[Review] Ardy Lightfoot (SNES) – Warm, Fuzzy, Familiar

Last month, I was encouraged by some of my readers to play some SNES games. I went in without any expectations, scrolling through the list of games on the Wii emulator, and came upon an interesting name to a game: Ardy Lightfoot.

Ardy is some type of fox (I think?)…well, he has a bushy tail and ears like a fox…Let’s say he’s a fox. He has a trusty side-kick; a blue penguin named Pec. The story goes that a very important rainbow shattered into seven pieces, and Ardy Lightfoot needs to locate all of them. If he collects them all he is granted a wish. Ardy’s arch nemesis, Visconti, already has one rainbow piece and is looking for more, so Ardy has to act fast.

Ardy Lightfoot is the ubiquitous SNES platformer game, if ever there was one. The mechanics to Ardy Lightfoot are very much like a Mario game, especially some scenes where Ardy travels down a mine shaft and pushes stones out of the way. He can also throw his sidekick at people or at objects to eat them or remove them, like Yoshi can do for Mario. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to Mario – the backdrop, how the characters move, how Ardy jumps on his tail to reach higher ground – is very much what Mario does in his games. Even boss fights where you attack by jumping on the opponent’s head to weaken them is like Mario.

Overall, I enjoyed Ardy Lightfoot’s familiarity and easy controls. Playing this game feels like stepping into a warm relaxing bath that is fast-paced, action-packed, and fun! Not unique, not different: just familiar.

Calgon, take me away…!

Ardy Lightfoot (SNES)
Developer: ASCII / Titus
Released: 1994