Athena on the NES is a mess of a game. To give it a little praise, it’s at least a fateful port of its Arcade version. The graphics are colorfully bright, and the weapons and armor upgrade mechanic is fun. That’s about it. The endless and unfair respawning of enemies, their spamming of projectiles, the awful ear piercing music, the stiff movements and jumping, and no stage checkpoints, it all just makes this a terrible experience. This is one of SNK's very early releases, and it shows their inexperience in platformers.
Athena is not recommended by me. I don’t mind difficult games, but this is just too broken and unfair to enjoy. It’s a shame, cause this has so much potential. Athena could have been up there with the likes of Mai Shiranui, but is instead relegated to a cameo fighter in the King of Fighters series.