Developer: Equilibrium Inc. Publisher: THQ Released: January 1991 Genre: Action
I remember Peter Pan and the Pirates as a cartoon that focused on the fun side of being a kid forever. It came on during the day so I only caught it when there was no school. I’m sure if I were to revisit it now it wouldn’t hold up like many of the cartoons of my youth. But for as much as I might have liked the cartoon I stayed the hell away from the game of the same name. By 1991 I had burned by one too many licensed games to take another risk again. My caution was warranted as Peter Pan and the Pirates is one of the worst games in the NES library.
Peter Pan and the Pirates holds the distinction of being the first game THQ ever published. And boy was this awful start. While THQ might be held in good esteem now due to games like Saint’s Row, Darksiders, and such for the longest time they were one of the most reviled publishers around. With games like Home Alone and Wayne’s World under their belt you can see why. Peter Pan is a failure on every single level and should be avoided at all costs.
Where do I even start? This is primarily a platformer where the goal is to defeat a set number of pirates before reaching the exit to each level. Peter has a basic dagger that has little reach but that isn’t as important. Peter starts with a limited amount of health but collecting boxes and fairies will raise it. Boxes are everywhere and I have yet to see how high your max health can go. All you need to know is that you are near invincible since the game literally throws boxes at you. The only time you will honestly die is if you jump in a pit, which is actually easier than you expect.
The controls are god awful. Walking in a straight line is about the only action that functions consistently well. Peter’s jump is not appropriate for the game they have built around it. Most ledges are either too far or too short, resulting in you constantly falling in. That is, if you don’t rely on flying. But I’ll get into the problems with that in a second. While flight has its issues it can and will save you from the constant horribly mistimed jumps. But it shouldn’t have to be that way. Your basic attack is so worthless that it is near impossible to stab anything without receiving damage. But as I mentioned previously your health is so high it won’t matter. You would think the one thing they would get right is flight but even that is asking too much.
Since this is a Peter Pan game one would hope being able to fly would be its saving grace. But the flight controls might be the worst part of the game. At any time you can hover around the screen so long as you have fairy dust. The problem is you can’t stay in one spot and must constantly stay on the move. You can’t even fly straight upward! Trying to steer once airborne is annoying at best but aggravating at its worst. To make matters worse if you so much as touch anything Peter will instantly drop. All of these frustrations come to a head in the final set of levels, where flying becomes mandatory rather than optional. But I doubt anyone will last that long outside of fools like me.
The bad level design is the cherry on top of a rotten cake. Peter Pan and the Pirates exhibit all the bad traits of American and European game design at the time. There is no distinction between background objects and platforms you can comfortably land on. The last few levels on Hook’s pirate ship are especially bad at this. The game even recycles three of its levels with only a change in color palette to hide the fact. You would think the final confrontation with Hook would be epic but far from it. You stab him about three hundred times to force him off the ship and are greeted with a hideous congratulatory screen for your trouble. But at that point I don’t think any reasonable human being would expect a decent ending.
In Closing
Peter Pan and the Pirates is the type of licensed trash that will make you hate video games. The game has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The only reason anyone remembers this game is to ridicule it. And it deserves every bit of shame thrown at it.
