Collection essentials #36: Adventures of Lolo (NES)

 

As of right now, Adventures of Lolo currently holds the record for the longest time I’ve owned a game before beating it. It was one of the early NES games I acquired circa 2004 thanks to mom yard sale shopping, and I only just beat it last year. That’s roughly 18 years!! That record will almost certainly fall at some point, but Lolo has it for now. Another fun fact is that the box, manual and cartridge you see in the photo are all authentic but were all acquired separately!

Adventures of Lolo is what you’d call an “action puzzle game”, where you do control a character freely moving around the screen, but the game is not primarily about testing your reflexes and beating up bad guys. Instead, the idea here is that the game presents you a logic puzzle that you need to use your brain to figure out, and defeating enemies and using proper timing is only an occasional complementary element for a specific solution. In Lolo, puzzles often involve setting up obstacles so enemies can’t shoot projectiles and kill you from the other side of the screen. There are other enemies you have to deal with by either obstructing or somehow disabling them so they don’t ruin your day. You will also sometimes acquire a special power as part of the puzzle, such as the ability to build a bridge or to encase an object into an egg so you can slide it around freely.

I do really like puzzle-solving games like this, although they do come with an obvious flaw that’s hard to avoid when you’re a game designer; you need to have challenge, but when a player can’t figure out your puzzle, they can just be left staring at the screen in bewilderment for hours, until they finally decide to play something else. That’s kind of what happened to me with this game. But for years I told myself I would go back and play it through someday, and I did! I did get a tip here and there from a buddy who had played it, but I don’t think I ever outright looked up a solution.

There are two sequels to Adventures of Lolo also on the NES which I also own, though I am not marking them as essential as I haven’t owned them nearly as long and I haven’t played through them yet. I’m currently sort of at the “hit a brick wall” phase with Lolo 2, actually. I don’t want to look up the solution for the puzzle I’m on, but it’s got me totally stumped!! Maybe someday I’ll figure it out…

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