Hi, I'm Palipilino!
NES
1/25/2026
Everyone loves a hidden gem, right? It's great to take a chance on a lesser-discussed title in a console library and have it turn out to be one of your favorites. Then you can spread the word to others about how fun it is and, you know, just get a tiny bit of self-satisfaction from your enjoyment of more obscure games, and everyone can marvel at how unique you are. What's not to like? Though there is the tendency for some of these more offbeat games to end up in a sort of superposition of unknown and obvious.
Take Gimmick!, for example, a SUNSOFT platformer for the NES. If you went outside and asked people on the street if they'd heard of it before, you're likely to pass away from starvation before you find someone who has any idea what you're talking about. But many fans consider it one of the definitive underground titles on the console. Perhaps the best way to say it is like this: of all the unpopular games on the NES, Gimmick! is the most popular.
The first thing you will either think or hear about Gimmick! is likely to be related to its graphics, and if you didn't know any better, you might be fooled into thinking this is one of those "retraux" games that tried to emulate 8-bit stylings with modern improvements. No, Gimmick! is a genuine, bona fide 1992 original title, and putting everything else aside, it is genuinely a triumph of game design. This would fit in with some titles on the Super Nintendo; on the NES? It beggars belief. Heck, this game preceded Kirby's Adventure, the game that many consider to be the best-looking game on the system!
| Played For | 4h 11m |
|---|---|
| Completion Type | Full Ending, High Score 565820 |
| Favorite Level | Level 2, with the pirate ship! |
It's a technical achievement for this game to look so good and to have such expressive colors and backgrounds. And presentation is exceptional across the board—the game's cartridge famously includes a specialty sound chip that increases output potential, so it's not an exaggeration to call Gimmick!'s soundtrack one of the most technically impressive on the console. And wouldn't you know it, it's really good, too!
Going back to the Kirby comparisons, one might take a look at Gimmick! and expect it to play about the same. While it does share some of its visual identity, though, Gimmick! couldn't be further from a Kirby clone—and not just because this game, again, preceded Kirby's NES debut. On the sliding scale of family-friendly to...well, typical "Nintendo Hard" NES game, Gimmick! finds its place comfortably on the latter. This game's difficulty is no joke, even with a half-hour run time and a half dozen stages. Part of that is owed to your sole star attack ability, which you can throw at enemies and will bounce around the screen a bit.
It would be hyperbolic and sensationalist to call this the worst feeling attack in video game history. But it certainly feels like that when you're playing the game! Any time you have to engage in combat in this game is a mark against its quality, unfortunately. And that's not just because of your typical NES game shenanigans in which enemies will hit you from off-screen, or how Gimmick! requires you to take unavoidable damage in some sections the first time you reach them. The star is just...very unpleasant to use for combat. Naturally, boss fights are not the best.
It's much better served for platforming applications, and to be fair, Gimmick!'s main, erm, gimmick—utilizing the star to jump to hidden areas and collect secret items—is actually quite ingenious. It's fun and technologically impressive, and it feels really great to find out how to bounce your star and when to jump on it to get you where you need to go. It's just heavily underutilized; if you aren't going for the secret ending, you'll hardly need to use it at all. And some of the hidden areas are just, for lack of a better word, unfortunate. One of the later stages will force you to reset if you don't manage to time your jump perfectly on the first try. And, sure, it's a short game, so you can get back to that point relatively quickly...but why make the player go through that in the first place?
Platforming is very slippery, which is actually good for some moments that are based on utilizing this momentum effectively, but again, it makes combat a rather cumbersome task, as enemies will often change direction with no discernible rhyme or reason, and it will often lead to you receiving some damage as you spend what feels like 20 seconds slipping across the floor, trying to come to a halt.
It's perhaps a bit unkind—though not necessarily untrue—to claim that Gimmick! has earned its cult classic status mostly through presentation. But it's a lot easier to look at one of these older games than to play them; you see it in a "Top 10 Hidden Gems!!!" video list and think to yourself, "Huh, that looks neat," before adding it to your backlog and never thinking about it again. That's probably a fair enough fate for Gimmick! It's pleasing to look at. It's fun to marvel at how SUNSOFT managed to get this working on an NES. But fun to play? Not really so much.