Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of THQ's 1992 license-based platformer for the NES, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Unlike the game based on the original movie, Home Alone 2 is pretty similar across all three of the Nintendo versions (NES, GB, and SNES) that were released back in 1992. And thankfully, Bethesda, mastermind behind the wretched first NES game, does not reprise its role as developer.

This time the work was done by Imagineering, the group behind the SNES and Game Boy versions of the first Home Alone, also known for their work on A Boy and His Blob and Simpsons games. While Lost in New York is in no way a "classic" title in any regard, it's substantially better than Bethesda's treatment of America's favorite holiday tale of child abuse and neglect. It barely resembles the movie upon which it is based, but still, the fact that it is playable meant some kids probably actually got some enjoyment out of this one. I did for a brief period of time way back, and it was still reasonably fun to go back and play again for this recording.

The game play is made up of simple, mundane platforming action. The graphics are.... odd. The sprites are nice and large, and the detail is generally okay, but it's pretty ugly thanks to the color palette choices and some really unappealing character designs. The cinematics are so bad as to be hilarious, but overall the graphics aren't horrendous. The same can't be said about the music, unfortunately, but I did get a laugh out of the sound effects lifted straight out of Bart vs. the Space Mutants.

Too bad they left out Donald Trump's movie cameo - I'm sure that would be quite a sight on the NES. Any of the system palette's shades of orange would've done the trick, I expect!

It does control well, though - Kevin is far easier to handle than Bart ever was, and the jumping sections are thankfully pretty okay as a result. I'm not sure why picking up a bell gives him access to Samus Aran's screw attack, though. (If you pause it while he's spinning, Kevin looks a lot like a 80s Glo Worm!)

And a fun aside here: the original source code for this game was found and released a while back, and apparently the entire thing was built on top of the framework used in The Simpsons NES games. I thought that was kind of cool.

But what's with that hopping grandma with the parasol? I'd have thought that hotel security would've done something about the senile old bag's blocking of the halls.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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