ROM CHECK FAIL

Its attempting to creating a game out of those glitch screen you often would see in old NES and gameboy games. In this one you see Asteroids, Mario, Zelda, Castlevania and a lot of other classic NES titles, except that the background doesnt fit the character. Its chaotic and quite insane.

There is an actual method you can progress through the levels, but i think it ends up being besides the point. Its chaotic nature is entertaining, and i think its the best thing it can offer for about 2 minutes.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a game where you can shoot Goombas as the ship from Asteroids, or fight Space Invaders as Link? No, of course it wouldn't. They're completely different games that don't fit together in any conceivable way, but that is exactly what developer Jarrad Woods attempted with the last instalment in his awkward trilogy of freeware games.

The core conceit of this game is a glitch aesthetic, the title screen presents an old videogame console failing to start and throughout the levels your character, the music and the enemies will glitch at random points into things from another game. This might sound interesting to you, however let me assure you that the game is not worth your time. ROM Check Fail is not an artistic project or a worthwhile experiment, it's a hackish mish-mash of popular things in the hope of creating something at least slightly fun. Nothing interesting is ever done with the changing game mechanics or enemy AI in the entirety of the game's fifty levels. The only hint of design is in the placement of blocks on the stages and the placement of enemies in the stages. After completing the entire game a couple of times, the only stages I can actually remember are a stage where a lot of enemies start off above you, a stage where a lot of enemies start off on each side of you and a stage where theres a few enemies above you but the blocks are placed in such a way that it takes a while to move to them. The vast majority of levels are such forgettable filler that it causes me to wonder why there are even levels at all. The game would probably be better if the stages were randomly generated, then at least there could be an element of high score chasing rather than simply plodding through the terrible levels to see a banal and unsurprising end screen.

This game is the work of someone devoid of ideas, it's not particularly fun (you will often die through no fault of your own), it's not particularly interesting (you will likely see everything the game has to offer within two minutes), it's not a good game in any sense.