Willow for NES - A Review | hungrygoriya 

I bought this game a while ago for the NES. I'm saving it for a time when I'm in between construction jobs. Thank you for your video on this game.

Yay, Willow! As a kid obsessed with the The Legend of Zelda, I considered Willow and Crystalis to be pretty much essential parts of my gaming library. Glad you had a chance to enjoy this one, and agreed on the music -- the Dartmoor Castle theme will always stick with me, and is one of those tracks I just occasionally find myself humming for no reason, even decades after the last time I fired this one up. I cannot even IMAGINE playing through the first half of the game without the Healmace, though. You are definitely hardcore! ;)

Where have you been my WHOLE LIFE! I still play this game every few years! Great review!

There was a side scrolling Willow game for the Arcade. You can in fact find it and play it in ROM form. I remember as a kid they had it somewhere, so I actually got to play it.

It's cool to see how well crafted this game was in spite of being a licensed title. I suspect licensing issues can also make it challenging or unprofitable to be re-released for modern audiences.

I'm surprised how good this one looks. I usually would have passed over this because it's a licensed game, but it seems like it would be a fun one to try. Gonna have to keep an eye out for it on my game hunts.

The wiggly forest animations during battles always make me smile 😆 Awesome review! One of my favourite games I've seen you stream.

I was lucky enough to get this game for Christmas in 1990, back when my brain still absorbed information like a sponge. Heh, it's been one of my favorites on the NES ever since then. Great review, great writing! And props on using (forgive if I misspell these) Muzh and Zeena's theme for the outro.

Thank you for this review. I enjoy every time you upload a new video

I know this was posted a year ago, but YT decided I need to see it, and you unlocked some memories of renting this NES cart from a local supermarket video rental shelf, I was so upset how lacking the printed booklet was with HOW to play so MUCH. I loved Zelda 1 and 2, but so many games with more complex systems just never gave you any hint about how it worked. Never bear this game on cart, but still loved the side characters, and as an adult who loved the movie, the extra lore was so great to revisit..

I've had this cartridge for quite a number of years but haven't gone past just checking it out. It really seemed awesome and I told myself one day I'm going to really have to get into this. Now more then ever I think the time has come. The clips you provided and great review have made it a must for me now. I don't know why I've sat on it so long. Thank you very much and as always stay hungry 😊

There aren't many western released NES games I haven't given a try yet, but this is one of them. Will have to give it a try in 2023. Another very good review/retrospective. I was pointed to your channel by the guys at Red Cow Arcade, and I'm a big fan of your content. I love how no-nonsense and informative your videos are. This is an approach that's surprisingly rare on RU-vid. Even when the game you cover doesn't really interest me (as with Solstice, for example) I find myself really enjoying the way you analyze them. No gimmicks, just quality. Keep up the great work. 👏

As to the soundtrack in Willow.... the cave bgm and the boss battle bgms are a couple of the NES's most "dangerous" sounding musics, right next to Faxanadu's boss battle, and TMNT 1's boss battle themes. I like boss battle themes that make you feel like you are in genuine danger, instead of metal-heavy "you're gonna curb stomp this boss!" theme.

Been playing this on and off for years. Always a fun game to come back to.

Just found this channel, I have to say, I love your review style! Kind of reminds me of a lot of early 2010's game review channels, in a good way. Very laid back, wonderfully narrated, straight to the point without leaving out anything important, and you did a great job of smoothly transitioning between your talking points. I didn't know anything about this game, but I was immediately hooked into wanting to learn more about it regardless. You've earned another subscriber.

Just found your channel and watched a few reviews. Love it. Gonna watch em all. Thanks for such high quality content.

[2:53] ... "this stack of tires with a head on top." The Michelin Man: Am I a joke to you?

Yesssss!!! I had looked up your channel earlier to see if I had missed content and was sad. But alas I rejoice for to my surprise a new video is here! It was great. :-)

I remember drawing sooooo many maps for this map as a kid. Loved it

The portraits look great! I can recognize the actors.

Great review as always! I played this as a kid when it was new, and I fondly remembered it as a masterpiece until a few months ago when I replayed it. Without my nostalgia goggles on, I noticed the same flaws that you pointed out. In the end I think it's a 4-star game, while I give Zelda 5 stars. Willow's world often looks great but for the most part it's just a bunch of what you called "labyrinthine passageways", while Zelda features a world that's far more explorable and mysterious, where almost every screen hides a secret in the form of a burnable tree, a bombable wall, etc. One thing Willow has going for it is the nice towns; Zelda might be my favorite game of all time if only it had a hub town to make the world feel more like a world.

