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The entire concept of this hack is so awesome. While the various communities around Mega Man, Mario Bros., Zelda, etc. have made some great hacks over the years, there are over a thousand other games that are ripe for fresh takes and fun new experiences. Layla is an obscure Japanese-only release (that I too only learned of from GCCX); choosing it for such an in-depth and complete hack is really refreshing. It functions not only as a upgrade built off the original, but could be its sequel as well. It irons out all the flaws with the original (one-death to title screen, pointless bonus game, harsh ammo system). It's an ambitious goal and realized well.

We can just begin with the music. As everyone is saying, it is fantastic. A few of these tracks are mixtape worthy. The nods to both the original Layla soundtrack and videogame composers like Tim Follin are excellent.

The movement is true to the original Layla. Iris has an unusual momentum and jumps in the most un-Mario ways you can imagine. But you start to understand it and eventually you can get her where she needs to go. Her fast running speed gives it a kind of Sonic the Hedgehog flavor at times. A big discovery was that you can press down no matter how fast you are going and she instantly stops. This makes some later jumps much easier to execute.

Although the movement and graphics come from Layla, playing through the original again reminded me just how much the Iris Mission fixes. The original Layla limits your ammo harshly, the mazes get very confusing, and the tornado pseudo-time limit of only 30 seconds without advancing is really cruel. After playing the Iris Missions now I see the potential of these kinds of hacks and changes to so many other games.

The platforming and puzzles increase in challenge and introduce new mechanics and gimmicks as the game progresses. What I really liked is that when it was time to introduce something new, the player is given hints from NPCs, background graphics, or game cues at what to do. This lets you explore and feel out the game and discover the answer for yourself. I beat this without even knowing there was a README with hints or watching playthroughs.

For example, you're stuck early until an NPC tells you that you can hold down to jump higher. Later you must run across an open pit with tiny platforms at full speed; background exclamation marks pass by that you eventually figure out are where you need to jump from to clear obstacles far ahead of you, like a rally car. I had to stumble into finding out you could backtrack levels, but getting stuck without grenades so early in the level pushed me to find that out (by exiting the level with the push-all-buttons command). I don't want to spoil the maze level, but seeing the available letters and getting the hints from the NPCs was a very fun discovery to put 2 and 2 together. Earlier in the game I died and came back to life when a powerup bumped into me, so when I found the NPC that hinted at this later I knew exactly what the trick would be. For such a specific trick, the setup is created to make it easy (the powerup sits in a little pit, the harming block is directly under it). It's a very smart little gimmick; one of many this hack has.

My only real gripe about this game comes in the first section of the last level. I wish we, the very small community of hackers and hack-players of old games, could put our foot down about levels where everything is just black and you have to wander around bumping into things until you die over and over. It is simply the most braindead thing you could possibly put in a video game and it appears more often than it should in otherwise quality work.

A previous version of this review was much more harsh about that stupid dark level, but after playing through a few more times I can't leave it like that. This is really one of the finest hacks I've ever played and it's a must download. I do still hate that dark part, but the quality on everything else is absolutely top tier.

First time I played the original game is 20 years ago.

This game was published in the year of Famicom origin, a lot of famous game series starts in 1986, on Famicom/NES, this game comes from a famous novel/TV anime Dirty Pair, maybe. There is only one thing in this game worth to proud: the title screen. Two girls in a narrow horizontal sight, and the title "Layla (Also with Katakana)" in art font. Except this, there is nothing to proud. The whole game is full of obstacles, traps, enemies, and godd*mn tornados (if you stay at the same screen more than 30 sec.)... Anything which can move or cannot move will kill you, and you holding lots of useless weapons. Obviously, this game is unfriendly to everyone who first play it. So I must thank to the author of this hack version one thing, you've greatly refined the mainbody of this game, removed so many irritating set, improved the gaming experiences.

The second thing I have to recommend is the soundtracks. Every stage (even the different scenes) have their original soundtrack, it's cheerful and exciting, though it sounds like the keygen music (now I'm writing review and listening the soundtrack, even it cycling perpetually, it never boring). Hear the soundtrack and play this game, your head and legs will shake on the beats, IT IS NOT JOKING. THE SOUNDTRACK KICK ASS.

Last thing make me amazed is the plot and the stage design. 8 totally new stages, different from the mediocre stages of original game, and also an EXTRA STAGE awaiting for your challenge! There's 9 stages in total, and each stage have different style and different way to pass through, so funny and challenging (classical action, maze, puzzle, even parkouring)! You must pass through it with your intelligent and technics!

