Nosferatu (SNES)

 It's incredibly easy to explain the idea behind Nosferatu: it simply asks "what if Prince of Persia was a beat em up and also Castlevania?". Though, it seems that the beat em up element gradually withers away as the game goes on. But anyway, that's the main thing: your main character (an average American teenage jock) runs and jumps and slides like the aforementioned Prince, but he's got punch combos and ducks and weaves like a boxer.

 

The plot's barely worth mentioning, so this is all it's going to get: your girlfriend's been taken by a vampire, and you've got to go and save her. This vampire is even more wealthy than most, owning several mansions, castles, and other large domiciles that you've got to get through to get him, and of course, they're all full of various minions to fight. Including, as the second boss, a pair of evil orangutans, which was fun to see.

 

A lot of effort has clearly been put into your guy's combat prowess, with his main stock in trade being punch combos, but he also counts shoulder tackles, roundhouse kicks, and more in his repetoire. There's even a vague kind of levelling system: collecting red crystals gradually unlocks more moves, but it's not permanent, as falling over (whether through monster attacks, traps, or general clumsiness) makes you drop your crystals. With all that in mind, it's a surprise that as the game goes on, it seems to de-emphasise combat in favour of platforming challenges.

 

There are still plenty of enemies as the game goes on, but fighting them becomes so inconvenient and time-consuming that they're more like aggressive, mobile obstacles that you're better off going around than through. Instead, the game starts to focus more and more heavily on platforming challenges, which really shows a lot of confidence on the part of the stage designers: everything hinges upon how well they're put together and they can't just rely on taking up more of the player's time by increasing numbers here and there, especially since the game also imposes pretty strict time limits. It's a testament to that skill on the part of the designers that I was just barely able to scrape through to the third stage.

 

Getting that far already required near-perfect timing and dexterity, and having to maneuver safely through multiple traps and stage elements at a time. I think anyone looking for proper spatial platforming challenges is definitely going to be satisfied by Nosferatu. Most people will probably hit a brick wall in their progress pretty early on like I did, but at least while they're getting to that wall, the game looks and feels luxurious. It could just as much be an early Playstation or Saturn game as it is a mid-life SNES game, and no-one would bat an eye. There's even some psuedo-FMV CG cutscenes! Either way, Nosferatu is at least worth some of your time.