Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse (Super NES and Sega CD Review)

Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega CD
Released October 26, 1994
Developed by Traveller’s Tales
Published by Sony Imagesoft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Mickey Mania released a month before Donkey Kong Country, but it’s cut from the same cloth. Donkey Kong Country was promising next generation rendered graphics on a 16-bit platform. Mickey Mania’s promise is a game where, for the first time, you’re playing an actual cartoon. Just pretend Rabbit Rampage didn’t happen (and that game isn’t very good anyway). This isn’t Dragon’s Lair where you’re doing button prompts. Oh no. You’re inside worlds that closely match the art style of six famous Mickey shorts: Steamboat Willie, The Mad Doctor, Moose Hunters, Lonesome Ghosts, Mickey and the Beanstalk, and The Prince and the Pauper. Some do a better job than others, but as far as matching the sprites go, yea, these look the part. Okay, so the Mad Doctor cartoon is black & white and the level in the game isn’t, but that’s no big deal. Do you know what’s REALLY remarkable? The Sega CD version isn’t a major graphical downgrade from the SNES version. David Jaffe confirmed the Genesis build was the “core” version that the SNES port was then built off of, so that makes some sense. Regardless, Mickey Mania is a seriously gorgeous game.

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The problem with Mickey Mania is the action has very little to do with the cartoons themselves. You fight enemies either by hopping on their heads or, more commonly, by throwing shiny gold rocks at them. Actual gags based around the cartoons are limited to the enemy sprites, but not necessarily their behavior. Some are closer to the source material than others. The skeletons (including the skeleton spiders), falling knives, and bats are all from the Mad Doctor short. But a lot of gags that would have lent themselves perfectly to video games are also missing, like a part where Mickey crawls through a tunnel with falling bricks that feels like it perfectly predicts the type of set piece you would expect in a video game nearly five decades before they were around.

I actually found myself giggling out how video game-like Mad Doctor is. It was made in 1933, mind you. Look at that! How did they miss putting that in the game? If that ain’t a perfect Mode 7 set piece, what is?

The game couldn’t do anything that complex. The most complicated it gets is, at the end of the second level, you have to create a bomb by pushing a beaker across a table and mixing three different chemicals, then place them over a Bunsen burner. Or maybe later on you have to push a flower pot under a water drip. That’s it. That’s as “interactive” as it gets, and stuff like that is extremely rare in Mickey Mania anyway. Everything impressive about the game is limited to the presentation. Strip that away and this would be a fairly simple platformer by this era’s standards. There’s no complex movement. There’s no double jumping or wall jumping. It’s just jump, push, and throw as you make your way from point A to point B. Hell, there’s rarely even pomp and circumstance when you meet your goals. Some of the cooler stages just sort of stop.

Lonesome Ghosts’ gag with the stairs actually isn’t even a gag from that cartoon, though I could have sworn it was.

For example, the level based on Lonesome Ghosts has no climatic moment. In the cartoon, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey get covered in molasses and flour. When the ghosts go to torment them more, they get scared away by three stars of the short looking like ghosts. That’s the whole punchline for the episode. That’s not even hinted upon in the game. An even bigger offender is Mickey and the Beanstalk doesn’t have the giant at all, unless you’re playing the EU exclusive PlayStation build. For everyone else, he’s not even hinted at besides hopping around its buffet table, and his iconic “fe fi fo fum” line isn’t represented at all in the game. These things aren’t even in cutscenes. There really are no cutscenes. What’s the point of doing these cartoons if you leave out over half the gags and all the punchlines? The charm of “playing the cartoons” is lost when the levels don’t have the structure of the cartoons or specially the payoff to all the whimsical characters and settings they’re trying to invoke.

They didn’t even get a cutscene showing this. Hell, static screens would have been better than nothing. One of the biggest things that hurts Mickey Mania is a complete lack of pizazz.

Mickey Mania is actually a victim of the time period. The concept was great. The developers all had a proven pedigree. The heart was there. The technology simply wasn’t ready yet. This was a 2000s concept produced in the 90s. In another decade, they could have done a cel-shaded platformer with cutting edge animation that could directly mimic scenes from the shorts. In 1994, all you could do was give a generic platformer a series of facades that resemble those beloved Mickey Mouse cartoons. Now, having said that, the game is actually okay and holds up relatively well, but this is where I have to split the review apart. But, before I do, I want to say that I wouldn’t want a re-release of Mickey Mania, nor would I want a remaster that just beefs up the graphics. I’d prefer a remake that, at times, retains the core level design, but adds in context-sensitive actions like being able to turn Mickey/Donald/Goofy into ghosts. And yea, they should have had Mickey fight a giant for everyone and not ONLY in the PlayStation build. Is Mickey Mania the first game that gated stuff out from platform to platform to this degree? Not exactly a contribution to gaming to be celebrated.

