Thanks you very much, glad you had fun :D
Having an actual timer or any sort of scripted death during the escape actually caused a lot of issues when testing, so we figured we'd drop it and let the player assume they need to be as quick as possible. Most players don't even notice :D
The NES trilogy are among our favorite games as well, so we're glad people think we did them justice. I hope to see more and more devs tackle this sub genre, for sure