I just played through Hook this morning. It's not a long playthrough, if you know the game already.
With games like this, I always wonder if it really is a good game or if it's just my nostalgia for it. It's probably been a few years since I've last played through it, and I was trying to think in terms of "if I never played this before" during this playthrough. I have to say, I think this really IS a great game. The only bad thing that I'd have to say about it is that there's no password or save feature. However, it's not a very long game. Other than that one nitpick (which you may not care about) it's a solid SNES platformer.
Graphics: The graphics in the game are fantastic. It's everything I want to see in a 16-bit platformer. Most of the game has very bright and vivid colors. Although there are a few levels such as caves that are darker, but they look great too. A lot of the backgrounds are great to look at, and there's a ton of small details to notice. In fact, I just noticed something new today and I've been playing this game for like 25 years lol. The sprites are all fantastic, and beautifully represent the characters from the movie.
Sound: There's a lot of music ripped straight from the movie score, and it sounds fantastic on the SNES. There's also quite a few original tunes in this game, and they're actually really well composed. You will find them stuck in your head after you shut the game off. The sound effects are nothing amazing, but that's not to say they're bad.
Control: Compared to a Mario or Sonic game, Peter moves a bit slow. You can run, but there's a certain momentum to build up to a run. You don't end up running a lot, mostly just to make a longer jump. The slower walk speed might seem jarring at first if you're use to Mario and Sonic, but you'll get use to it soon enough. And once you do, you'll realize that the control is spot on. Jumps and landings aren't at all frustrating. We've all played bad platformers that control like shit, but this isn't one of them. It's different than you typical hop and bop, but it controls great.
The game follows the movie pretty well. Of course, there's extra areas in the game that are not present in the movie. But hey, you know they have to do that. There's cut-scenes now and then. Such as in the beginning of the game, and in between a few levels. They follow the story of the movie perfectly, however condensed for a video game.
After the first level, you acquire that gold sword from Rufio, just like in the movie. It has a kind of unique gameplay gimmick. The gold sword has a longer reach and shoots a projectile (think Zelda). But you loose it after taking 1 hit, which can be frustrating. When you loose the gold sword, you revert back to your standard short sword which has a slightly shorter reach and does not shoot a projectile. If you loose your gold sword, you can find it hidden in a few levels. I never end up having it for very long before taking a hit LOL.
I would call this a hidden in plain site gem. It's not exactly hidden, but I feel like a lot of people have passed over this game because they assume it's bad. There was a game titled Hook on the NES and Gameboy, both of which were pretty bad. And with the general assumption that "movie games suck," why would you think this one would be any better? A lot of movie games ended up being pretty lame, but there's a few example of ones that really shine. And this is one of them.
Speaking of Hook for other consoles... This version of Hook received ports to the Genesis and Sega CD. The Genesis version took a hit in the graphics and sound department, just like most games that were made for the SNES than ported to the Genesis. The SNES version has really nice bright and vivid colors, but the Genesis version looks really bland by comparison. And the music sounds flat compared to the SNES. The Genesis version sounds really like typical boops and beeps from a sound chip compared to the sampled SNES tunes. The Sega CD version is typical, they took a Genesis game and added some CD type stuff to it. It received voice overs for the cut scneses and some FMV straight from the movie. This sounds awesome on paper, but in execution it's pretty lame. The voice overs are HORRIBLE, and the cutscenes are only a few seconds long and look like garbage. Otherwise, it's the same game. If you didn't own a SNES, I would still say it's a fun game on the Genesis. Despite the graphics and sound not being as nice, it still plays just as well.
This game has remained cheap for years, but it seems like it's finally going up in price. But all retro games have been, so I'm not surprised. Still, it's relatively cheap compared to other SNES games. And for the price, I still think it's worth adding to your collection. Or if you're an emulator or flash cart kind of guy, don't think twice and give this game a try!