Cheesy - PS1 - Full Playthrough

A full playthrough of Cheesy on the original PlayStation. If you're looking for a particular section I've broken this game up into manageable chunks here    • Cheesy - PS1 - Full Playthrough  

This is a PS1 exclusive platformer that was released in 1996 in EU and Japan only, fairly early in the PlayStation's life. It was developed by a company called CTA (that have only ever made three games) and was published by Ocean. You play as a mouse who has to escape a mad scientist's castle by finding the ingredients to a teleport spell, each boss in the game has one ingredient.

At the time of writing GameFAQs classifies this as a 3D platformer, which it obviously isn't. It's 2D, maybe 2.5D at best, there are some on-rails 3D sections but those aren't platforming. It has some overhead sections too.

It's a flawed game, the controls aren't great, the platforming is floaty, and the 3D parts especially require a lot of memorisation and feel like cheap ways to extend the game length. I ended up having to rely on notes to help me remember certain patterns. There is also quite a lot of repetition and recycling despite the mix up of gameplay styles. The password system is a pain too, not because of the passwords themselves but the way you put them in, it's just way too sensitive, so you keep overshooting the letter you're trying to select.

That said, I found this an interesting game from a PlayStation fan's perspective. It's got that hard to describe dark grainy atmosphere you get in a lot of PlayStation games, you'll know what I mean when you see it. The soundtrack is pretty good in places too and parts of the game are tough. I did die a lot in this run and had to use some continues, but I've edited the deaths out for a less painful, more succinct viewing experience, splicing the successful parts together at checkpoints. You get continues by collecting the cheese pick ups, one for every hundred. They suck because you have to start right back at the hub world, but they're better than dealing with the password system.

You can return to the hub in some stages and you can grind for lives and hearts in the opening level, up to a maximum of 9 lives and 10 hearts. It's easy once you have the gun and only takes a few minutes, so that's what I did (off camera) and why I normally have 9 lives at the start of a section. I needed them as you'll see.