Day 33 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: The Firemen

The Firemen is an action game with a similar gameplay style to Link to the Past. You play as Pete, a fire fighter faced with an immense blaze that has broken out at a high-tech chemical facility. The object of the game is to work your way through the building and extinguish as much of the inferno as you can while rescuing survivors.

The only weapon you have is your fire hose and a limited supply of water grenades however, you also have the help of a young fireman, Danny, who will clear paths for you with his trusty axe and tried to protect you from incoming fire.

The 'enemies' vary from simple flames to huge robots sent haywire by the inferno. The Firemen can be pretty unforgiving in terms of difficulty as many enemies are quite tricky to defeat and you have a limited number of continues. When the game is finished you get graded on your performance, looking how much of the blaze you tackled and the number of people of rescued.

The Firemen is something of a hidden gem on the SNES and it commands high prices, with complete PAL versions costing at least £300, so unless you've got the cash to spare you'll have to look at emulation or perhaps a reproduction cart. It's certainly worthwhile tracking down however, as the Firemen is a challenging, but rewarding, experience and a game that every SNES enthusiast should play.