This game would have been perfect if it wasn't impossible to beat.
There is a status screen that pops up when you hit select. It shows a very small map, your items, how many lives you have, and how much of each of the four potions you have. The map is difficult to use, as it only shows a few rooms at once, and only shows the rooms you have been in. It does however show you which rooms have doors to other rooms, which is very useful. Hitting a will tell you how many rooms you have completed. The potions are just miscellaneous colors, and it doesn't tell you what they do. It's basically trial and error.
The game play is awesome. This game is a puzzle-adventure. Every room that you enter is a puzzle to be solved, and you are on a quest to locate the pieces of the Staff of Demnos. The staff is used to defeat the Evil Morbius, I think. I have once found one of the pieces, and I play this game for four hours or more every time I play, and there is no saving.
As I said, every room is a puzzle, and all of the puzzles are very different. Some rooms have enemies (you can't kill them) that move in a pattern that you have to avoid, and others have the enemies, plus another puzzle on top. In another room you have to figure out how to stack things on top of each other to get to another door.
The graphics are pretty good, as you can tell what everything is. The enemies are generic monsters, balls, and pit-falls; but it is effective non-the-less.
The music is awesome. It is on an infinite loop, but it isn't that short. It is dark, and sets the mood spectacularly. It is very well done for an NES game.
I would definitely recommend this game to everybody. I enjoy it a lot, and I'm sure a lot of others would also.