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Sibling rivalry is at the core piece of this story of Inq and Suq vs Nightmare. They are twin demons with an appetite for dreams, and a desire to smite nightmares. The game requires you to take control of Inq and compete with your sister, Suq, to determine who is the greatest demon of the night.

The game presents itself as a standard, side scrolling shooter with both characters present on the screen. The player takes control of Inq and attempts to collect the bubbles that float up from the houses. These represent the dreams of the people who live within them. Suq will also be trying to capture the dreams from under your nose, and she doesn't mind using a few dirty tricks to beat you to the punch.

Suq will attempt to bump you if you get too close or shoot you if you get in front of her. She makes an effort to catch the floating dreams and will knock you out of the way to do so. Thankfully you can get the edge on her by shoving her aside or shooting her. For the record, knocking her into oncoming enemies is immensely satisfying.

Yes, naturally the game has enemies coming at you as you fly through the sky. Exploding balloons, bats and more litter the sky as you attempt to collect the floating dream bubbles. Warp gates, which increase your speed, also float by towards the top of the screen. This creates a problem, as you want to stay near the bottom of the screen to collect the dreams but you also want to get ahead to catch up with the nightmare bosses.

The nightmare bosses take on the form of a Jack O Lantern, a witch, a headless night called Dullahan, Dracula, the Grim Reaper, a dragon, and the dark lord himself, Satan. When they appear you need to maintain your speed, as they can escape our demon duo. The bosses present a new challenge, as you not only have to keep collecting dreams before Suq, you also have to hit the nightmare more times than she does. If you are successful then you move on to the next stage.

The game comes with a PDF manual, though I found it lacking. There is no explanation of what happens when you collect the dreams and the consequences of contact with an enemy, or enemy projectile. From what I can ascertain, dreams captured by Inq and Suq are recorded on 2 bars in the top right corner. Contact with an enemy seems to make the bars decrease, so from that one can assume that you lose a collected dream each time you are hit.

MSX 1 games can be simplistic affairs, and the palette offered by the system is limited. With that in mind, the developer of this game has put in a huge effort to make the game appear as colourful as possible. Inq and Suq are coloured in blue and pink respectively, and they look rather playful. This is offset by the black background and creepy looking nightmares, which give the player a haunting feeling of flying through the dark night sky. The standard jerky vertical scrolling that is a known standard for MSX games has been carefully hidden by the smooth character sprites. You notice it if you look for it, but you should probably be enjoying the game instead of looking for any faults. The controls feel accurate and, while there is no force feedback with MSX controllers, knocking Suq feels rather satisfying. Pressing either button on the controller will shoot at the enemy, though holding the button down will cause Inq to hold up a shield in front of him until the button is let go. Suq shooting at you while your shield is up will cause Inq to absorb and scatter the shot in front of him, causing huge damage to oncoming enemies. The only frustrating aspect of the control scheme is that shooting causes Inq to be pushed back slightly.

The story of the game is original and beautifully depicted with its graphics and sprites. Your characters and enemies may look rather simplistic yet they personify MSX coolness. The music fits the night time theme of the game, and it's a great achievement for a 16kb MSX game. Sound effects are standard, with the shots sounding like 8-bit magic effects you might have heard in plenty of other games. The important thing is that they don't take over from the background music, allowing you to enjoy it more while you played and added more fun to the standard shoot 'em up experience.

I thought the manual could have been improved upon... there were some areas I wasn't sure what was actually going on! I would also have liked to have seen a two player mode, I felt the game is basically screaming for it to be included, but at just 16kb you can understand why it isn't there!

Overall Inq And Suq Vs. Nightmare is a fun little shoot em up with a difference. Even though I am not really a fan of the genre, I found the competitiveness between the siblings to be an enjoyable, fun and a unique gaming experience, in that it offers a multiplayer gaming experience without the need of another person in the room. It's an entertaining little shoot 'em up that is presented in a bright, colourful way, even though the name and darkness of the night setting suggests otherwise. The scrolling flaws of the MSX hardware are so carefully tucked away that you barely even notice them.