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SPLIT DECISION: SUPER NES

Well, this is strange: I found out right before publication that EASY on the SNES is NORMAL on Sega CD. Huh? Seriously? I’ve never been so f*cking pissed off about a game’s adjustable difficulty in my life. Well, I’m mostly pissed at myself for not checking first. I just threw the game on to see if Mickey Mania blocks later levels on EASY. It doesn’t. So really, the only major difference between the two versions is collision detection. While it’s not perfect on the Sega CD, it’s MUCH closer to being sprite-accurate, whereas your box is provably much bigger than your character on the SNES. Take a look at the above slideshow, where I got Mickey on the same spot of the elevator and ducked. On the Sega CD build, I’m not taking damage, and on the SNES version, I am. On Sega CD, I have to get directly next to the skeleton for it to damage me while ducking. On the SNES, you literally cannot use your sprite to judge what’s safe and what’s not. It doesn’t match the Sega CD build, and hell, it doesn’t match the game’s objective reality of where the things damaging you are on the screen. This collision is historically awful.

See, even situated further over, it’s still lethal (the screen is faded because it’s literally fading to black), whereas I’m safe on the Sega CD port anywhere but next to it. But look at that sh*t. Our two sprites couldn’t be further apart, and I know they’re capable of better because this doesn’t happen on Sega CD.

Not only is the collision worse, but there’s just more of everything on the SNES. It first becomes noticeable in level two, when skeletons are introduced that, once defeated, shower the screen with their still-lethal bones. The ones on the SNES explode into ten bones on NORMAL. Even on HARD, Sega CD’s skeletons only burst in six, and the pattern they come down on is more reasonable to dodge. On the elevator part of that level, skeletons will perch on top of the carriage and self-destruct, raining bones down on players. The Sega CD’s bones have a pattern with an intuitive dodging area. The SNES bones cover the screen in a different, harder to judge pattern AND that’s before you factor-in that the collision is a lot less accurate. Consequently, dodging is never intuitive on the SNES, since there’s no way to logic-out safe buffers between you and what you’re trying to avoid. On Sega CD, ducking is fairly perfect and reliable. On the SNES, all the problems that happen when you’re standing carry over. Again, the Sega CD’s collision isn’t 100% flawless, but I never had to rewind the game just to figure out what exactly damaged me. On the SNES, I lost count of how many times I said “wait, I took a hit back there? FROM WHAT?”

The SNES is missing half the final boss fight too. This is the end of that game. There’s an entire different fight with Pete right before this on the Sega CD.

I assumed the SNES game was beefed-up to “rental-proof” it. That was a common practice during this era. Publishers were annoyed that a child could pay a couple bucks to rent a game and finish it in a single day. It’s either that, or stuff had to be toned-back on the Sega CD version to accommodate the less powerful hardware. Either way, I found the SNES game to be too unforgiving with the damage. Mickey Mouse is, and always has been, a children’s property, and it shouldn’t be subject to typical buffing of difficulty. I don’t mind the content that was cut. The missing section of the final boss fight with Pete is really just back-and-forth busy work, and the “The Band Concert” is little more than a glorified bonus mini-game that doesn’t feel remotely connected to the short that it’s named after. While most of the game is, more or less, identical to the Sega CD version, Mickey Mania on the SNES is too frustrating for its own good. Easy mode does help, but I think even children would get mad at taking damage from things that aren’t really touching you.
SNES Verdict: NO!

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SPLIT DECISION: SEGA CD

Fun fact: originally, I only chose the Sega CD version as the primary subject of this review because I read on the game’s Wikipedia page that a level based on the Band Concert was cut from the SNES port. It was one of my favorite Mickey Mouse shorts as a child. Then, I beat the Sega CD version the first time without finding it. Gosh darn it. I got it the second time around, and boy, was it a let-down. It really is just a glorified bonus stage where you jump up a series of floating boxes. It lasts maybe a minute. But, god bless it, because I actually had a lot of fun playing Mickey Mania on the Sega CD. There’s a LOT less cheap shots. There’s a LOT less projectiles that just fly in from off-screen. It’s just plain more enjoyable. There’s some pretty dang decent level design in this. Again, it never truly accomplishes the sensation of playing a cartoon. There’s just not enough interactive gags to do that. I’m sorry but you’re going to have to do a lot more than pushing a potted plant under a water drip. But, as a typical 90s mascot platformer? Mickey Mania ain’t half bad.

Another example of the Sega CD’s kinder, gentler nature: the Mad Doctor boss. On the SNES, he positively spams the screen with these bottles. They’re all over the screen, and thanks to the poor collision detection, knowing where is a “safe zone” and where isn’t is punishing trial and error that weirdly never feels consistent, either. That’s not the case at all in the Sega versions. The box isn’t accurate, but it’s much closer to your sprite. You can suss out where the damage is coming from.

