Total Recall (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Acclaim's 1990 license-based beat 'em up for the NES, Total Recall.

What do you get when you pit a heavily jaundiced Arnold Schwarznegger against droves of psychotic little people, homeless bums, and heavily armed flying drones?

If you guessed a comedy of errors, you wouldn't be far off the mark, though to be fair, the film itself was fairly outlandish as well.

Total Recall on the NES gives you control of Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger), a man whose mission only becomes clear after he suffers a botched memory implant at the hands of Rekall Inc. Loosely based on the plot of the movie, Total Recall has you kill your wife, take a space shuttle to Mars, and punch hobos to death for a briefcase, and all of this is done in the name of liberating Mars (and Quaid himself) from evil corporate corruption. Neat.

(Side note: the chick with three boobs is nowhere to be found in this game.)

It's a basic action game that's equal parts platformer and beat 'em up, but it feels like a budget edition of Double Dragon. The stages are simple and easy to navigate, but they tend to be loaded with frustrating traps (like the alley-grabbing hoodlum guys and the glory hole fence in the first stage) that can wipe you out very quickly if you aren't careful with your placement and timing. In taking on your enemies, there aren't many moves at all: you can punch, jump punch, and duck punch, but the lack of variety makes most of the enemy fights feel similar to one another. This isn't too much of a problem, though, since the game is incredibly short, but the questionable hit detection can sometimes lead to an unfair death or three.

The game feels forever long when you first play it because it will kill you constantly until you get into its rhythm, but once you know the controls and the stage layouts, it's quite easy to finish it in under twenty minutes.

The graphics are surprisingly not bad - the style actually resembles The Adventures of Rad Gravity in numerous ways (both games were developed by Interplay) though this one is far less colorful and diverse than RG was. The music, though. Uck. Whereas Rad Gravity's soundtrack was thoroughly excellent, I get the feeling that this one was phoned in. It's bland and annoying - not a great combination for NES music.

Overall, Total Recall is an NES title that might please fans of the movie, but while there's nothing particularly awful about it, there's nothing particularly good about it either. It sits quite firmly in mediocre territory, but there is some fun to be had with it. Mediocre, after all, is a big step up from many of the other license-based NES titles out there.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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