QUByte Interactive and Piko are back with another retro re-release collection. This time they have brought Jim Power: The Lost Dimension to modern systems. How does this collection hold up compared to their other releases? I had never heard of Jim Power prior to playing this collection, so as always I looked into it's history. The game was originally released back in 1993 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and MS-DOS computers and was developed by french dev Loriciel and published by Electro Brain. It's also considered to be one of the most difficult games ever made.... Oh and it originally came packed together with a set of 3D glasses which created a unique 3D experience, for better or worse! Thankfully the 3D glasses are nowhere to be found in this release!
Jim Power is a classic action-adventure platformer that brings the special agent Jim Power, to save our planet from the supernatural alien, Vaprak. His forces are too strong, a direct attack would not be effective and that's why Jim Power has to slip through the defenses and attempt to stop this threat. It's up to the player to reach Vaprak's fortress and send him back from where he came. Upgrade your weapons, jump carefully through the platforms, eliminate the enemies and reach the peak of your skills to save the planet from the never knew evil.
The games soundtrack was composed by video game music legend Chris Huelsbeck, probably most well known for his work on the Turrican series. The music is described as having been directly influenced by the music from the video game series Ys as well! The game features a variety of different gameplay styles including side scrolling platforming, horizontal shoot 'em up and over head style stages. The side scrolling Contra like gameplay makes up the majority of the game and includes lots of platforming and shooter combat.
As with their other retro collections, QUByte and Piko have included multiple versions of the game in this pack. There is obviously the original SNES release, but they have also included a previously unreleased Sega Megadrive port (Genesis for you US fans) which was under the name Jim Power: The Arcade Game and has been faithfully completed by Piko including restoring the ending, music tracks and sound effects that were missing from the unfinished prototype. Also if one unreleased version being added wasn't enough, Piko has also included a newly developed NES version of the game in all its 8-Bit Glory. There are also 4 different screen filter options and 3 different screen types that can be selected to customise your experience to how retro you want to play!
Overall it's another well made collection of retro goodness, wrapped in a very nice package. Unfortunately it's the actual choice of game that lets its down. Whilst it boasts great graphics and a decent soundtrack, it's extremely, unforgivingly hard and that may put alot of people off ever making it to the end. Luckily there are now save options available to you... and your going to need to use them!
TOTAL SCORE: 6.5/10
QUByte Classics - Jim Power: The Lost Dimension Collection was released on the 2nd of June 2022 and is playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The game is priced at £8.39 and can be purchased HERE. The game is also available on other consoles and has physical editions available through Strictly Limited Games.
A copy of the of the game was provided for this review. A big thank you for that!
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