Flea!

I absolutely adore new releases on older systems, especially when they are as great as this one. Flea! is a pretty huge game set out over 80 levels (including various, very cool, scrolling boss levels) in which you play as a constantly-jumping flea called Harry who is off to collect bottles of blood to save his people (or *ahem* flea-ple). I’m a big fan of a simple idea done well and Flea! is a textbook example of that principle. The controls in this pixel art, 2D platformer are immediately accessible with left and right controlling the direction of your jumping and a hammering of the A button required to lower the leap-height (a surprisingly satisfying mechanic). This is pretty much all you need to make your way through the 80 challenging stages that make up the game. Accompanied by a chiptune soundtrack that had the same effect on me as the classic Bubble Bobble theme – in that, it’s heavily repeated but never feels repetitive – you start with 21 lives that, in the wrong circumstances can disappear faster than a pint of lager in the hands of Chips Rafferty. You gain lives by collecting blood and handing it over to a rotund flea every few stages, each bottle translates to …

The game doesnt work at all if you use the "fullscreen" option in the settings, it drops the fps down to 1 fps. This can be slightly worked around by playing in windowed and then right clicking the window and "maximixing" it. The game looks very choppy at times boss fights are weird because they are "auto scrollers" but they also auto scroll your character at the same time, which makes it feel very weird to try and control. Most of the levels are trivially easy except for the occasionally random extremely precise jump. Though the difficulty did start to ramp up around the time I decided to stop playing, it started to become more frustrating than actually challenging. You collect the blood on the screen and it becomes lives. Needless to say by around level 35 I had well over 100 lives so there was no threat of actual game over. There is a "small jump" mechanic which requires a very bizzare single button "press" just before you land. This feels very weird to actually try and pull off. There is no save mechanic that I could find so when I quit the game around stage 35 and relaunched it, it made me start all the way back at the beginning. Though in the pause screen there is an o…

Very fun game! Super difficult and couldn't put it down. Full of puns and adorable characters that make you want to finish the levels to meet them all.

I really enjoyed this game a lot! Its heavily influenced by classic NES games of old. I can definitely see the TMNT style platforming, Kirby's Adventure style music, and the the color palette of early NES games. This game is difficult but it is very fair. There are not dirty tricks. I really recommend picking this game up, its pretty short but very fun!

It's listed saying "partial controller support" that is a lie. It doesn't work with a controller even if you map the buttons properly. UPDATE: Now that NESTek is replaced with NESBag upon update, controller inputs on Steam work flawlessly

Well done! Reminds me of Super Meat Boy which is a good thing :) Great that the .rom is included in the Steam version. Thx for your effort! Nice game!