[Review] Gimmick! Special Edition - Nintendo Switch

Developed By:  City Connection
Published By: Bitwave Games
Categories: Retro, Platformer
Release Date: 07.06.23

Gimmick! is a bit of an infamous game in online retro game circles isn’t it? A late release Famicom game by Sunsoft is usually enough to be a reason, but Gimmick! also had a fun release outside of it’s date. It’d be one thing if it was Japan only, there are a lot of Japan only games back in the day. However, Gimmick! was release in Japan as well as only Scandinavia. Kind of gives it a bit of an allure…does it live up to all of this though?

Better question. How does this new Special Edition handle the game? This is the first time Gimmick! would get a wide release. Is the emulation good? How about the extras? Lets dig in.

Gimmick is a looker for an NES/Famicom game, as it should be considering it’s release after the SNES launched. While there is some flicker when the going gets tough, it’s a colorful, smooth, well animated game. There’s even a decent handful of cutscenes that explain the story. In Gimmick! you control a creature named Yumetaro. Whilst out shopping for toys for his daughter, a man grabs Yumetaro at a toy store. Yumetaro quickly becomes the girl’s favorite, making her other toys jealous. This causes them to kidnap her and bring her into another dimension. It’s up to Yumetaro to rescue her.

I also want to mention how good the music sounds for an NES game. There definitely was some extra chips to help out to get this music to work on these 8 bit consoles and it just sounds so good.

Gimmick! is a short game at 6 levels, but it’s challenge more than makes up for it. You can jump everywhere, but your jump doesn’t hurt enemies. Instead, you’ll use stars that Yumetaru can spawn. The stars are tossed and either bounce or slide at an arc. You need to be careful and a bit precise to hit enemies properly. The stars have a secondary function though. You might have noticed that you get slung places. The stars can be used as a platform to get you into difficult places. This is needed if you want to get into hidden areas which hold special items which you are very much going to want to get, trust me.

In terms of re-releases, Gimmick! Special Edition gets the job done. It has standard emulation rewinds and save states and all of that fun stuff. You even get achievements that are related to difficulty modes you can choose. One with rewinds, one without, and then a speedrun mode. In addition to that, I’m happy to say that manuals, box art, cartridges, they all are in an extras menu. If there had to be any extras, I’m glad it’s that…though a music player would have been lovely too.

Gimmick didn’t quite get the best reviews, even in Japan back in the day. I want to say this is because the game has an absurd difficult curve. Or rather just brick walls the player if they don’t know how the game functions. Once you do, it becomes substantially less frustrating, even if it’s still a hard little bugger of a title. It’s definitely worth your time though and with the extra modes and achievements, is ripe for replays.