The Jetsons: Robot Panic (Game Boy Review)

The Jetsons: Robot Panic
Platform: Game Boy
Released October, 1992
Designed by Isao Matono
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

HEY.. this ain’t too bad at all!

The first big surprise of my Hanna-Barbera marathon is that the Jetsons on the Game Boy is a very good game. Not quite great, but for the hour it lasts, likely less, it’s a pretty decent platforming romp that incorporates the entire Jetsons family. Except Astro, which is baffling. They couldn’t come up with one more level for the dog? He’s such a good boy, too! The rest of the family are all given one level to shine, along with their own unique superpower, except George Jetson, who gets all three. Before you play as him, you can take the Elroy, Judy, and Jane levels in any order. All four Jetsons can pick-up and throw crates, and although it’s not as satisfying as Rescue Rangers, enemy placement and especially puzzle design is based around the crates, making it work. They did a pretty good job in overall level design. Elroy’s the only one who has a projectile. He can throw a ball that takes out enemies, with my only real complaint being that it doesn’t have satisfactory OOMPH. Also, his stage is mostly auto-scrolling, pausing only when you enter rooms that contain health refills or heart containers. I’m not the biggest fan of auto-scrolling, and while it’s never bad by any means, Elroy’s stage is the most basic and uninspired in the game. Thankfully it seemed like it’s the shortest of the game’s five stages

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Then the Judy and Jane stages happen, and Robot Panic makes the leap into the upper-tier of licensed Game Boy games. Literally! Judy’s special power is anti-gravity boots. Not only do the boots allow her to walk on the many spikes in her level without taking damage, but in many areas you can walk across the ceiling. There’s even puzzles that involve picking up boxes so that when you reverse the gravity in the room, you have enough clearance to get to the door. Jane, meanwhile, gets a jetpack. Both Jane and Judy’s powers have limited fuel, which becomes problematic, especially when their powers transfer to George for the final two levels. The turd in Jetson’s galactic punch bowl is that you have to pause the game and manually select the powers, watch the character blink a few times, then unpause and continue. Since Judy and Jane’s powers use fuel that relatively slowly refills, you don’t want to leave their powers on (especially Jane’s jetpack). It’s frustrating because the Game Boy has a select button that goes completely unused, when it would have been much more efficient to act as a real-time item select. It doesn’t ruin the Jetsons but it does slow the tempo down.

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If not for that one mistake, I dare say Jetsons would be in the pantheon of OG Game Boy platformers. Solid, responsive play control, surprisingly decent graphics, and level design that fully embraces the superpowers with lots of clever layouts lifts Robot Panic into the discussion for best licensed black & white Game Boy release. It goes without saying I had low expectations for this one. Boy, was I wrong. Even the short length doesn’t bug me. I don’t really want to be stuck with any Game Boy action game that long. Give me forty minutes and four out of five really good stages over twenty stages that wear out their welcome any day. Jetsons maintains consistently entertaining level design from the start of Judy’s stage and never lets up. It even features an alright (if unspectacular) boss fight that was well done enough that I regret they didn’t roll the dice on putting bosses for the other characters. How come nobody talks about this one? The Jetsons is one of the most underrated releases on the Game Boy and might be the best thing to ever come out of the entire franchise!
Verdict: YES!