Villordsutch reviews Alter Ego on the NES…
In our homebrew reviews today we take a look at game that destroys your mother’s bizarre hysterical rant of, “I can’t be in two places at once!?” and puts it to bed once and for all. Not only that, but it’s possibly the first NES game I’ve ever seen with a ZX Spectrum credited at the beginning.
Alter Ego started it’s Homebrew life as a ZX Spectrum game in 2011 created by Denis Grachev and published by Retrosouls – it’s currently free to download over at the World of Spectrum. You control a small non-descript little chap who happens to inhabit this world with his phantom twin. Bizarre as this sounds this can come in amazingly useful as you find yourself lost in amongst numerous platforms and meanies out to end your existence. Using a rather brilliant body swap trick, both you and your phantom twin can trade places to reach some difficult spaces.
The game is an excellent platform puzzler that really warms up the brain cells as you find yourself restarting the level when you either trap your little fellow in a small corner and run out of “swaps”, or if you fall foul of a number of the denizens that patrol the platforms.
The ZX Spectrum version is brilliant, however the NES version is something rather special. Here not only have you got the cunning puzzler, but Shiru (from Moscow) has captured the perfect look of what you’d expect to see on a NES platformer, whilst not losing completely the essence of original ZX Spectrum game. It shines with a brilliant Nintendo glow, whilst in the background a excellent soundtrack plays away, composed by Richard “Kulor” Armijo.
This is a perfect game for the NES catalogue, and what makes it truly fantastic is that this game is Freeware! That’s right you pay no cash for this game, it even comes with a label and manual if you have a way of producing your own cartridges. You can however easily port this over to your NES Everdrive or NES Powerpak if you want to play it the correct way, or if you want to play it via emulation I’d recommend Nestopia with the USB NES Controller which can easily be bought off eBay.
Alter Ego can be downloaded from Romhacking.com here.
Rating:- 9/10
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Originally published August 25, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
