Nimmos Pond for the Hopeless

You, like many other avatar collectors, are ecstatic about the prospect of getting the Nimmos Pond avatar, right? Of course you are! Now, if you are anything like me (i.e. horrible at games), your high score before the avatar came out was probably under 500 points. How does TNT ever expect us to get the avatar when we can barely play?! Well, I want you to know it is NOT hopeless. I got the avatar... like five minutes ago. If I can do it, you can do it! I'm probably never going to get a trophy in this game, so why should you listen to my advice? Simple. I am like you and will give you the perfect set of advice to get the avatar, which is probably the only reason you want to play this game.

First things first, what IS Nimmos Pond? Well, you control a cute little Nimmo who just wants to be on his own lily pad in his own pond. All these other huge lily pads are in his way, and it's making him quite bothered. So, you have to shoot the other lily pads until they disappear, collect power-ups, and not get hit! If you get hit, you lose health and eventually die. :'(

So what are these power-ups and what do they do? I'll explain what each does, but you really only need to know three of them, and you'll learn them quickly because they are pretty much amazing. Oh, press V for the Nimmo to stick out his tongue and get the power up as it goes by you.

Health- This one looks like a red cross; go figure, huh? But this gives you more health= IMPORTANT!!

Paddle Power- This one looks like a little yellow capsule with green stuff inside of it, and it's kinda spazzing out. Not too important for our purposes.

Bomb- More on bombs later, but this power up looks like... a bomb? Yep. Very, super dooper important, but we will talk about it later.

Rapid-fire- The green star-shaped power up. Gives you faster firing; sounds nice, but we will not be using it.

Multi-fire- The yellow star-shaped power up; shoots three pellets instead of one. Very, very, very important to have. Makes your life WAYYYY easier.

Super bullets- Looks like a little brown circle; do not get it. End of story. I hate this thing quite a bit. :P

Reset- The reset speed looks like a little blue bar... it would be useful if you were moving, but we will not be moving, so this is therefore not needed.

Okay, so you notice we focus on three power ups: health, multi shots, and bombs. Let's discuss these.

Health is obviously important. You run out of it and you die, end of game, no avatar for you, sad day. You keep it up and beat the avatar score, and BAM! New avatar! So it's imperative that you constantly keep a check on your health, do not let lily pads run into you, and make sure you grab this power up when you needed and when you can.

Multi-fire is a very, very, very beautiful thing. When you first start playing, you will notice right away that some lily pads are very hard to shoot and you can't get your Nimmo at the right angle to shoot the lily pad efficiently. Well, imagine having a spray of bullets instead of just one; it makes the game much better and enjoyable. You can also upgrade, meaning the space between each of the three bullets will get larger with each upgrade. To upgrade, all you need to do is get another yellow star power up. In the leftish top of the screen, you will see your yellow star power up along with a number for each upgrade. I prefer 3-5 because after that the shots get too spaced out for my liking, but mess around with it and see what you like!

Bombs... oh, bombs. :) After the first few levels, some of the bigger lily pads start to move faster, and sometimes you do not have enough time to shoot them. So press the B button and a bomb will explode, thus protecting you from this insanely fast-moving lily pad. You get three bombs at the beginning, so do not get bomb-happy right away. :P The bombs you have are pictured on the bottom of the screen, right above the Nimmo's head down there. You can only hold three at a time, remember. So do not grab a bomb power up when you have three in inventory already; that would be a waste.

So now I am going to explain how you get the avatar score. You are only going to rotate your Nimmo, NEVER move him forward or anything. Once you start moving him, he will always move. Once you start moving, it is nearly impossible to not hit other lily pads. So the obvious solution is to not move, only rotate.

Now if you are like me, and you probably are, you are like, “What?! The lily pads are just going to hit me! How do I just not move at all?!” Well, yeah. xD You have to shoot the lily pads before they get to you. That really is all that's to it, honestly.

Of course, though, I have some more tips to help you out. First, power ups do not disappear. They will stay on the screen until you use them. So that means you will have lots floating around after you have about 1,000 points. That also means you do not need to grab them right away. If you get rid of all the lily pads except for a few towards the end, you can focus on getting the power ups then. Now, you aren't moving; the power ups must come to you! Patience is key here, grasshopper.

Also, be careful when two power ups float by at the same time. It might be wise to just wait for the needed one to drift by again in a few seconds. You do not want to lose your multi-shot, upgraded power up for some bad one that makes the game near impossible, right? I did it the first two times I ever hit 3,500 points. I was low on health the first time, and the second time I was waiting for a bomb. Both times I grabbed the brown power up, and it was dreadful.

This is also brings me to another fact about power ups: sometimes they switch on you. Most of them stay the same... so a health will always be a health power up for the most part. However, some alternate and which power up you get depends when you get it. So if you see one you need and then you don't, don't panic. Remember, patience is key. :)

As with all games, you will need to practice a bit to get the hang of this, but it is not as difficult as it seems, really. Practice, practice, practice, and feel free to neomail me for moral support and other help if needed :)

One final note: Lots of people have been complaining about this avatar. It's mostly been “Why Nimmos Pond?” Well, why not? It is one of the older games on here, very underplayed, and very under appreciated. It actually is pretty fun, and I'm glad they released this over one of the more popular games that everyone can score well in. However, if TNT does take requests, I think Magma Blaster or Chemistry for Beginners should be next, thanks!!! :D