I haven’t played the NES Flintstones games, but this one seems more about referencing bootlegs in general, so I doubt I’m missing much on that front.

Platformer, no controller support. Left/right move, up grabs certain objects like vines, etc., Z jumps, X attacks, up+attack uses your sub-weapon, and Shift swaps between your two sub-weapons. Controls are fine; there are only minor issues that don’t affect gameplay too much, such as movement having a bit of momentum and attacking having a split-second delay.

First, I should point out that the game doesn’t work properly on high-refresh-rate monitors. It starts off seemingly fine, but you’ll notice enemy projectiles and moving platforms are too quick for you to beat the first level (and the game only saves between levels).

Oh, and the game has a lives system for some reason. You can change it to infinite lives in the options, but it doesn’t save your options settings, so you have to go back and change it each time you close/reopen the game.

Get past all that, though, and the level design is pretty good. It’s a good balance of challenging without going beyond the limitations of the controls. Yup, it’s actually designed around your short-range attack preventing movement for a moment! The only issues I really had were 1) the train (5th EDIT: miscounted, it’s the 6th) level’s gaps in the ceiling (where rocks fall) is small and easily overlooked, and the white bar you can grab on with the up key doesn’t really look like something you can grab; and 2) one chasing-spikes segment in the 7th level starts as a horizontal segment, but the gap in the wall doesn’t lead to the next area so you realize you have to keep going up. Plus, there’s also a lot of up-and-back-down segments that make the timing a lot tighter than it seems at first (especially since there are flashes that cause the spikes chasing you to jump ahead quite a bit).

Although the levels are mostly good, the third level decided to have visual interference, like a blackout segment and an upside-down segment, which is more annoying than challenging.

Bosses are a mixed bag, though. Your attack range is short enough that you have to be quite close to deal damage (unless you have sub-weapon energy, which there is admittedly a lot of), and although your attack animation isn’t that long, you still can’t move during it. Despite this, many boss patterns have abrupt movement changes that–due to the aforementioned control quirks–you can only really avoid if you know they’re coming (and even then, it can still be a toss-up for a few of them). The worst example is the semi-final boss: one of its moves just pushes you back against the wall, but this doesn’t sync up with its other attacks (which are chosen in a random order), so it’s common to find yourself trapped helpless against the wall while a laser falls on you, dealing unavoidable damage. Closest I got to avoiding it is figuring out that your attack’s horizontal-movement-prevention will also work against the wind, but this still isn’t a sure-fire way to avoid getting hit since attacks can happen at almost any point. Definitely don’t turn on one-hit KOs; you’ll need that health bar.

I should also note that a couple bosses/minibosses will seem unavoidable until you realize they break tradition with the rest by having no contact damage (at least for part of their sprite)! Since the sprites are ripped directly from other sources, the game has to rely on presentation alone to convey this, which sometimes works but not always.

Overall, despite the flaws, this game is pretty good, especially for a free game. I recommend it. You can download it here: https://gamejolt.com/games/grand-dad/162835