I do wish the combat had been more than just throwing rocks or typical hop-‘n-bop action. What could have further sold the idea of “being inside the cartoons” was giving each level a unique weapon. For example, in the final stage, you’re fighting what looks to be the weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, only they’re wearing medieval cosplay. Wouldn’t it have been swell if Mickey had a sword to fight them? Or hell, if you want to keep the projectiles, why have generic rocks? Paint them as ink balls in Steamboat Willie, or crossbows in Prince and the Pauper. Everything involving immersion is limited to the background. Of course, that’s true of 99% of games from this era, but you can do little things to complement the facade, and Mickey Mania doesn’t. I feel bad for the designers because I know they had BIG plans that never made it off the drawing board thanks to an ironclad publishing deadline. Mickey Mania was mostly sold on having cutting-edge graphics, and that’s a risky business plan when you’re literally on the cusp of the next generation of consoles launching. If the Gaming Historian wanted to do a video on a famous game that could have been SO much better, this is it.

Oddly enough, the Moose chase doesn’t really benefit from Mode 7 as much as you’d think. The Sega CD version lasts longer than the SNES one and is the one and only part of the game that I felt was harder on Sega’s platforms than on Nintendo’s. But, both are still visually impressive.

I’ve never cared about audio/visual advantages, so having added voices or a full orchestral soundtrack wouldn’t have made the difference at all in my decision. Which is a good thing because we actually didn’t get the orchestral score working, and we’re not sure why. It worked for Power Rangers! The sound effects and voices were there. I don’t know why it was missing, but it sort of proves my point. Good graphics and a nice soundtrack are only nice to have if the game is fun to begin with. If Mickey Mania’s gameplay had been as punishing on Sega CD, my verdict would have been the same as the SNES version. Instead, the Sega CD’s more accurate collision detection allows me to more carefully examine the game’s other merits. I prefer Mickey Mania’s series of set-pieces to the type of zig-zaggy Disney platformer that Virgin Games was cranking out (see my review of their version of Aladdin). The levels in Mickey Mania never wear out their welcome, and there’s plenty of checkpoints. It’s also a game that benefits greatly from emulation tomfoolery. I had the children play the game this morning, and they all really enjoyed it. With Steamboat Willie recently in the news, they were all familiar with the short, and they were smiling ear-to-ear. That made this review worth it.

Weirdest difference between the two ports: on the SNES, I was constantly trying to jump off the ropes only to re-grab them as soon as I let go. I don’t remember this being an issue on Sega CD.

Okay, so maybe the combat doesn’t feel “true” to Mickey Mouse, and sometimes the enemies are too spongy, but I still enjoyed Mickey Mania as a platforming experience. It feels like a natural evolution of Castle of Illusion, even though the two games have no connection. While the set-pieces don’t feel as interactive as they should, the enemy sprites are top-notch and, yes, enemies are mostly fun to deal with. Mickey Mania might not be the most creative game, but as a slightly average, slightly pedestrian platformer with an amazing presentation, it’s still worth a look thirty years later. It might not feel like a cartoon, but the entire concept makes for a fun theme for a mascot platformer. I never got bored at any point during the two Sega CD runs I made, with the possible exception of the middle of Lonesome Ghosts. Otherwise, the stages are paced-out absolutely perfectly. Sure, I also never shook that feeling that a lot of ideas got cut for either time or hardware limitations. Mickey Mania was ten years ahead of its time, but this is one of those cases where the game is worse off for that.
Sega CD Verdict: YES!

This is the level select code. Just go to the sound test in the options menu, set the three effects to these, then hold LEFT on the exit until you hear a chime. On the SNES, it’s “Beanstalk 1” and “Extra Try”, then highlight EXIT and hold the L button for ten seconds.

And if you’re wondering where the PS1 version is, I watched this video and decided “why bother?”

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES Review)

Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released November 20, 1992
Directed by Yoshinori Takenaka
Developed by Capcom
Re-Released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002
No Modern Release

If any platformer deserves the title “whimsical” it’s this one. Like, you pick up these cherry tomatoes and you expect them to be throwing weapons. Nope. Helicopters. Cute.

When I started doing Disney reviews last year, one of the games that came up the most was Magical Quest. “You’re gonna do it, right?” The thing is, this is actually one of the few “retro” games I had during my childhood. I had it for the Game Boy Advance. Back then, I liked it fine! It was short and it often lost its boldness, but, you know, it’s fine! Then I played it in 2021, and it was, you know, fine! And then I just played it again before I started typing this and it was, you know, fine! And now I find myself staring at my monitor wondering if I’ve made the right decision on what game to review. I really only chose this because I’m starting yet another Disney marathon and I knew I could run through it really quickly to kick off the marathon. Now that I examine these games in detail, what bothers me about Magical Quest is that it feels like every cool idea is just getting the surface scratched.

Well, this pic turned out good. “No, not the touch of death!” Or maybe Mickey is telling him off. When you tell someone off, you must jab your finger in their face for emphasis. It’s tradition. And he’s calling him “bub” for sure. Again, tradition.

