Felix the Cat (NES) Review!

Felix the cat is a really underrated platformer. Unfortunately it was released way too late in the lifespan of the NES in 1992 when the Super Nintendo was sitting front and center.

Listen To This Article

0:00

/3:38

1×

Felix heads off through the nine stages in the game. Some of the worlds are on land, others are in the air, some have Felix swimming through water. The different stage types add a great level of variety to the gameplay and break up each of the areas.

At first I thought you could go and jump on the enemies like in Mario or Sonic but Felix takes a different approach to how to get by enemies. Felix will use his punch attack to knock out things along the way. Not only can Felix use the punch but when you pick up a heart container, Felix will get powered up.

There’s a ton of different levels of power ups that Felix can get to before becoming a final form by finding more hearts during each of the different types of stages like a tank or a submarine. If you get hit, you’ll be transformed back into the previous form you were set to. Each of the powerups also have a limited amount of time that you can stay in this form before reverting to the previous one. Picking up milk is a way you can increase the amount of time that you can keep the form.

The Story is pretty simple and about what you would expect from a platformer. The evil professor wants to snatch Felix's magic bag of tricks away from him. The professor ends up capturing Felix’s friend kitty and offers to ransom her in exchange for the bag.

The controls are fairly straight forward, one button jumps, swims or flies, the other uses Felix’s attack.

I found that picking up extra lives either by scoring 50 thousand points was a great way to keep up in the later stages that get a bit more difficult. You only have 3 continues before having to start from the beginning again.

Overall, the gameplay is rather easy if you can take things incredibly slow once you’re fully powered up. You really have to be careful if you only have the punching ability in the first form.

The best stages were by far the swimming stages. I thought they would be janky like a lot of other swimming stages but Felix controlled surprisingly well underwater. The Flying stages the worst out of them all. You could fly all the way at the top and have nothing hit you like using the p wing in Super Mario Bros 3.

Scattered around each of the stages were these magic bags that give you a quick way to step inside for some powerups.

The bosses, although might look a bit tough at first, were mainly pushovers with little challenge especially when you’re powered up.

The most difficult part in Felix the cat is this stage where you’re flying around a spaceship before the final stage in this auto scroller. You can’t take your time here since the stage keeps on moving and you have to find the milk containers since the magic meter is lowering. It was so frustrating to have to go up and down fighting off these blobs of white poop.

Even though Felix the cat is a bit on the easy side, I did enjoy giving it a go. The varying power ups and level designs keep Felix feeling fresh. Good luck finding a copy, it’s crept up to over a hundred dollars in 2023.