it's mildly traumatic.
       • What's more, he can pass through walls, so he can suddenly appear in places that are far away due to obstacles, but are adjacent to each other on the map.
     • The "large octopus" guarding three of the treasure chests is terrifyingly strong, and you can hardly defeat it with your half-baked rapid-fire ability. If you don't get all the "genki candies" mentioned below, the difficulty level will further increase.
       • You can defeat it by attacking its legs 8 times, but if it gets sucked into its legs, it will take a tremendous amount of continuous damage, so you will need to attack it continuously. Even if you try to avoid the legs, the space is narrow due to the large octopus and the terrain, making hit-and-away tactics extremely difficult. By the way, in stage 3 of the demo screen, there is no way to do anything about the big octopus and he is instantly killed.
       • Even if you can defeat it, the damage you will receive is tremendous, and immediately after you defeat it, a large number of skeletons that are classified as strong enemies will spawn, and "sea snakes" that have spawned elsewhere will appear, so this is an event that is especially easy to kill in this game. It becomes.
       • Three of the eight treasure chests are under the "Big Octopus", so the probability of being able to rescue all your friends without fighting them is quite low, so you almost have no choice but to fight the "Big Octopus". do not have. This is one of the reasons why it is said that the difficulty level suddenly jumps up when this game has three stages.
       • It is a common story that when they finally defeat the ``big octopus and open the treasure chest that the ``big octopus was guarding, it turns out to be a ``sea snake.
     • If you stay on the same screen for more than a certain amount of time, an enemy called a "ghost" will appear that will kidnap a single item or enemy on the screen . If an item is kidnapped, the item will appear on the adjacent map, but the direction is determined by Doraemon's position when the "ghost" disappears from the screen, and there is no guarantee that there will be a shortcut to that location, so it will be difficult to find the item. I end up wandering around even more.
       • The timing of the appearance of "ghosts" is quite strict, so there is no time to leisurely map them until you memorize their behavior patterns. Once you memorize it, you can easily create that much margin, but by that time most players had memorized the map quite a bit, so not many players mapped it.
       • As a relief, it's relatively easy to remember the locations, and there are several screens where no enemies appear at all, including "sea snakes" and "ghosts." Memorizing this location and arranging items there was considered an important strategy.
     • If you take too many diamonds or gold nuggets, you will be forcibly warped to the "torture chamber" and must continue to be attacked by a large number of skeletons until you collect 20 dorayaki or die. Although it is possible to escape by withstanding the enemy's attacks for a certain period of time, or by continuing to pick up the dorayaki that occasionally fly among the enemies, it is quite difficult. The sight of being attacked by a large number of skeletons in a closed area, coupled with terrifying music, is quite frightening. It's very similar to Mighty Bonjack.
       • In the first place, there are too many scary elements throughout all the stages . Even the graveyard production and music in the second half of stage 1 are quite impressive. As mentioned above, in Stage 3, the graphics, music, and difficulty have reached a level that can only be seen as intentional, and is a little difficult to modern standards (though it was no problem for children of the time). In particular, inside Oniwa Castle, there were enemies (especially skeletons) that moved faster than normal, and the "sea snake" zone in the narrow passages, so although it wasn't very difficult, many elementary school students probably gave up due to fear.
     • The resurrection location is a place with a "pass through hoop", but depending on the conditions you can get stuck. Specifically, the following conditions apply.
       • For some reason, the pass-through hoop gets trapped inside a rock, and the ghost is unable to steal it.
       • It's in a position where I can't get the back order bag.
       • I can't go to Dorami-chan appearance point from the resurrection location . Or you have already called it once.
       • Fulfill one of the following three conditions: you can't rescue your friends from the treasure chest, they're behind the wall, or you can't get to the gate of Oniwa Castle.
9. No continues in the game; heck, there aren't any save files at all, so if you get a game over, you'll have to go through the entire game all over again.
10. Doreamon's sprite looks weird. His face looks sad, like he did something that he wasn't supposed to do.

Reception

The game received mixed reception from the critics, but mixed to positive by gamers and Doraemon fans. The game praise with good graphics, good control, good gameplay, and great music. but the game criticism with this game is way too hard to complete even for kidskids

The game sold 1.1 million copies and considered the tenth best selling NES/Famicom games ever.

Trivia

• The game's engine is used for a fan game called Mario Quest.
• The game's cover art is very similar to a poster for the movie, Doraemon: Nobita's Little Star Wars, with some tweaks.
• On the next and last Famicom game that features Doraemon, it was released by Epoch instead of Hudson Soft. Hudson Soft then releases the PC Engine games that features Doraemon. The most known is Cratermaze.

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