Play Total Recall Online
NES adaptation of the Arnold movie where you punch, steal guns, and shoot enemies into space. Janky but weirdly faithful to the film's weirdness.
Total Recall came out on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, developed by Interplay Entertainment. It was part of that wave of movie tie-in games from the era, a time when you could expect to see almost any film, no matter how action-packed, get translated into an 8-bit side-scroller. This one was based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, and it tried to capture that story's particular brand of sci-fi paranoia within the console's limitations.
You control construction worker Doug Quaid, who may or may not be a secret agent, as he punches thugs, commandeers their guns, and shoots his way through a linear series of levels. The main objective is to survive the journey, uncover the conspiracy about your identity, and find the alien artifact. Signature mechanics include screen-by-screen exploration where enemies respawn if you backtrack, and a life system where you can find health-restoring "juicers" hidden in the scenery. The pacing is relentless, and the difficulty is notoriously unforgiving, with cheap enemy placements and instant death pits. It feels like a frantic, confusing scramble that somehow mirrors the main character's own disorienting experience.
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*This ROM is provided for backup and educational purposes only.