The idea is that you gain three costumes along the game’s meager six worlds that give Mickey different abilities. The magician costume is just your traditional projectile, but it also can bring a magic carpet to life. So, that’s something. It’s the other two costumes that I care about. The fireman costume has an entire stage built around it that’s among the most clever fire levels in gaming history. Various platforms are constantly catching fire and you’re forced to douse them with your hose before using them. As short as Magical Quest is, you can tell a big reason for that is they put a lot of fine-tuning into the set-pieces. The timing for all the fire-based stuff is spot-on. But then it’s taken a step further when you have to use the fire hose to shove crushing blocks out of their current position so that you can use them as a platform. That’s neat! That whole fire stage is one of the best platforming levels in gaming history. We’re talking about one of the most common genre clichés in an over thirty year old game somehow still feeling fresh. That’s a big achievement. So, why doesn’t Magical Quest as a whole feel along the same lines?

Excellent boss fight for that level too. Actually, all the bosses are pretty good.

The mountain climbing gear feels almost like it was made for a Bionic Commando game. It’s my favorite costume to use, and also the costume that gets underutilized. The level for it goes really quickly, and then it’s not really useful again. It’s such a let-down because it’s a blast to use. Grappling hooks are rarely as intuitive or enjoyable as they are in Magical Quest. But the consequence of that awesomeness is that there’s absolutely no challenge to the stage. It doesn’t even qualify as “clever” because it feels like you’re largely circumventing much of it. Now granted, I’ve played this game enough to know that I can just bypass most of the enemies, but if I recall, I did that as a kid too. Then the final level really doesn’t do any big set pieces for the climbing outfit. It’s the best part of the game, but it feels like they didn’t know what to do with it, and you don’t expect that from Capcom.

The final level having fake-out doors where you have to replay the mini-bosses is a dumb idea. Either do a boss rush or don’t. If you’re going to do it the way Magical Quest does, where the wrong doors lead to mini-boss fights, at the very least cut their damage by half.

And I really don’t want to use the excuse “well, it’s a children’s game” for why I feel Magical Quest underutilized some of its concepts. I think it’s safe to say the SNES Aladdin is aimed at a younger audience, but it’s still one of the best platformers on a system largely defined by platformers. I think that was on the table for Magical Quest. The engine they built here was so solid that Capcom was able to pull two sequels out of it. As I prepare to kick-off yet another Disney marathon that will include the whole trilogy (it didn’t, but I will get to it in 2025), I wonder if I’m going to ultimately wish that the three Magical Quest games were combined into one. I don’t know what to expect! I’ve not played the other two. All I know is, unlike Aladdin, I don’t feel like they squeezed the maximum potential out of this engine. By time Aladdin’s credits rolled, I really think they had arranged every combination of platforms and acrobatics possible without feeling repetitive. That’s not remotely the case for Magical Quest. When the credits rolled, I just got this weird “were they crunched for time?” vibe.

A lot of would-be set pieces just plain don’t work. Like these things, or rolling down hills on apples, where you don’t really “bind” to the moving objects and they’re often not necessary towards making progress anyway.

Mind you, for all my complaining, I really do think that Magical Quest is one of the better SNES mascot platformers. Memorable set-pieces, excellent play control, and a frisky pace that really never lets up makes this one of the best children’s games on the SNES. While I could do without the mini-bosses, the end of stage bosses are all fun to do battle with. If I have to complain outside of my whining about how subdued all the gimmicks but the fire suit are, I’d say that this is that rare game where it’s the normal baddies that are unmemorable and underwhelming. They often feel like they’re only there because they need to be. None are memorable. None are cleverly used. I get the sense that Magical Quest was rushed through development in order to have a big children’s game the year after the SNES launched in North America. It really speaks to how well-oiled the Capcom machine was that they could come up with a totally solid game like this. I just think it’s a little overrated. Magical Quest is really good. It ain’t great. Fingers crossed for the sequels, but as for the original, hey Mickey, you’re so fine, but you absolutely DO NOT blow my mind.
Verdict: YES!
Hey Mickey! Clap clap clap. Hey Mickey! Clap clap clap.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Video Games: The Definitive Review – 12 Full Reviews for Famicom, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Sega CD, Nintendo Game Boy, and Super NES)

My #1 favorite television show from my childhood was Power Rangers. The show started up around the time my memory started working. Not so much the first season. I was only 4 when it aired, but as my parents remind me, I was frightened of many elements from the show. Rita had this skull in her castle that had spooky flashing eyes that had me hiding behind my mother. I was scared of most of the monsters, memorably one that was half octopus, half pineapple. Yes, really, and to my infinite credit, it’s a lot scarier looking than it sounds. I don’t remember any of that, but I distinctly remember being terrified of Lokar. He was a recurring disembodied head different from the nicer disembodied head that told the Rangers what to do. Lokar is introduced on the show by a pair of gigantic goddamned eyes that open up and it’s actually still, to this day, the scariest visual the show has ever done. Seriously, watch this. The clip should start at 17:16. That’s some pretty intense visuals for a children’s show.

Now, we must be misremembering the order of events, because that clip above is Lokar’s THIRD episode, but I know for sure it’s the above clip that had me clutching my mother while crying hysterically at the age of 4. He debuted in the two-part Island of Illusion about three weeks before that. My hypothesis is that I never made it past the “TODAY ON POWER RANGERS” segment for Island of Illusion when he was shown, and I never saw Part Two either. Back then, with the exception of Goldar and Scorpina, Rita’s monsters never returned. When Lokar returned for what was originally intended as the season one finale, Doomsday, I didn’t see it coming and that sh*t traumatized me as a child. Seriously, I almost quit watching the show. If any producers of Power Rangers are watching this, chances are one of the angry letters you got was from my father.

