Here’s another game that I played through on a stream. You can see that archived here. I talk a bit about my impressions in the video itself, so I’ll be brief here.
Sneaky Snakes was one of Rare’s early handheld companions to a console release, in this case Snake Rattle n Roll. It takes that game’s central mechanic of eating Nibbleys throughout a level in order to gain enough weight to unlock the exit, but translates it to a 2D sidescroller rather than an isometric 3D scape.
It seems very faithful to the formula of its parent game but with a few interesting additions and maybe a little more variety in its content. There are more different varieties of Nibbleys, for example, and things like an evil snake or a ball you have to push around then bounce off. New enemies such as sentient staplers and toilet lids show a sense of ridiculous fun that the game’s sometimes hellacious difficulty doesn’t quite manage to squash. The final boss too, a pot-bellied homunculus with a brass instrument for a face, has to be seen to be believed.
The environments become more and more strange as you continue, ending in some decidedly alien caverns. Perhaps it really is following up on the promise of “Snakes in Space” that the NES original teased in its ending. Incidentally, this video fits the maps from the first game together to show how clever its level design was to fit it into a greater context. Sneaky Snakes is not quite so impressive but it’s still fun and a refreshing change of pace from other platformers.
