Genre: Children – Educational

Publisher: Gametek

Total time played: 20 Minutes

Short review: 

Interesting links related to Fisher Price: Firehouse Rescue

• Speedrun (12min 48secs)

Finally!! 

There are 3 Fisher Price games on the NES, two of which (I Can Remember and Perfect Fit) I have owned for years and see almost every time I go into retro game stores. The third is Firehouse Rescue which I have seen only once in a store and the label was all torn so I didn’t buy it. I recently decided to just buy it on eBay. So, after 20 years of collecting I finally was able to play this crappy Fisher Price game.

How to Play

You know when you were a kid and would go to dinner at a restaurant and the kids menu had a maze you would try to get through with a crayon? Well, that is exactly what Firehouse Rescue is like, except you use a controller to direct a firetruck through the maze. Once you get to the house that is “on fire” you enter it and move your firetruck ladder under the window with the person needing help and press A. The person will come down the ladder to safety.

Here we go!

The city planner really needs to work on his road design.

I’ll save you, even though the house is definitely not on fire.

Difficulty

There are 4 levels of play labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Each level consists of 4 rescues. There are only slight differences in the 4 levels

1. single screen, no time limit
2. scrolling screen, no time limit
3. scrolling screen, 50 second time limit
4. scrolling screen, 50 second time limit, must find key hidden in maze before going to the house.

I ran through the game pretty quickly only having to redo 2 of the mazes.

Sound

I usually don’t have a sound category in my reviews but the sound was very special in this game. The intro plays some very familiar circus music. The game itself features no music. All you hear are a few beeps and boops and the surprisingly realistic (for NES) rumble of the firetruck.

Final Thoughts

For a small child this game could be fun for 10 minutes. For a 35 year old man it is passable and there are no glaring glitches or bad programming but there is never any reason to play it again.

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