Seriously, this might STILL give me nightmares.

That’s really the only negative memory I have. I loved Power Rangers. I never missed an episode.. except those ones with Lokar. Unlike Saturday morning shows, a new episode of Power Rangers was on every weekday. It was such a big cultural phenomenon that season two premiered in prime time, which I watched with my parents! And the lead-up to the big screen movie was every bit as exciting for me as Christmas was. I saw it twice in theaters. The second time was on my sixth birthday. No, I can’t explain why Lokar frightened me but Lord Zedd didn’t. I even remember my father say “poor man” when he married Rita. The thing is, Power Rangers was part of my life long before video games were. I had a couple of the Game Boy Advance Power Ranger games, and I had Dino Thunder for my GameCube, but I never really played them. If I had been a little older, I probably would have had all the games in this feature. I’ve previously only sampled them all. This time, I played every single game I could find that featured the words “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” plus the two Sentai games that came before them, until the end credits rolled. Below are full reviews for the following games:

  • At least they got the Shogun Megazord scale right.

    Chōjin Sentai Jetman (Famicom)
  • Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger (Famicom)
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
    for Game Gear
    for Game Boy/Super Game Boy
    for Sega Genesis
    for Super NES
    for Sega CD
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
    for Super NES
    for Sega Genesis
    for Sega Game Gear
    for Game Boy/Super Game Boy
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Fighting Edition (Super NES)

Now that my friends at Digital Eclipse are doing a Power Rangers game, I figure I’ll do my part by making this review, which can serve as a guide for where Power Rangers went wrong in video games. And it went wrong, wrong, WRONG, almost universally. I have faith they can do better. Throw a rock and you’ll hit a game developer who could do better. But, they’re a good choice. I promise no rock throwing.

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

Chōjin Sentai Jetman
Platform: Famicom
Released December 21, 1991
Designed by Hirohisa Ohta & Tomoko Okamoto
Developed by Natsume
Published by Angel
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

For you non-Sentai fans, this is was the last installment of Sentai before Sentai seasons were converted into Power Rangers.

This is the first ever Sentai or Power Rangers game for consoles, and frankly, it’s shocking that it took until 1991 to happen. Even more shocking: Chōjin Sentai Jetman is actually a pretty solid action game, though one that certainly feels paint-by-numbers. You can pick any of the first five levels, and then pick any of the five Rangers to tackle those. In theory, this is fine, even if there’s functionally only three choices. The Red and Black Rangers each use the same sword and have 8 health points. The White (Pink) and Blue Rangers use blasters and have 6 health points. Only the Yellow Ranger is unique, as he has a power-punch wave, along with 7 health points. There’s actually balance to this, as the two full-range weapons require more shots to take down enemies than the other weapons do. And in a way, this is all moot since all five Rangers have a kick move that can be done by holding UP when you attack. So, it’s not THAT deep, but the combat is satisfying, with good collision and just enough OOMPH to be immersive even with smaller sprites. Chōjin Sentai Jetman is apparently a close cousin to a semi-famous NES game by developers Natsume called Shatterhand. It shows.

Each of the five rangers has a screen-clearing bomb that’s activated by pressing START. It looks the same for all five: they take to the sky and fly across the screen, and all the enemies go poof. Bombs are infrequently dropped by baddies, so you don’t have to be totally stingy with them.

As decent as Jetman is, it feels like a huge missed opportunity. The five levels, action packed as they might be, are samey, with no set-pieces and the same enemies. There’s also zero difficulty scaling through the first five levels. Why not give all five Rangers unique weapons and different attributes, then tailor the level design around that concept by having players take control of each Ranger once? Natsume was handed the ability to give players a one-of-a-kind action platforming experience on a silver platter and they blew it. And I haven’t even gotten to the boss battles. Actually, let me talk about the mecha in general. A unique aspect of Jetman is that each of the mecha (aka Zords in the US) flies. This was a golden ticket for each level to be split into the platforming bits and then brief shmup bits. Since the platforming action is solid, I imagine Natsume could have thrown together solid space-shooting segments. Nope. Like so many Ranger/Sentai shows, the action cuts straight to the Jet Icarus segments. Yes, that’s what this Sentai’s Megazord is called. Jet. F*cking. Icarus. Damn, that’s badass. If only the boss battles lived up to that name.

