The premise is predictable: an evil professor has kidnapped Felix's girlfriend, Kitty, to hold her for ransom in exchange for Felix's magic bag of tricks. Felix must journey through the levels to defeat him and rescue her. No surprises there.
The unique thing about Felix the Cat is the awesome power-ups he is given through the levels. Using his ever-present Bag of Tricks (something like a briefcase), Felix gets to take a ride on and in a variety of vehicles that put contemporary platformers to shame.
NES Mario, for example, has four modes: little, big, fireball, and--as a treat--flying. Our feline hero has over a dozen. On land, for example, Felix can travel by foot, by motor car, or by tank. Underwater, he can swim in his scuba gear, ride a sea turtle, or pilot a submarine. He flies, Marry Poppins style, through the airborne level, before powering up to a pedal-powered hot air balloon, and finally--my personal favorite--a kitty-sized biplane.
And each vehicle has its own weapon, which works differently than the others. The sea turtle produces air bubbles that drift upward; the motor-car shoots a straight ahead in a kind of reverse exauast; the tank has a cannon that fires in an arc. The dolphin shoots fireballs from its mouth. Logical? Nope. Entertaining? You bet.
The fun of Felix the Cat lies in whizzing through the levels with increasingly cooler gear. Enemies are a mild hindrance at best: most of the baddies are one-hit-kill and will leave you alone. Since attacking will deplete your supply of magic, it's smarter to just jump over them. In the same vein, if you live for the boss battles, you'll be slumbering through the repetitive motions of the five-hitpoint renditions of the evil Professor.
Replay, of course, doesn't come into the decision to acquire when the game in question is an 8-bit platformer over 10 years old, but all the same you might want to keep a save-state file of World 8--the UFO level.
