Let’s Play Rockin’ Kats! 
Rockin’ Kats is what I’d consider a hidden gem among the NES collection, meaning that not many people have heard of it but it’s so damn good. Without feeling like looking it up, I feel like Taito made it and I can’t name a lot of other Taito credits, but this has to be among their best.
Let’s Play Rockin’ Kats:
The “gimmick” of this game was that, similar to Bionic Commando, you had a grappling ability to hook on to and interact with different surfaces, but you could do a lot more with it than you could in BC. It was actually like a toy gun which launched a gloved fist which could grab on to surfaces and spin you all around it before launching yourself in whatever direction you wanted. You could also use it to bounce off of surfaces, so you could safely traverse spiked floors by propelling yourself over it with the hand.
The hand was also your method of offensive, and you could buy augmentations for the hang like turning it into a spiked ball which did double damage. There were also lots of items in the store to buy like rocket shoes for giving you a couple seconds of levitation ability.
I really dug the roarin’ 20’s theme they had going on between a lot of the dialogue and level designs, not to mention the bulldog mob baddies. It was pretty unique all in all when a lot of games were just looking to piggyback on and become carbon copies of popular Nintendo made titles.
Great music, fun innovative game play, a fun and fresh story, this game has everything I looked for in an NES game. If you’ve never played this game, do yourself a favor and pick it up or give a play on an emulator if you get a chance; it’s got the Tony Seal of Approval (even though that’s not a thing).
And lastly a shout out to my ex sort of girlfriend Karen for gifting me this for my birthday years ago. Even at that time my list of wanted NES cartridges was pretty short, but this game was square at the top of it, and she grabbed it for my birthday. Yeah she was pretty cool.