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The boss fights are really simple, clumsy one-on-one fighting games with only a basic punch move, a useless jump move, and blocking (which is done by holding down). To the game’s credit, the action is so stiff and lifeless that it legitimately feels like two rubber suit giants fighting, just like in the show. Of course, in the anything-goes realm of video games, that’s not a positive thing anymore. The bosses are indeed the weakest links in the game. It’s a VERY stripped down tournament fighter where you block moves and counter-punch, only without satisfying impact. You get a special meter that builds up as the battle goes on. Any attack but the most powerful one is basically worthless, so just wait for it to fill-up all the way. Only the final boss puts up any challenge, but it’s still basic and incredibly dull. It’s such a downer, because the action stages themselves are well done. This might be the most unhappy YES! I’ve ever given out. Chōjin Sentai Jetman is fine, and dammit, that’s so annoying. There’s nothing more depressing for me on this job than a game that plays well but got there without any risks or ambition. Natsume did the absolute bare minimum, and actually, the end product is still alright. It’s so frustrating, because imagine what they could have done with an actual vision.
Verdict: YES!

And “doing the absolute bare minimum” will be a reoccurring theme for the rest of the Power Rangers/Sentai gaming franchise. You’ve been warned.

Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger
Platform: Famicom
Released November 6, 1991
Designed by Michito Okamoto, Masako Araki, and Yūji Watanabe
Developed by Arc System Works
Published by Angel
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I’m playing a less-strobe-heavy version of this made specifically for me by Tetrahedrus at the request of Garrett Gilchrist. It’s not 100% strobe-free, but in the original build, the game flashed constantly from weapon use, enemy slaying, etc. This version’s strobes only happen during cut-scenes. Have you ever had a game made just for you so that it won’t risk your health? I hope people know how much that means to me. No matter anything else, it means the world to me. And if you want to hear about my history with epilepsy, go here. I do NOT speak the Queen’s English. They edited in phrases like “mum” because they’re from the UK and people there don’t love their mothers enough to call them “mom” which sounds more dignified than “mum.” I kid.

This part specifically still flashes very violently even in the less flashy ROM hack that I inspired. If you have or suspect you have photosensitive epilepsy, consult your doctor before playing any video game.

Before firing up Zyuranger, I couldn’t believe they didn’t bring this game out in America at the start of the Power Ranger toy craze of 1993 – 94. Even if the NES was dying, how many millions of Nintendo kids out there would have wanted a Power Rangers game for their NES? More importantly, how many parents would have bought said NES game for their kids? I think a million seller was on the table. I really do. Except, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger really wouldn’t be as easy to adapt to the NES. In Power Rangers, Rita’s minions on the Moon, with the exception of Goldar, rarely get involved. In this game, Witch Bandora’s gang are all the bosses. There’s a few rubber suit monsters of the week, but they appear as normal baddies. Remember Pudgy Pig from the sixth episode? That’s a basic monster you fight in bulk along the way. Golem Soldiers, aka the Putty Patrol, rarely show up. Do you know who else doesn’t show up in playable form? The Green Ranger. Or Megazord, aka the Guardian Beasts. Just in cutscenes and a pong-like mini-game. Now that I’ve played through Famicom Zyuranger, I really don’t think American audiences would have gone for any of this. As disappointed as I was in the combined mecha battles from Jetman, and as basic as they are, it IS better than nothing.

Hey, I was frightened of that pig as a kid.

The strange thing is, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger does exactly what I wanted Jetman to do. The game is divided into five stages, and instead of being taken in any order, you play as one Ranger per stage. The object isn’t just traveling from point A to point B, but finding ten power coins per stage which grants you the metaphysical powers of the Guardian Beasts, aka the Zords, which in case you didn’t know, are actually gods (lowercase g) in the original Sentai version. And again, you don’t get to pilot them or use them in any meaningful way. They don’t even defeat monsters in cutscenes. You want your giant robots? We got your giant robots right here, playing hot potato and video table tennis. That’s why every copy of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger came bundled with an empty bottle, so you could mail in the tears of disappointed children for a coupon good for 10% off* select Zyuranger toys.
*Offer good only for the versions of the toys that don’t let kids combine them. Ain’t nobody having fun on our dime.

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Instead, each cutscene at the end of stages shows the Rangers finishing off everything with the handheld Power Blaster. AKA “no giant monster fights this episode? Well, that sucks.” And you don’t even get to fire it yourself! I’m shocked they even allowed you to fight enemies at this point. Why stop where they did? Why not just have the game be a picture of the producers pointing and laughing at the idiots who bought this? Anything that a child would want in a Sentai or Power Rangers game is simply not here. The most you get is the Rangers acquiring and using their individual components of the Power Blaster. Each level starts by using a generic blaster, but eventually you’ll come across a door that grants you the use of that Ranger’s power weapon, usually around the time you find that stage’s fourth coin. All the five weapons do successfully manage to feel unique, and they also defeat enemies much faster. Sadly, the OOMPH is pretty poor in general thanks to some haphazard collision detection and poor sound design. You’ll notice the character sprites are massive in Zyuranger, and yea, the graphics can be pretty okay, but compared to Jetman, the action is just not good.

Goushi’s stage, the entrance to Bandora’s palace, is crazy short. I literally couldn’t believe how quickly it ended. But, he gets to be the one who beats Grifforzar (aka Goldar in the US). Who also turned out to be the easiest boss in the game. Geez. It’s because he’s the Black Ranger, isn’t it?

