Plot
If you haven't seen the movie, willing or not, that is truly an achievement. It seems as if one would have to deliberately try with all his might to never view this movie, and in case you haven't, then no, this game is not based on the Television series starring Linda Hamilton. Instead it's a whimsical tale of love lost and found.

A long time ago an old woman was caught in the rain and wished to take shelter in a handsome (as if there were any other kind) prince's castle, but he turned her away because she was ugly. Then the old lady turned into a beautiful fairy (?) and declared that she had only been testing his morality and saw that he was a cruel and heartless man.

So she turned him into an ugly beast and gave him an enchanted rose. If he could not find the "true meaning of love" before all the petals on the rose fell off, than he would die. A few years later a poor man stumbled into the prince's castle after making a wrong turn. The beast imprisoned him and his daughter, Belle, came looking for him shortly after.

She offered herself in her father's place and the prince accepted. Can Belle show the prince/beast the true meaning of love? How can anyone make a game out of a movie where the beast only fights twice in the entire movie?

I don't know the answers*, but I can tell you this: I feel 100% less-masculine after writing this plot summary.

* This is a boldfaced lie. It's also in bold. Get it? Ha ha ha ha ha.

Sound
Disney is famous for having "hip" and "great" musical numbers that often times win them academy awards, but for some reason I guess recreating academy award winning symphonic arrangements with Phil Collins is kinda hard with an 8-bit sound chip.

This game came out at the end of the NES' life when game developers were trying as hard as they could to make some of the most detailed games you could out of 8-bits to try and convince people step away from their SNESes for a while and go back to play an 8-bit game, but it ends up a mess.

The sound used so many different effects to try to give it ambiance and depth, but it just ends up sounding like a mish-mosh of bleeps and boops. It's obvious Hudson Soft isn't the greatest at NES sound, and if Capcom had chosen to make this Disney game, I'm sure the sound would have been substantially better.

As for now, I guess it gets the job done, but it's not worth writing home about.

Graphics
As I mentioned before, this title came out at the end of the NES' life while developers were still trying in vain to squeeze something new out of the NES. The developers tried to give everything in the house lots of detail by using tons of shades and hues, and in the end it ends up a blurry mess.

The beast's face is barely distinguishable and the supporting cast are very hard to identify. I can't tell if I'm fighting a flying knight helmet or a giant flying rock. Don't try to use the movie as reference as to what you're fighting either.

I don't recall seeing the beast fight flying gargoyles and oversized mexican sewer rats in the movie. It appears as if Hudson just decided to throw in enemies from its other games to hamper the Beast's progress.

Control
The controls are relatively simple: A to jump, B to attack, press up near walls to climb. However, they are not responsive. Beast has to do a very low crouch before he can jump, making for a costly two second delay from the time you push A to the time he actually jumps.

The same hold true for his claw swipe. It feels like Beast is on some type of depressant and just doesn't feel like moving fast enough to swat the sewer rats today.

It may not seem like a big deal at the beginning, but when you've got lots of flying gargoyles swooping down at you, it would really help if you could act towards destroying them IMMEDIATELY instead of waiting for the Beast to care destroying them. Also, there's no distinguishing from what walls you can and cannot climb on.

Gameplay
The gameplay in Beauty & The Beast consists of you, as the Beast, running through the castle from door to door. At the bottom of the screen is the magical rose. It serves as your timer. As you go through the level, the petals on the rose gradually begin to fall off. When all the petals fall off, you die.

I would have no problem with a timer except this one is entirely too fast. The petals fall off so fast that you don't have a chance to explore. Make a few wrong turns in the level and you're as good as dead. Not that you're not as good as dead anyways.

As mentioned before, Beast doesn't like to punch fast. You WILL get overwhelmed with the crappy flying enemies in this game and destroyed in a matter of minutes. Also, it appears as if Beast hasn't been keeping his mansion in tip top condition and many of the floors have broken.

It seems as if his entire mansion consists of hallways and STAIRS. Imagine the fun you'll have walking up dozens of flights of stairs jumping over falling statues.

After going through many levels of this nonsense you get to fight Gaston in a grueling battle to the death or something. It's more fun reading Nintendo Power's spread on this thing than actually playing it. Too bad NP wasted valuable space on it when it wasn't even released in the USA. Poor NP.

Challenge
This is one of the most challenging games you'll ever play but for all the wrong reasons. The controls truly are the worst factor of this game and make playing through it a hard ordeal. The game gives you plenty of hit points but they'll all be wasted by the cheap enemies that can move at the speed of light.

This game has the level structure of an Atari 2600 game and half the time you'll find yourself stuck in the horrible mazes this game conjures up, praying for the petals on the rose to go on and fall off to end the torture. It's hard to WANT to learn the true meaning of love when the ordeals you must go through to learn it are like hell.

This game was given the full treatment by NP and then no-showed in the USA, and for that we should be thankful. This game, as well as The Jungle Book, just go to show that the only one that ever could do Disney right on the NES was Capcom.

Some Disney creations translate well into games like Aladdin and Chip & Dale, but the ones that involve a jaded beast learning the true power of love from a quiet bookworm girl, those are better left to the big screen.