Play Totally Rad Online

Totally Rad came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, developed by Aicom and published by Jaleco. It was part of that late NES wave where developers were getting more experimental, trying to stretch the hardware with bigger ideas and weirder stories, even if the graphics still had that familiar blocky charm.

You control a young magician named Jake, fighting through side scrolling levels and overhead maze dungeons to save his girlfriend from an evil sorcerer. Your main weapon is a short range magic burst, but the real hook is the transformation magic. By collecting orbs and entering a spell menu, you can temporarily turn into different powerful animals; a frog that spits explosive flies, a bird that flies freely and drops eggs, or a beast that tears through enemies with its claws. The levels are packed with secrets, requiring you to backtrack with new forms to access hidden areas and power ups. It is not an easy game, with some brutal enemy placements and bosses that demand pattern memorization. Playing it feels like unraveling a strange, clunky but genuinely clever system buried under all that 80s attitude.