Awesome video. I played this when it was new, and this lined up with my experience a lot of the time. Thanks for the review

I'm really enjoying these reviews, very detailed and thorough and often titles that I haven't heard of.

The healmace is in the second town of Dew. You get it by talking to the village chief after getting the wood shield.

I’ve recently gotten into retro gaming and watching retro reviews. You happened to be in my feed one day and I’ve been watching you ever since. I enjoyed your Lunar and Spellcaster videos a lot, and this one’s great too. Willow was a game I had the opportunity to rent but never did. I regret that now lol. It looks great. Keep up the awesome work and Big Ups!

I love this video and you for making it. This game has haunted me since childhood and I hope I get the chance to replay it again before I die. Keep up the good work!

I was lucky enough to see you complete this on twitch. I remember how you had to go right back to the start to heal before the final boss! I actually tried this on an emulator after watching you play and it's a great game of its type, really love the music too. This is the type of game I'd have loved as a kid.

Oh, pro tip: for fast leveling near the end, fight the multiplying red bubbles in nockmaar in the room directly west of sorsha and madmartigan. They sap 10 mp every time they split, and they split 3 times into 8 bubbles before they go berserk and attack you. If you use thunder on them they all die for 800 XP (100 x 8 bubbles). After they are dead you should recharge your MP to -10 from entering the room. You can do this over and over again until you slowly run dry on MP, then equip the Devileye and just kill them before they split to recharge ;)

okay, now I'll watch Willow. I've always wanted to but kept forgetting!

Another great video!! So glad I stumbled in here!!

Love your videos!

Me and my dad played this when I was a kid. Best time of my life.

"Skeletal Accessories" has to be one of my favorite ways to describe skeleton parts. I do love the way this game looks and it's still fairly cheap. Definitely lots of good fun to be had with this one! Nice review!

I forgot all about this game!! Thank you for reminding me!!

Another gem, friend! Nice work. I always remember playing the arcade cabinet, but not the NES version. You've inspired me, yet again!

Willow was a surprisingly ambitious game for it's time. I was really impressed with it. I think this game went in it's own direction because they knew it needed to in order to succeed.

Such gorgeous graphics for a licensed game. The moving foliage does seem a little extra, but it’s still pretty impressive. 🌀 🌀🌀

Your narration in every of your video has a very consistent quality, it's good, the way you speak is fast but didn't left myself with lost of information with me having really terrible attention span. I'm having a terrible ecszema and your content has helped me preoccupied from the unbearable itchy skin that unbelievably took my sanity. Thanks.

Oh man, I mentioned this as a recommendation in a comment years ago, I'm excited to see your take on it (once it's done processing, of course)! You had recommended me the Lucky Dime Caper, which you also covered recently - I guess it's time for me to hold up my end of the bargain and give it a play :}

your channel is really cool and really nice to find people who have passion for retro gaming i subscribe friend

Continue to love your content : )

I recently rediscovered this game after almost a decade after watching the movie again and I'm amazed at how well this game holds up.

Im glad that I discovered this wonderful channel

I played through Willow when my brother bought it. At the time I wasn´t very impressed, it didn´t capture me as much as other action RPG adventures I´d played. You´ve mentioned some of the things I didn´t enjoy in your review, many of the music loops were too short for me and I also found many high notes to sound shrill (especially the password screen). The drab environments made the game less exciting and I found it to be rather linear. There is one standout moment however: ascending the sacred red towers. The eerie music and illusion of height made this straight forward challenge strangely captivating for both me and my brother. Everything just fell into place there. And I completely agree that Nockmar Castle has the best music by far.

Looks like a fun little game! Love that you highlighted the cons (as always), they seem quite small and nothing that would put me off giving Willow a try! Thanks for the review!

I love this review so much

Such an awesome video! Thanks for playing it and bringing more eyes to this title! I'm a little biased towards it but all your criticisms were spot on and valid. No magic use during boss fights was another sore spot the game decided to run with but I understand that would prob be too op with refresh and thunder

I get goosebumps when I hear Faxanadu music

the game that got me into arpg's. love this game so much! thanks for doing a video on it.

