Spelunker (1987) NES Review

Nothing captures the imagination quite like a good ol’ fashioned treasure hunt. The idea of embarking on a grand adventure and unearthing a long lost treasure trove has been lodged into the pop culture stratosphere for as long as pop culture has existed. There’s just something about the idea of finding something cool in a musty old hole that makes the happy parts of our brains light up. Even if the exchange rate on 8-bit treasure might not be as lucrative as it was back in its heyday, money isn’t everything, anyway.

Spelunker is a game about just that. Our fragile protagonist (who I’ll call Mr. Spelunker for convenience) is looking to make his way down into the deepest depths of some nondescript caves. Any passing resemblance to pre-Super Mario Bros. Mario is purely coincidental. It’s up to you to navigate Mr. Spelunker through the never-ending perils and bring home a fat pile of gold…but it’s easier said than done. The ghosts of dead spelunkers rise from the depths to try to drag you down with them. Your own bombs will blow up in your face. Your bones are made of glass, so even the tiniest falls mean certain doom. And don’t even get me started on the bat pee. It’s all pretty scary stuff. What’s the world’s frailest treasure hunter to do?

Navigate perilous jumps, climb ropes, and bomb rocks and walls to descend further into the creepy caves, with the finish line being a secret underground ziggurat stuffed full of priceless 8-bit treasure. You can’t get your hands on that gold without taking detours to collect keys, tools, and your own air supply. Though it’s simple in its execution, Spelunker almost feels like equal parts platformer and puzzler thanks to all of these intricacies. The control scheme might take a little bit of getting used to for some, but once you get a handle over it, spelunking like a pro comes naturally.

I personally enjoyed Spelunker so much that once I had beat it, I went back and finished it five more times during the days that followed, just for shits and giggles. It was the kind of game where the more time I put into it, the more it gave back to me in terms of enjoyment. After having a whale of a time uncovering its secrets and getting better with every playthrough, I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I found out that the general consensus about the game is so overwhelmingly negative. They dare to call this thing a kusoge! The cheek! The gumption!

The thing about Spelunker that tends to send most people sour is the fall damage. If Mr. Spelunker falls any further than a few centimetres, he dies so fast that his ass literally doesn’t have time to hit the ground, frequently resulting in more than a few weird mid-air deaths throughout. This infamously happens to most first-time players in the first few seconds of playing, to the point where the BGM feels like it was intentionally composed to flow seamlessly into the “you died” jingle. It’s an understandably hard and somewhat embarrassing adjustment to make for most, who then go on to write off Spelunker as little more than trash.

Alright. Okay. Listen. Stick with me on this one. I want you to hear me out. You listening? Okay. Spelunker is actually really well designed and unfairly maligned– wait where are you going come back DON’T LEAVE

Ahem.

Most first time players will need to put in a bit of time and effort to get used to the game’s unusual mechanics. Rome wasn’t spelunked in a day, after all. However, if the player acclimatises themselves to the way the game works and approaches the platforming with an air of patience, Spelunker really isn’t as tough or unruly as people tend to say it is.

IREM fine-tuned each section of the game to an impressive degree…some might even call it a sadistic one. Honestly, I’d go so far as to say that Spelunker’s levels are designed in a way that I find similar to the likes of Adventure Island; every single step Mr. Spelunker takes has been carefully and deliberately pre-predicted by those tricky dicky game devs, making the game’s true hidden goal come to light: it’s up to you to think about how to avoid playing right into the designer’s hands.

Hasty players will be punished by cleverly placed jumps and manoeuvres that would otherwise be cleared with ease when approached patiently. The rarely occurring enemies are obstacles that need to be approached with strategy and caution, as opposed to the usual “kill ’em and move on” cannon fodder they usually are in other platformers. An air refill will always pop up exactly when you’ll need one the most, and that’s no happy accident either; game design is tricky work. It’s a real shame that these great level designs are largely overlooked and overshadowed by people turning their noses up at the fall damage, because there’s a lot of clever stuff to be found here.

Now lemme tell you some interesting facts about Spelunker. When the Famicom version of Spelunker made its way into the hands of Japanese gamers back in 1985, the public initially didn’t warm to it thanks to its difficulty and unorthodox controls. Despite this, the game still manage to sell insanely well; so well in fact that the original game’s designer, Tim Martin, used the royalties from the Famicom conversion alone to pay off a large debt that was hanging over his head at the time.

In spite of the negative reception (or perhaps because of it), the game went on to make quite a cultural impact in Japan. “Spelunker’s constitution” has become commonly used slang to refer to people who are easily hurt. Now retired pro baseball player Hitoshi Tamura had been given the “loving” nickname of “Spelunker” by fans, thanks to the legendary (and seemingly unending) string of injuries he suffered from. Reportedly, people in the stadium used to chant the game’s theme song whenever the poor guy stepped onto the field! Another interesting tidbit: when Spelunker launched on the Japanese Wii Virtual Console, the game managed to outsell Super Mario Bros. on that platform. For a brief period, sure, but it still takes a big splash to dethrone the man himself for any amount of time.

I didn’t realise it before this write-up, but I live laugh love for a tightly designed platformer, and Spelunker is definitely one of those. Whether or not the way said tight design plays out to your tastes will be on a case-by-case basis, but I personally thought it was excellent, and a highly satisfying clear. At the end of the day, I think it’s safe to say that Spelunker is one of those “if you like it, you like it, and if you don’t, you don’t” type of games. If you’ve never given it a shake before, try approaching it with an open mind and you might find yourself pleasantly surprised. One person’s trash is another one’s treasure, and as previously established, we all like a bit of treasure.