The Flintstones (Sega Master System Review)

The Flintstones
Platform: Sega Master System
Released November 1991 (1988 on Home Computers)
Adapted by Paul Marshall
Published by Grandslam Entertainments
Released Only in Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

That green thing above Fred’s head is the paintbrush. I never understood half the jokes in the Flintstones. Logically, the joke that they use living animals to replace electronic appliances makes sense, right? The humor is supposed to be they’re the MODERN stone age family, with all the conveniences a typical nuclear family of the 1960s has even though they don’t have electricity. Instead, animals are their electric can openers, garbage disposals, or laundry machines. In fact, that’s the Flintstones punchline in its entirety. Why a living paint brush though? Why is using an animal more convenient than a stick with hair? Do the Flintstones need the satisfaction of knowing, when they stare at their living room wall, that an animal suffered SO MUCH to make it that color? It’s funny they use an animal that lives under their sink as a garbage disposal, in part because we really used to stick pigs in our outhouses and rain shit down on them. They loved it! They never ate better! But Michelangelo didn’t take one of the piglets and use it to paint the Sistine Chapel! At least when it was still alive. I can’t say with certainty The Last Judgment wasn’t painted with the snout of a dead piglet, but he was definitely not using a living one. It’d squirm too much!

It’s rare that I play a game so bad that I think the developers should be ashamed of themselves, but that’s the Flintstones for the Sega Master System, and presumably the earlier 1988 home computer games that this version copied. An absolutely atrocious, lazy licensed game that has no soul at all. It’s divided into four segments. First, you paint a wall. Do I even need to go on? It’s not even a fun video game type of paint the wall, either. You have to catch the paintbrush, because, well, Flintstones. Then, you have to dip the paintbrush in the paint bucket, which you cannot move. Then, you put some paint on the walls. Then you repeat this step until the wall is done. The challenge is a strict time limit, moving a ladder into the right place, and the fact that Pebbles escapes the crib and draws on the bottom part of the wall, ruining your work. The collision detection makes no sense for where your paint will be, and this is made worse by the fact that your brush runs out of paint really fast. Also, it still consumes paint to do a portion of the wall you’ve already done. It’s awful, but once I figured out that Pebbles being out of the crib too long doesn’t lead to a fail condition, I won pretty quickly. I just painted the top part of the wall and most of the bottom while she sat there doodling. Then I dropped her in the crib, caught the paint brush, and finished the bottom. This was so boring that I’m half surprised level two wasn’t “now watch it dry!”

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The second level is a very quick drive to the bowling alley that lasts under a minute. Over the course of a few screens, you have to hop over rocks. The collision is god awful and the timing is weird, but it’s over with fast. Then, an actual full-sized game of bowling is the third level. It’s one of the worst bowling engines I’ve ever experienced. At the point of impact, the balls and pins are replaced with a BAM graphic. Even when the ball is being delivered right into the pocket, the head pin and other pins COULD be left over. Even with this problem, once you find the sweet spot and the right amount of left hook and power, getting a strike is easy. In my first full game, I had a 230. It should have been a 220, but whoever made this doesn’t understand how bowling works. The 10th frame has a max of three balls. Not complicated, right? Except when I played the tenth frame, I got a strike, a 9, and then got the spare.. and it gave me another ball. Are you kidding me? By the way, the object is to beat Barney’s score, and he’s a terrible bowler. I won 90 to 230. It wasn’t even close, but it might actually be entirely random. While I was learning the mechanics, at one point Barney had a double strike and was neck-and-neck with me. Once I understood what I was doing, I couldn’t miss and Barney couldn’t hit. What a bizarre game.

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After all this, the game suddenly becomes a terrible platformer. Flintstones’ home computer roots show here, as it’s along the same lines of the type of sloppy, unpolished shovelware that my older readers had to slog through to find the rare quality games on their Amigas or Sinclairs. You make your way up a shaft, dodging enemies and compensating for gusts of wind. There’s a helmet that, once you grab it, you don’t even have to bother dodging the nuts and bolts that try to crush you later. Grab Pebbles and bring her back the way you came and.. that’s the whole shameful game. I have played some doozies at Indie Gamer Chick, but Flintstones might be the most cynical. I got the distinct impression this version of the Flintstones was not a game anyone wanted to make. There’s no heart to it. There’s no polish. What little extra effort there is to be like the cartoon is undone by atrocious gameplay. Anything resembling charm is entirely dependent on the connection to the show itself. Like, hey, Fred does his tippy-tingle-toes approach before releasing the ball in bowling. That would be commendable if the game was good, but it ain’t, and so that effort becomes obnoxious instead. The best thing I can say about the Flintstones is it looks the part, but that actually takes on a sinister vibe when the gameplay is as horrendous as it is here. They knew what they needed: the license and the graphics to look enough to get kids to pester their parents to buy it. That’s cruel, isn’t it? The Flintstones is the rare game that’s so bad that it’s borderline evil for it.
Verdict: NO!