This game has a special spot in my nostalgic heart as it was one of the first games I rented growing up with my bro (after Dick Tracy, which was a horrible game to rent as a six-year old because it was hard as hell). Whomp’Em is a platform game where you take on the role of First Nations/Native-American action hero – one of the few games (apart from inFamous: Second Son on PS4) where you get to take on this role!
I will admit when I first played this game as a kid I thought I was playing Dragon Ball as you get a rideable cloud later in the game just like Goku’s. Turns out (from Wikipedia) that in the Japanese version of the game you played as King Monkey – the Chinese mythological character which Goku is based off it!
Similar to the Mega Man series, once the first stage is complete, you get to choose which of six levels to progress onto next. After beating the boss of each stage, you also get a new weapon based on the element of the enemy you just destroyed. This is tried and true formula and it works for the most part here apart from some bosses not having any weaknesses at all. Once you finish all stages, you get teleported into the sky where you progress though the last stage and beat the final boss.
In terms of graphics, I loved the big characters onscreen when compared to other games like Mega Man. The enemies leave much to be desired and are very generic looking. The stages also befall the same issue and look quite land, often simplistically displaying the aesthetic “element” of the stage as seen below in the “fire” and “water” levels. Sound effects in the game were nothing special but did set the mood of the game.
Gameplay and control is quite responsive – you run around with a spear and can do regular forward facing attacks and then up and downward attacks while jumping. While enemies respawn regularly like in most NES games, you can continue to kill them for health power-ups. I found this somewhat broken as you can get multiple “energy tanks” that fully heal your life when you run out, which ended up making the game too easy as long s your farmed for the items. It would be like getting energy tanks from regular enemies on Mega Man – doesn’t matter how hard the boss is, with multiple tanks the boss can be defeated.
Overall this game is a fun, short-lived platform game that is a bit on the easy side (until you get to the final level). It gets bonus marks for being nostalgic bring my score of it up to 6/10.
FINAL SCORE: 6/10
RetroGame Man 