I remember when I was a child, I first saw Felix the Cat. I distinctly remember a scene where he was using his tail as a helicopter, and for some reason, I was immediately indeared. Naturally, I was unaware of the legacy of Felix the Cat—never really processing that I actually had a VHS with a couple of the old cartoons on it prior to my seeing him on TV.
Of course, back in those days, most great cartoons had pretty decent video game tie-ins—the best, of course, produced by the best companies of the time. Ducktales and Chip n’ Dale had some of the best games of the NES era produced by Capcom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons got prolific arcade games from Konami, and Felix the Cat got a pretty solid NES game from Hudson Soft—makers of Bomberman.
Nowadays, when Konami isn’t making terrible Silent Hill demos, they’re releasing Hudson Soft’s games with their logo slapped on them since Hudson Soft merged with Konami back in 2012. As such, we get the Felix the Cat “collection,” which, like Konami itself, is a mostly okay game that trades hard on legacy names and nostalgia.
Konami’s Felix the Cat is a simple tale somewhat following the story of The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat cartoon. It’s a simple plot—the mad Professor has kidnapped Felix’s girlfriend, Kitty, and Felix must venture across nine realms in order to rescue her. Honestly, what else can I say about the plot? It’s an NES game, it’s as straightforward as it needs to be—Super Mario essentially set the standard for what video game plots needed to be back then.
Gameplay is your standard 2D platforming affair. Felix must move from the left side of the screen to the right, avoiding pitfalls and enemies. Luckily, our fabulous feline is equipped with his Magic Bag, which comes with an extendable punching glove to fend off enemies. Players can collect upgrades that give Felix various transformations, which also give him extra hits from enemies—with each hit knocking the transformation down one level.
As an HD collection, Konami’s Felix the Cat has been given some updates and quality-of-life improvements. Aside from the visual upgrade—although players can choose to have the old CRT filter, which I always appreciate—the game does come with a rewind feature, allowing players to account for the many mistakes that will surely come from the archaic game design. Players will also be able to create a single save state at any point in the game, which is pretty nice as well.
However, as a collection, Konami’s Felix the Cat doesn’t really come with much. While it does include both the NES, Gameboy and Famicom versions of the game, they are all functionally identical—with the Game Boy version being a significantly paired-down version of the other two. And when I say functionally identical I mean it for the NES and Famicom versions. Aside from the cutscene text being in Japanese, these games are EXACTLY. THE. SAME. And if there are any differences, I surely couldn’t tell you what they were.
Add to that a lack of any artwork, audio or even informational additions, I honestly couldn’t see why anyone, outside of hardcore Felix the Cat fans, would justifiably get this. I suppose it is a decent enough little nostalgia romp, but it doesn’t really feel like a celebration of the legacy of the character that it could have been—and for the asking price, I just don’t feel like it’s worth it.
This really feels like something that should’ve just gone to the NES Online library, given the weird stuff they just put on their sometimes—who wanted Quest for Camelot on the Game Boy Online library?