I remember playing the heck out of this game. I was disappointed at how much it seemed to diverge from the movie (which I had watched and loved), but I got over that pretty quickly (we didn't have much of a selection of games at the time). I recall having a hard time getting started with it, and not being sure where to go or what to do. Willow was pretty much defenseless against trolls, which I would run into fairly frequently. Fortunately, as you pointed out, you could run, but if they boxed you in you were done for. And, yes, the music was pretty great. I can still hear most of the tracks playing in my mind. (Also, strangely enough, the game's plot seemed to fill in some of the gaps that the movie left behind. I don't know if those fill-ins were canon or not, but they made sense enough to middle-school me.)

I like your style of videos very much!

Love the movie! Had to find a VHS copy just to own it. This game is on my list for finds. It was one I was never able to find when I was young. I did play the arcade game a few times!

I remember my brother playing this game, and now watching TASes of this very game this game is actually pretty good and awesome. Great review you did a wonderful job, even my brother would say the exact same thing as well

Great trip down memory lane! I loved playing this as a kid, but I never finished it. I've been wanting to pick it up and try again. I'm surprised you didn't mention the interesting mechanic where you have to "learn" how to use new weapons by them attacking slowly until you level up enough. It's a mechanic I don't think I've seen in other games of this era.

I remember playing this 30 years ago and being afraid we'd messed up getting trapped in the dungeon at the end and that we'd have to reset the game.

After listening to your pros and cons about Willow I realized it’s similar to Crystalis in many of those same points. I played through Willow about three years ago and made it all the way to the final battle; but my level was too low, which meant I didn’t have enough MP to finish the battle. I was grumbling about that for weeks ;) I recently finished Scurge Hive on the GBA, and I was shocked by how well-crafted it is! If you’re done with your backlog in the next 75 years you should tack it on at the end ;)

I loved this movie when I was younger, but had no idea this game existed for the NES until just recently. Looks like it would be fun.

Some of the disconnect you are seeing with the game's story from what's in the movie is partly because while the visuals and character designs are taken from the movie, the story is mostly taken from the associated novels. I guess the people who designed the packaging never heard of the novels (I hadn't either until a couple years ago) and went with the movie's plot instead.

Excellent descriptive documentary. "...the many dark colons of this ancient land." Well done.

When I was a kid, I went to my grandma's house all the time. And she had a NES with a few games, and this was one of them. This game infuriated me, but I loved it anyway.

Funny story: I'd played this back when it was new, but had never seen the movie, and for my lady, it was the opposite. We got into this conversation about Willow one day, and I brought up Kchill of the nail clan, and she had no idea what I was talking about. "You know: the cute little bunny/hedgehog thing! Gives you the seed that lets you breathe underwater?" I'd had no idea that none of that was in the movie. When I did finally sit down and watch it with her, I really didn't care for it, but this is still one of my all-time favorites on the NES, and it has what, for my money, is one of the all-time greatest adventuring tunes playing while you're exploring the overworld; it's energizing at the start and breaks into something wistful and emotional by the end.

I'm looking over the giant graphics dump @BenjaminNixon linked to, and I see this game made very clever use of the 2/3 palette trick. This is a thing a lot of NES games did to try to squeeze more tileset variety out of the console's 4 palette limit; they'd try to use only two of the three available colors for most tiles so they could fake having more palettes than they really did (for most simple background textures, you only need two or three anyway to make it clear what you're looking at). In this game, they use the "combined" palettes most games avoided to make tiles where two things meet, like patches of bare dirt in grass or diagonal edges of a body of water. In addition, the tiles just have more fiddly details overall including a fair bit of dithering. This game must have looked practically next-gen on a CRT.

I haven't played this one since the late 80s when it first came out. The gameplay is something I found rather forgettable after all this time; at least it didn't give me heavy nostalgia as with the case of Zelda or Simon's Quest or Faxanadu. I remember it being a bit of a slog and maybe more relieved when I beat it that I could move on to a new game instead of reflecting so fondly at the end. On the other hand, the music is something I recall so vividly. The extremely short and loopy Cutscene Theme in triple metre when we encounter characters (ex: when entering a building in town) is permanently stuck in my head and pops into my mind at the oddest times; it gave me an ambiguous and bittersweet sort of feeling as though it's a little bit sad, comfortable, peaceful, and hopeful all at the same time! The music I found almost as memorable as Faxanadu.