For the most part, I was just kind of bored playing Zyuranger. With the exception of the Blue Ranger’s level, which does the barest minimum to quality as a maze, as I actually didn’t find all ten coins the first time, the levels are boring and basic, and the challenge comes largely from bad collision and cheap enemy placement. In the thirty or so minutes it took me to finish, the game produced one lone highlight: the second boss battle. It’s fought with the Pink Ranger on two moving platforms. She has the most fun weapon: her bow, and this boss is actually built around how you use that bow. That’s it. That’s the one and only “this ain’t bad” moment of this entire miserable excuse of a Sentai game. The rest of the Rangers often have these strange double-swinging animations that might make no contact at all and kill enemies, while other times (especially against bosses) they go right through them and register nothing.

Dump confetti on this part, because this single boss battle qualifies as an unambiguously exciting and fun video game moment. The rest is just boring.

Now, the million dollar question is could this have been translated to English, brought to the United States in time for the 1993 Christmas season, and become the last ever bestseller for the NES? As bad as this is today, in 2024, I think this might have been considered more acceptable in 1993. Some things would have been ridiculed either way. Megazord and Dragonzord playing Pong would have been a farce, and some of the between-rounds actions being trivia questions would have been as dull here as it was in Disney’s Adventures in the Magic Kingdom. Funny thing, too: you can play any of the mini-games in the menu. If you pick “trivia” you will be asked one single question, then it dumps back to the game’s main menu. One question, and one only. Why even bother to include it on the menu? While I do think this, converted to MMPR, would have been a bestseller, it’s only because the property was as hot as any toy craze had EVER been. But, as a video game, I’d be fine with burning this game’s green candle at both ends.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Platform: Sega Game Gear
Released in 1994
Directed by Koji Ishitani
Developed: SIMS Co.
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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I’m not a fighting game expert by any means, and the Game Gear version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is structured like a tournament fighter. But, for what it’s worth, from my casual fighting game fan perspective, this actually surprised me by being a better than decent game. This version of MMPR is a 1 on 1 fighting game that, at times, takes the structure of a brawler. Before each stage’s main rubber suit monster, you have to defeat a wave of putties, one at a time, that each only takes one or two blows to kill. My biggest complaint about the game is there’s too many putties. I think they could have cut it by more than half and retained that “true to the show” feel. Like, four to six would be fine, right? Remember, this is not a side-scrolling brawler. It shares more DNA with the Street Fighter franchise than something like Streets of Rage. So, how many putties are you slaying in that first stage? Fifteen. It’s just too much, to the point that I could totally understand why a game with quality fighting mechanics like this could still earn middling reviews.

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Now, with that out of the way, while the volume of the putties is tiring, the way they’re used isn’t. At least after a couple stages. When you hear about how the putties are part of the game, you probably expect that you fight all of them in one long segment, then the boss. That’s how the TV show was. But, actually, there’s no set level formula. At least once per stage, Goldar will show up to pester you. Even though he has a full health bar, ignore it. He flees after a few hits, which is pretty true to the MMRP Goldar character who never won, but also never lost. Or, sometimes the boss starts the stage, then vanishes until the climax, sort of like me in bed. Like a boss. Sometimes Goldar alternates with the putties, or there will be a fake-out where a putty jumps on the screen, but it teleports away and then Goldar swoops in for a chicken-sh*t cheap shot before vanishing. Forget being a critic. As just an ordinary gamer, I appreciate they didn’t stick to one specific recipe for the levels. I actually think that decision saved the game, because no amount of awesome mechanics can overcome that much mindless repetition. I just wish the putties were trimmed by at least half, and maybe give the early ones a little bit more health so they’re not just fish in a barrel. The game starts with TEN PUTTIES that all are killed in a single hit, and you can literally kill them as they enter, before they even get a chance to throw their first punch. It’s cannon fodder, but there’s nothing exciting about it. I was fine when the putties beefed up, and by the end of the game, they were just as fun to fight as everyone else.

Dragonzord in its fighting mode does Ryu/Ken’s Dragon Punch. A little on the nose, no?

And really, Power Rangers on Game Gear puts the two-button, 8-bit Mortal Kombat games I played to shame. Probably because it was built around the hardware and not against it. The combat feels legitimately impactful, with violent striking moves and very satisfying OOMPH. For my new readers, that’s my pet term for games creating the illusion of real world impact, velocity, weight, etc. All games benefit from OOMPH, but only fighters and brawlers absolutely need it for immersion. Power Rangers has it, and it’s well done for an 8-bit fisticuffs game. Also, despite four of the six Rangers using the same sprite (Pink and Green are unique), all the characters feel different from each other. In addition to the basic special moves, each character gets three special moves. All of them are done the same way you throw a fireball in Street Fighter II, with the final button being 1, 2, or 1+2. I’m rapidly losing the ability to press two buttons at the same time, and so that was a LITTLE annoying. There really was no reason to not do DOWN-BACK instead. While I’m actually happy that all the moves are done the same way, I know that hardcore fighting fans might not enjoy that as much.

