Flink is an apprentice wizard who is entrusted with saving Imagica Island after the evil wizard Wicked Wainwright has sealed the 4 rulers of the island in crystal. Wainwright’s volcano lair then belches a huge, black cloud over the island bringing misery to all the island’s dweller. Yay.

Anyway, the first thing that strikes you about Flink is the sheer detail in the graphics department. Flink is a wonder to look at with some beautifully animated sprites and incredibly well-drawn backgrounds. The entire game is a joy to plod through and the graphics are wonderfully complimented by some superb level design. Enough can’t be said about Flink’s aesthetics.

Gameplay is standard platform affair with Flink running around, jumping over pitfalls and defeating enemies with his own weight. The big gameplay gimmick comes in the form of Flink’s wizardry. Either by finding treasure chests or destroying enemies by jumping on them or picking up an item to through at them, will cause an item to fall to the ground for the taking. Obtaining scrolls will give Flink the details for creating spells from said items in his cauldron. Spells can be used for all manner of actions from offensive to defensive. However, the big flaw with this is that putting items into Flink’s cauldron in the wrong order will cause a backfire and all the items used will be wasted. This gets incredibly frustrating when spells contain rare items which forces you to replay levels unnecessarily.

This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Flink wasn’t this massive. The scale of the game is epic and completing it in one sitting is going to take some serious dedication. Thankfully, there’s some amazing stages to discover all backed with one of the best soundtracks to grace the Mega CD. Flink’s soundtrack is a whimsical, poppy and quite folksy sounding collection of tunes. Some tunes grate a little as they are used a lot more frequently than others but otherwise we can’t complain about Flink’s eclectic mix of songs.

Sound is not so memorable with most effects being dull and almost inaudible. There are no voice-quips. However, in most games this would be a negative thing but with Flink it adds to its’ charm. With the music more prevalent, it emphasises the stunning visuals and gives Flink an interactive cartoon vibe. Not many game’s can boast something like this without containing a vast amount of pointless cut-scenes that don’t further what little story the game has. Flink is truly a unique experience.

Our major gripe with Flink is the character’s movement. Flink is slow. Damn slow. At top speed he’s still pretty slow. This isn’t a massive hindrance but because of the game’s scale, scouring it to the end is certainly made considerably longer.

To the important question; is Flink worth a purchase? Yes. I can’t stress this enough. If you’re a Mega CD owner, your collection is screaming at you to own this masterpiece of platforming. Just be prepared for a long haul.