Games I Grew Up On: Adventures of Lolo

One of the earlier puzzle video games I played growing up was Adventures of Lolo for the NES.  Lolo's girlfriend, Lala, has been kidnapped by the evil King Egger (definitely a theme with NES games...) and Lolo must climb the 10 floors of the tower and defeat King Egger to save her.  Each room of the tower consists of a puzzle where Lolo must grab all the heart tokens without getting killed by Snakeys, Skulls, Almas, Medusas, Rockys, Leepers, Gols, or Don Medusas.  Some of these enemies kill Lolo with a touch, others merely block access to places.  Specific heart tokens will give Lolo the ability to shoot at enemies and encase them in eggs that he can safely push around (some enemies cannot be egged).  There are also tokens to make bridges over water (that Lolo can't cross otherwise) and hammers to remove a single obstacle per hammer.

Adventures of Lolo is still one of the few true action puzzle games I've played to date.  Portal and Portal 2 had moments here and there where timing was required, but not with enemies chasing you down (stupid Almas...).  Most other action games with "puzzles" are mostly just block puzzles where you need to put Crate A into Slot A and Box B into Slot B.  As a kid, I think I might have managed to get through maybe half of the game.  In college with an emulator and save states, I was able to beat the whole game.  Then, after college I managed to beat the game on the original system, but it's definitely a brain twister and a half.

Lolo got two more games after this and Lala was not only not captured in the third one, but you could play as her if you wanted.  I think my favorite part about Lolo and Lala is that they were enemies in Kirby's Dreamland and later became staple Kirby enemies named Lololo and Lalala.  Also, given their super simple geometric shapes, Lolo, Lala, Leeper, and Rocky were my first creations in a brief foray into sculpting I had a few years ago.

Kirby about to put the hurt on Lala