But there still a little question: the "crash" in the EXTRA STAGE, seems on purpose to do that, isn't it? I hope author can answer this!

Strongly recommendation! Download and play! NOW! YOU WON'T REGRET FOR THIS!!!

(I've beat this game through, full 9 stages, I registered am account to write a review... Thanks the author again, you refined my childhood!)

Lives up to the author's intent: feels like a more modern experience, with weapons more evenly split up across the various levels. I haven't played a lot of it, but what I have is pretty great and the soundtrack is killer-if this had come out in the 80's with other NES games, it would have had one of the best soundtracks of anything on the system.

I did not play the original Layla.

Arino played it on the Game Center CX TV show and he reportedly* liked it. I cannot find that episode on YouTube, sorry.

I really like the upbeat music that Supper added to the game, it makes it very cheerful. The Iris missions put a big smile on my face. It also made me laugh at the nigh-impossible jumps and unintended collisions. Sometimes I had to attempt a certain jump 10 - 20 times to get past a particular screen. I found it very amusing how the dying player ascends to the ceiling on angel wings, but if they intercept a health item on the way up, they'll come back to life!

Iris, the player character, has a *lot* of inertia, which I never really got used to. Combined with the many difficult jumps Supper put into the levels, many players might quit in frustration. I gave up in Mission 6. (I played in an emulator with save states.)

There are some puzzles also, requiring you to traverse the screen in a certain order, triggering falling blocks or shooting blocks through a gap, stuff like that. Those I liked. A lot of the missions feature warp puzzles, like the last stage in Super Mario Bros. Certain elevators return you to earlier parts of the mission. This really only became an issue for me in Mission 5. "Linear", my foot. I do not like warp puzzles. They are as old as the line "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

You can only scroll from right to left, like the original Super Mario Bros or Contra. You have infinite lives and ammunition, and are sent back to an earlier checkpoint when your life bar is depleted. Only shield is limited and is taken away on death.

The readme comes with tips, it is required reading. Beating the final stage requires intentionally killing yourself and glitching through the ceiling, like a speedrunner. I don't know why Supper did not change the design for that section to not require such a detailed trick. Maybe that was not possible for a hack.

Try this hack! Maybe you are a genius and will speedrun it. Would love to see this one on GDQ one day.

• according to korean basket weaving forum

It's been over a year since I played this one (as well as the original game) and I should have posted this review much earlier.

First of all - hacking a quite obscure game with little to no documentation is quite a feat on its own, especially when vast amount of changes is taken into account. I'd call The Iris Missions a quasi-sequel to the base game.

The original Layla has many shortcomings but once you familiarize yourself with the game it's actually enjoyable. Well, except for the music, which is a far cry from what one can hear in The Iris Missions. It's amazing especially because sound drivers weren't particuralry good in dB-SOFT's games, yet you managed to compose a bunch of catchy tunes. It's not Tim Follin, it's not Naoki Kodaka, but it's definitely one of the best NES/FC vanilla soundtracks (ie. without expansion chips) I've ever heard. In fact, I wouldn't discover either this hack or Layla if I wouldn't come across this sountrack on grad1u52's YouTube channel.

Secondly, numerous anti-frustration features are a big part why this hack is a big deal. Bonus stages were boring and had no purpose, I'm glad these were removed. And who wasn't killed by that tornado on their first playthrough? Respawning at a checkpoint eases things a lot, though in the last mission it shouldn't reset these barriers - deactivating them in the first place is a tough task.

I like the level design for the most part, every one of them has an individual gimmick like letter-coded maze, jumping course or the secret level. My only issue is with the eight mission, where jumping becomes notably tough thanks to ceilings placed just above character's head. It's sometimes a gamble whether you're going to make it or not. Generally I hate when platform games do this kind of thing (hello Turrican).

As good as this hack is, I really miss stocking up on ammo for guns. This mechanic forced players to conserve their ammo rather than going mindlessly guns blazing, which is especially true for the machine gun and energy knives, with the latter being able to pierce through walls, making them too overpowered.

There are a few more things this game could have had added or modified, but considering how much effort was to hack a largely undocumented, little-known game, The Iris Missions is one heck of a modification and every fan of action platformers out there should give it a try.

PS. I've included a little footnote about this hack in a review of Layla at Hardcore Gaming 101, hoping that more people will play it.