Another fact filled review. Really enjoyed that one thanks. Looks pretty nice as a fantasy adventure. I think I played it breifly as a kid, but as it wasnt like the movie it didnt grab my attention. - You make it sound so much better though :) x

Willow was one of my favorite movies as a little kid, but I didn't even know this game existed until I started using the internet actively in the 2000s. It's definitely one of my most wanted NES games, and I secretly hope it and the very cool looking arcade beat-em-up also based on the movie get a modern rerelease someday. Also, if my timeline isn't too far off, isn't this one of the first action RPGs to have your character swing their sword in an arc like that, instead of poke or bump? I feel like some elements of this game influenced a lot of titles in following years

Thank you for this, I keep saying it but I love your old school RPG 😍videos, keep them coming :)

I was waiting for you to review this game. ⭐Those swaying trees got me, not going to lie. And you are not foolin' anybody about the item you couldn't pick up "forcing" you to grind out levels lol. We know you like to explore the whole game anyway! Looking forward to the next review. Oh and if you like Warwick Davis check out Life's too short it's pretty hilarious.

I'm glad I found this channel.

When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6 years old, we visited my Aunt and Uncle. They lived in a large, cavernous house in the forest, and on that day, the skies were dark, and it was raining heavily. Everything seems so much bigger and scarier when you're so young, and so small. After lunch, the grown-ups chatted and my cousin took my brothers and me into the den to watch a movie. The movie was "Willow". I was far too young to enjoy the movie as I found it to be quite scary, so I stared out the large windows at the trees swaying in the storm. The trees were so old, and so tall. The steady rains turned into a powerful storm with high winds, bright lightning, and very loud rumbles of thunder. It began to hail, and large pine cones and sweet gum bulbs crashed to the ground. I wasn't afraid of the storms really, because I knew I was safe and warm in the house. I wasn't much afraid of the movie either because I knew "it was just a movie", as my parents often reminded me and my brothers. But the two events, coinciding- this did begin to make me feel uneasy. Just when I felt I couldn't silently endure the mild terrors I was experiencing any longer, my Aunt entered the room and laughed, "This is too scary", and she replaced the "Willow" VHS with "Race for your life, Charlie Brown". I was happy the movie was changed, but I never did much care for Charlie Brown- even at a young age. Bravely, I continued to stare out the window. The rain eventually slowed and all that remained was an eerie, foggy mist that hung about the soaked branches of the pines.

Being that I had been conditioned that any movie adaptation games on NES sucked, I avoided this one for a long time but was pleasantly surprised when I finally gave it a shot.

Interesting. I only knew the arcade run and gun by Capcom from this franchise. I think it's really cool when the same game becomes something completely different (when it's good) when transitioning to a different platform.

I always wanted to try this as a kid, but never got the chance to! I kind of love the idea of taking the characters from the movie and just doing their own thing with it to make a new adventure. I feel like the unequipping of armour and weapons when you die is a holdover from Capcom's arcade games in a "You've been powered down until you can find pickups" way, sort of like the Willow arcade game, but I dunno... It does seem like a weird choice, especially from a modern perspective. Thank you for another great video!

I remember playing this upon release and being blown away by the sheer size of the world. While it's true that many screens are repeated, by the time you reach the final castle, you really do feel just worn down from the sheer distance you've traveled to get there. One neat trick the game does is that all the traversable screens exist in the game memory on a 29x32 grid, but it's never intended to be engaged with as a single square block of world a la the original Legend of Zelda or A Link to the Past.

back in the very early 90s Willow was my personal absolute favorite NES Game, more than Zelda, more than Super Mario, more than Final Fantasy. i use to play it for hours, as well as "The Legend Of Kage" which unfortunately was a very repetitive game.

Wholeheartedly agree with you, just LP'd it a month ago and it really holds up. Although, when I was a kid it felt much longer!

