One of three crazy point-and-click adventure games produced by our good friends at Kemco for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Deja Vu is the kind of game you either love so much that you want to have it's babies or you hate so much that you want to eat it's children. Either or, the game is a port of one of those pseudo-text adventures gracing your old Machintosh computers back in the year 1908, when Apple was so gigantic in the computer sense that it was only shadowed money-wise by the other two big companies of it's size, McDonalds and that dude who starred in the blockbuster cinematic hit, Tron. The premise is so simple that only the select few of you that have Attention Deficit Disorder (all two of you) will never solve it due to it's slow nature. Let me just say that in 1990, you had the choice of either playing the action-packed acid trip known as Super Mario Bros. 3 or you were playing this. Guess what I was playing?

"Holy crap, I'm black?"

The story of Deja Vu is pretty uninteresting. Oh, by the way, the answer to that last question I asked, I was playing Super Mario Bros. 3, not this game. I only started playing this game about a year after I've beaten the legendary third Mario escapade because I was looking for some cool games. Unfortunately, the NES was near the end of the line what with those damn 16-bit systems like the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo rolling around the corner. The only other games we were hoping for were Final Fantasy and Kirby's Adventure, so we need filler games like this. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, because I once again drifted into mindless dribble! So, the story goes as follows: you woke up in a bathroom stall, and can't remember a thing. What happened to you? What have you done? Why are your palms hairy? I know the answer to the last question, and if you keep doing that, you WILL go blind! Ha ha, I was watching that one Police Academy movie the other day and it was so funny I stole that joke from it! I'm a comedy mastermind! Anyhow, you realize something more important: who am I? Not unlike that Jackie Chan movie Who Am I? starring Jackie Chan as a guy with amnesia, you have amnesia in this game and can't remember anything, except you still remember how to speak English and how to walk and all that. Amnesia never really made any sense at all.

(Insert your own joke here and be creative)

This game was made for an old Mac, in that you control an arrow similar to the one you are probably using now to click on hypertext links and download the ample amounts of porn the world wide web makes readily available to you. So don't be suprised that controlling an arrow with a directional pad affixed to your NES controller is boring and stupid. You move the arrow to little "commands" on the non-visual menu bars on the bottom part and right part of the playing areas, as well as the pretty pictures on the old non-menu parts of the playing area. Among the many commands available to you include "MOVE", which allows you to MOVE from one room to the next, and "EXAM", which allows you to EXAM-ine something. My favorite command is "HIT", which makes you punch things. I usually use the "HIT" commmand on "SELF", which is your person. Get it? HIT SELF! HA HA HA LOLOL!111 You could also "EXAM SELF" and "MOVE SELF", but it ain't as funny as "HIT SELF". Although, I do find "USE GUN1 SELF" kind of funny, but that ends up killing your character, which is alright, I guess. Ace Harding ain't exactly the world's coolest character.

Yeah, nothing that out-of-the-ordinary.

I didn't spoil the suprise, did I? Well, who cares? When you get the dreaded "Game Over" screen, the tombstone on the screen clearly states "Ace" on it, not to mention that you will often EXAM-ine pictures of our hero with his name written on them, as well as other dead giveaways. And speaking of "dead", to the left you will see a dead body. Ain't this game the bomb? So I'll just give you all the details of the game right now. You have amnesia. Somebody set you up and made it look like you killed that dead person on the desk. You not only have to regain your memory, but clear your name and live happily ever after. The end. Did I mention that this game is set in the 1940s, and that your character is a private investigator, and some other random crap that I may or may not be aware of because I got bored relatively fast? Probably, but only because I have Attention Deficit Disorder. That or I'm lazy.

Is the game fun? The puzzle element is fun the first time around. However, slow controls do hinder the game. Also, once you've beaten the game, you'll be able to beat the game over and over again since the randomness factor is nonexistant. Everything is preset and stuff. Yeah.

Ratings

Graphics: 2.0 / 5.0
Sound: 0.5 / 5.0
Control: 2.5 / 5.0
Fun: 2.0 / 5.0

Graphics: Um... This was originally a Mac or DOS game or something. I believe that the graphics still suck. This hurts the game, as you can't tell the difference between a doorbell and a random shadowy blotch thing.
Sound: Really generic detective music, NES style, and it loops. Oh, and does it ever loop...
Control: Easy but slow. Really slow. Plus the arrow doesn't always point EXACTLY where you want it to.
Fun: Kind of, if you are into that kind of thing.