Venture Kid

For short, nostalgic blasts of fun Venture Kid succeeds in almost every respect. While there's fun to be had here, it's painfully clear that, just like playing the game itself, everything is just going through the motions. The excellent soundtrack may even be enough to warrant a dabble, but with nothing new brought to the table, there's no reason to spend your hard earned cash, when the games that this owes so much to its design and creation can be purchased. There are a lot worse than this, sure, but be aware that once completed the first time, multiple revisits are unlikely. Fun? Certainly, but with little variation in gameplay or level design there is not enough for this to stay interesting in the long term. With a little more risk-taking in development, a craving of individuality, and a creative spark, Venture Kid could have gone far.

If you are looking for a stroll down Mega Man-memory lane, Venture Kid offers a solid nostalgia trip down the side streets of the genre’s general neighborhood. Platforming feels tuned to the best examples of the era. Taking heavy influence from classic NES titles, Venture Kid captures the 8-bit age with pitch perfection, even if it misses the mark in other places.

All in all, Venture Kid is a retro platformer that plays fairly well, but lacks the excitement or inspiration of the Mega Man series it tried to model. With such a wide spectrum of games in this genre that push the limits of what an action-platformer is capable of, something so vanilla is going to get lost and overlooked. Unless this is the first such game you’ve ever played, you’ve likely seen everything offered here somewhere else.