Adventures of Lolo first hit the North American NES on 20 April 1989 and followed to Europe on 21 February 1991.
The game is based on the Eggerland video game series which originated on MSX computer systems in 1985 in Japan care of HAL Laboratory. In this game you take on the role of heroic Lolo who is intent on saving the kidnapped Lala from the series antagonist King Egger. (I’m not making these names up… which I find wonderful.)
Lolo must enter King Egger’s castle and solve each room’s puzzle to climb higher and eventually confront the mad King to bring Lala home safe. Within each chamber Lolo must open a treasure chest by collecting all of the hearts to clear the room of danger and open the door to the next area. Puzzles are solved by pushing blocks and or “eggs” that the enemies become when Lolo shoots them with magical powers that he may or may not receive each round as he collects the previously mentioned hearts. The game can currently be found on both the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShop and comes with an extreme recommendation from me.
Every Friday in my youthful years my Father would take me to the local video rental store to pick out a new NES game to play on the weekend. I remember very specifically the weekend I rented Adventures of Lolo. I’m not sure why my father stopped as he passed through the living room that evening to watch me play the game… but after giving up on a tough puzzle myself he walked over and demanded a turn.
We spent that entire weekend passing the controller back and forth and come Sunday when the game was due back, we dropped it off and then drove to the local shopping mall to purchase the title for our home. In the following weeks we gave that game no rest at all. One by one the puzzles were solved and we made steady progress to the final confrontation with King Egger. When the game was conquered we were on top of the world. We would beat it many times over throughout the remainder of the year. It was very rare that my Father would play a video game with me, but when he did those games really stuck with me.
I find it amusing that still to this day should the topic of video games ever come up in a social setting my Father will go out of his way to be sure that everyone knows he thinks Adventures of Lolo is the greatest game ever produced. It’s a fair opinion. The puzzles are intuitive and smartly crafted. The graphics and characters are vivid and adorable. The game is quite timeless in design and execution. If only the soundtrack were not an endless loop of the the same maddening 30 second tune from start to finish I would argue the game was very close to being perfect.
I’ve been falling in love with video games for as long as I can remember, but it’s always those that I shared with friends and family that burn brightest in my memories. I’m sure that I’m not alone. Perhaps you can’t have the same experience with Adventures of Lolo that I had, but I still hope that you can find the time to enjoy it and have fun.
