Adventures of Lolo

1989 · Puzzle · NES

About Adventures of Lolo

Adventures of Lolo (1989) is HAL Laboratory's NES block-pushing puzzle game, 50 rooms of hearts, eggs and monsters drawn from the Japanese Eggerland series and the first of them released in North America.

Adventures of Lolo in Depth

Lolo, a round creature, sets out to rescue Princess Lala from King Egger, whose castle has 50 rooms across ten floors of five. In each room Lolo must collect every heart to open a treasure chest, and the gem inside unlocks the exit and makes all the enemies vanish. Some hearts grant items that help trap or defeat the creatures roaming the maze, such as Skull, Medusa and Rocky, each with its own movement and attack pattern.

Lolo can walk, push certain blocks and fire a limited number of shots. A shot enemy is briefly sealed in an egg, which can be pushed elsewhere, used as a bridge across water, or shot again to remove it for a while. On certain screens Lolo gains powers such as smashing rocks or building a bridge, and some enemies are immune to his shots. Being shot or touched by certain enemies costs a life, while others only block his path by standing still or freezing when touched. A room can be restarted at any time at the cost of a life.

Making Adventures of Lolo

HAL Laboratory developed and published Adventures of Lolo for the NES in North America in April 1989, compiling puzzles from Eggerland: Meikyū no Fukkatsu and Eggerland: Sōzō he no Tabidachi. It found a cult following: Game, Set, Watch's Todd Ciolek called it the "leader of the [block-shoving] movement", the Chicago Tribune called it "a challenge of logic, not brute force", and IGN later named it one of Satoru Iwata's successes, "all about fun, appeal and simplicity". Some critics found its looping music grating and its graphics simple. Sequels followed on the Famicom and NES, including the American Adventures of Lolo 2 and 3, and a separate Game Boy Adventures of Lolo appeared in 1994. The original was re-released on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console and on Nintendo Switch Online.

Adventures of Lolo Trivia

It is the fifth Eggerland game but the first released in North America, assembled from puzzles in two Japanese Eggerland titles.
A Nintendo representative said Nintendo was "trying to stretch the kids' imaginations" with it.
Its success surprised HAL Laboratory.
Lolo and Lala later turned up as Lololo and Lalala in Kirby's Dream Land and other Kirby games.
The developers of Professor Fizzwizzle and LIT both named it as an inspiration.