enjoyed this decent late-era platformer. sometimes very pretty, it kinda makes you wonder why other NES games couldn't use the palette so nicely. the climbing controls are a bit fussy and losing allies perhaps a bit too punitive if not using save states. playing on Normal (hardest?) i was surprised at how high boss damage was a few times. maybe Easy tones that aspect down. (otoh the game has a generous-for-the-era password system.)
it'd be nice if someone made a patch to prevent the music from restarting every time you pause/open the char-swap screen.
watching some pro strats, it turns out that your little mouse is the ultimate boss killer, a total glass cannon. ha.
Takeru / Sur Dé Wave / D.O.G. (not sure of the distinction) seems interesting. Takeru was composed of ex-Capcom pros but it fell apart quickly due to apparent financial mismanagement. (update: ok wow, so Strider developer Kouichi Yotsui was the force behind Takeru's commercial failure / cultish adventure game Nostalgia 1907, which doomed the company. great story in that last link. what a strange career path for him!)
love that wonderfully '90s Sur Dé Wave logo.