I remember watching the movie on vhs when I was around 12 or 13, then when I saw that a friend had an nes rpg based on it I immediately started playing it. It took a while but I was able to get through the whole game without resorting to guides and such. I remember missing an endgame sword somewhere but the Wing sword outclassed it after completing the eagles quest. Iirc, you need to be lv14 to revert Raziel's polymorph then she powers up your wand. Idk if that was required to damage Bavmorda's 1st phase but it was nice to have. Despite Madmartigan having a very minor role, it was nice that they still put in the Sorsha romance even if it was very abridged. Then right after that moment was the boss fight with Kael then the home stretch to Bavmorda.

Great video! I found Willow was a good game but is definitely a hard game to figure out where the heck you are supposed to go.

I actually just started Willow the other day. Was able to "modify" my mini nes, so now I have all these games I never played. Wanna finish this one, then jump to the SNES.

It's a good thing you found the battle sword! All those non battle swords were making me nervous. I saw the arcade game first, and was expecting a conversion when I heard that there was a NES version too. I was so disappointed to see that it was this instead, that I wasn't willing to give it a chance. If Konami could convert the TMNT arcade game to the NES and even add two extra stages on top, then why couldn't Capcom do the same with Willow? Well I know better now.

Seems like it held up well in some ways but showed its age in others, not a mix I come across often on the Nes. Great video.

Awesome video. Spot on about the music. May I suggest Times of Lore or Dragonstrike for a future vid?

For some reason, this makes me think of Jurassic Park for the SNES, because of how much it diverted from the movie (though JP was actually more in-line with the novel). You' mentioned in a comment about hoping for a re-release alongside the upcoming TV series, which would be fitting considering how much more of a central role Willow has in Claremont's novel trilogy (which the upcoming TV series is based on). At least on the first novel, anyway.

Nice intro song, I love the game it's from. Good review!

Willow! I'm so happy they're bringin it back! But anyways, this game was awesome, and I might have in life a time or two played the soundtrack by on my way to work. As a kid I loved it. It was to me one of the gems growing up. Another one I'd suggest is Crystalis. That was another one of the gems.

I always thought of Willow as a "poor man's Zelda." I remember I was able to beat it as a kid without any additional help. Not that beating it was amazing or anything, but certain games like Simon's Quest were near impossible to beat without some inside knowledge or some rich kid on the block having a subscription to Nintendo Power.

Thank you!

Great review :) For sure, the defenseless respawn is such a strange mechanic. Like why?

Great Video! I would love to see your take on Dark Sun, shattered lands (PC). That was my favorite RPG of my childhood.

I remember my older brother playing through this game when i was maybe 6 or 7. I tried it out much later. Solid game

For some reason I thought you already did this game. Guess not! I love the old TV vibes in your videos. This one is especially good at capturing the 80s/90s RF connected CRT jank. Makes me wonder how you get all that artifacting to show up in your recordings.

A great game that I hadn't even known about till around 2006. Me being not only a fan of the movie but Capcom as well was a no brainer when I first seen it. On the NES I don't think there were even 3 bad Capcom games and though I did the normal level up grind at the beginning per usual it made the game more enjoyable in the long run. Great video with a stellar game 😁👍

I never got terribly far in this, but i remember liking it enough to rent a couple times as a kid.

I remember playing through a little of this with my friend Joey. Can't recall another thing about it though.

And after the events in Willow, Bavmorda moves to Tristram... =)

This was such a hidden gem. I played the hell out of it as a kid.

This game definitely feels a bit like a square squished into a circle in certain parts, and is by no means a perfect game, but overall I agree it's a very fun game with a killer soundtrack. I also agree that no one needs prior knowledge of the movie to enjoy it, which is great.. but for fans of the movie, it's a nice bridge to some of the plot points, though certainly not very accurate in spots. Generally, I think the developers did a very decent job of making a fun game out of a movie title. Fun watch!

I was watching Willow at my grandmas house like 30 years ago with my cousin (who was about the same age as me, like around 8-10) and she blurts out your mom looks like bavmorda. She doesnt really that much, but I cant think of Willow to this day without thinking of my mom looking like bavmorda. I never played this one. I saw it numerous times in the store and always wanted to try it but I didnt know anyone who had it. Its cool to see it finally.

My favorite touch in this game was that the static outdoor backgrounds would suddenly animate when a battle started. I'm not sure if any other game did that.

Underrated gem right here. It reminded me a bit of a link to the past in the graphics.

This is such a good game. We had it as a child, and my brother got really far but lost his password and never went back to it. I plan on playing it again myself here soon.