If you’re using the pistol and shooting as quickly as you can, the super won’t last all that long. The super state also changes the spread of your attacks. But the meter reduces more slowly while you’re doing damage, meaning that you can keep it going for a while as long as you’re able to attack fast enough. Once you activate it, you become invincible and do extra damage. The super is even more useful than it sounds though. After attacking enough, it’ll fill up and you can open a massive can of whoop-ass on everything around you. This is furthered by Mighty Goose‘s super meter.

The goose can take four hits before dying, but enemies routinely drop healing items, so you can get back on your feet even if you’re in seriously dire straits. It’s challenging enough that you’ll die if you get too sloppy, but forgiving enough that you don’t have to be an ace at the genre to see the credits. That’s mostly because the game’s difficulty stays at a pretty consistent 6/10 for the duration. These types of games have always had some memorize-y sections, sure, but they feel out of place in Mighty Goose. The only way to not get hit by them is to either have super fast reflexes, or more likely, to memorize where they spawn. One level, for instance, has spiders drop on you from above. I found that the levels themselves are typically well designed, although I had some issues occasionally. Some levels end in boss battles, as well. The controls are also excellent, as they’re responsive and feel just as good as the games Mighty Goose apes. The levels themselves are colorful, varied, and fun to move around in. There are also some vehicles that the goose can ride, such as a tank, a mech, and a speeder bike. Once you’re out of bullets, you go back to the pistol. Once you pick up a weapon, whether it be a shotgun, machine gun, or missile launcher, you’ll have a certain amount of shots you can fire. Mighty Goose uses Metal Slug rules for these. As you murder everything in your path, enemies will drop weapon pickups. Honk if you, wait, I just told you not to do that It’s a run-and-gun shooter you know how those work.

Once the level starts, you move to the right while shooting everything in your path. You pick from one of Mighty Goose‘s levels from a map that’s presented as traveling to different locations in the goose’s ship. But you don’t want to have the honk equipped because it doesn’t do a goddamn thing. Speaking of honks, you can make the goose honk by pressing the special button, but only if you have the honk equipped. How could I not mention the groovy one himself? It’s all silly, and sometimes there are random close-ups of the goose making a ridiculous face in the middle of a level. What? I’m talking about a game starring an anthropomorphic animal who shoots guns in space.

While chasing down leads, he goes toe to toe with a crow that made me think of Psy-Crow from Earthworm Jim. Our titular hero is an intergalactic bounty hunter chasing after some bad space dude whose name I already forgot. It’s not especially lengthy and doesn’t do anything to try and move the genre forward, but it’s an enjoyable action game in its own right.

It isn’t nearly as difficult as either of those, but it successfully captures the feel and balls-to-the-wall action that they had in spades. Mighty Goose is a throwback to games like Contra and Metal Slug. You know how the saying goes: everything is better with memes! Or was it that nothing is better with memes? Either way, somebody made a run-and-gun game starring a goose, and now I’m going to talk about it for several paragraphs.

Th mighty goose