Gremlins 2 - The New Batch

Gremlins are creatures that multiply in darkness and dampness — in the nineties, that mostly meant your computer. This game belonged here like a snail in its shell.

It's a platformer directly tied to the second film, where all those terrible creatures wreak havoc in the middle of a New York skyscraper. Your Billy Peltzer doesn't belong here — you play as Greta and Danny, trying to survive in a building full of these creepy little things. The goal is simple — get through the levels, collect what you can, kill everything that moves. Classic stuff from Imageware, who had the right to publish film adaptations back when things were still pretty straightforward.

It plays like any decent platformer from that era — jumping, shooting, watching out for falls. The movement is responsive, without those modern soft animations where the character thinks for three seconds before deciding to move. Billy's behavior pays off here — gremlins attack you from multiple directions, they have smart AI at least for their time, and levels aren't just linear walks forward. Back and forth, jumping across parts of the map, finding keys — this construction keeps your attention. The graphics are ASCII-art for the eyes, the sound design got by without voiceovers, just music and effects. Keyboard controls are flawless, without those frustrating responsiveness problems that the competition often had.

It's aged relatively well. The difficulty of some sequences hurts, especially the later levels are unnecessarily harsh. But that's exactly what that era was like — there was no softening, just hard game design without mercy. The atmosphere holds up thanks to faithful representation of the world from the second film, and if you lived through that time, you'll recognize the spirit of the nineties in it.

Trying it today in an emulator makes sense if you like film adaptations and won't break on the harder parts. It's not genius, but it's consistent craft without unnecessary fluff — exactly how they made games when video games were still carefully stored computers in climate-controlled rooms.