If you must do a boss rush, THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT! Power Rangers ends with all the non-Green Ranger bosses replacing the Putty Patrol as the basic enemies. But, their life is halved. It would be boring otherwise. I hate boss rushes, but if they were all done this way, I’d be down with it because it actually felt earned and climatic instead of just a rerun.

But, let it be said, I was VERY impressed with the variety of moves and different fighting styles. And the game doesn’t bind you to only one Ranger per run. You’re given the option to change between every level. Not just the Rangers either. Megazord is here, and they didn’t even bother trying to create a bullsh*t sense of scale. That was wise. He has his own unique moves. Then, you earn the Green Ranger after beating him and his Dragonzord in the third level. After this, you get THREE options for the giant monster battles: Megazord, Dragonzord, and Dragonzord in Fighting Mode, complete with his badass sword that’s actually a giant f*cking drill. I really didn’t know what to expect when I saw the Game Gear MMPR was a tournament fighter. The AI isn’t too hard. It felt just right. Controls are responsive. Excellent OOMPH for an 8-bit game. Hot damn, Power Rangers on Game Gear ain’t bad at all. And, in fact, I actually ultimately believe this is the best Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game of the era. I’m happy for Game Gear fans, but damn, that is a sad fact, isn’t it?
Verdict: YES!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Platform: Game Boy – Super Game Boy Enhanced
Released August, 1994
Directed by Takeshi Yasukawa
Developed by Tom Create Co.
Published by Bandai
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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I haven’t reviewed a lot of Game Boy titles, so it’s a safe bet the worst I’ve done yet is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A reprehensibly lazy game with no redeeming value. Choose one of the original five Rangers and play five boring levels against a tiny handful of Putty variants. The first two stages are very basic walk right, punch baddies types of design. They’re so uninspired and dull that I think they’d get a failing grade as the first assignment in game design school. Then, level three introduces spikes and blind jumping around those spikes into the equation, and MMPR-GB becomes an actively bad game. There’s sections where you have to scroll downwards, with multiple blind leaps to platforms below that are riddled with spikes. Thankfully, they’re not instakills, and in fact, they don’t cause all that much damage by themselves and only pose a threat because of how many there are in the stage. It’s still crap design, but it’s not even the worst example of the spikes.

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In the last stage, you have to do climbing sections with platforms that have almost imperceptible spikes on their sides. Again, the spikes don’t really do much damage, and health refills are plentiful, but you do recoil from the spikes, and so it creates busy work. This is then amplified by having putties who throw explosive footballs at an alarmingly high pace. ON TOP OF THAT, they angled the platforms so the footballs go between the gaps while you’re coming from the wrong direction to defend against them. It’s like someone built a Rube Goldberg machine that tears the wings off flies.

Do you see the spikes? Well, every platform in level five is like this, and there’s more than one sequence like this. I guess that’s how they decided to be climatic.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on Game Boy is one of those rare games that I have nothing positive to say. There’s no redeeming value at all in this one. You can utilize all the Rangers handheld weapons by pressing SELECT, but utilizing them drains your health. Very, very slowly. In fact, so slowly that I don’t even know why they bothered at all. Also, unless I’m mistaken, all the enemies are one-hit kills, so the only advantage the weapons hypothetically give you is added range. Except, most of them are barely longer than the standard punch or the effective jump kick. The only time SELECT matters is during the Megazord fights that cap every stage. Megazord fires a beam from his sword that will quickly drain your health, but the fireball does a lot more damage than the basic attack does. I’m stunned that they actually balanced the risk/reward element of that nearly perfectly. It’s the only thing the game does right, but it’s still not a point in the win column, because the boss battles are boring anyway. MMPR on the Game Boy is one of those games that makes me feel sorry for the children who got this under the Christmas tree. It really is a soulless cash-grab with minimum effort and game design that could have been, frankly, any property.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released November, 1994
Directed by Hajime Ishikawa
Developed by Nova Co, Ltd.
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Green Ranger isn’t in or even hinted at in the SNES game, so the Genesis version might have been the envy of Nintendo owners. But I suspect Sega owners also looked longingly at SNES owners, with their Power Rangers game being in a more suitable genre for the show.

How on Earth did the Sega Genesis version of Power Rangers end up so much worse than the Game Gear version? Like its 8-bit little sibling, this is a tournament fighter. But, unlike the Game Gear game, no effort is made to make this feel remotely like you’re playing the TV show. No waves of putties, or variations on the tournament fighting structure. It’s just another run of the mill Street Fighter II wannabe that saturated this era, and not one the better ones. First you fight a monster as one of the five (eventually six) Rangers. That’s round one. Round two is the same monster, only you’re either Megazord or Dragonzord if you played as the Green Ranger in round one. And those really are the only two options. Dragonzord in Fighting Mode only shows up as a special move for the standard form, which makes zero sense. On the positive side, this is a true, blue fighting game. Each character gets their own set of special moves that require their own unique button inputs. Each character also has their own fighting style. So, effort was made. It just feels like the concept was flawed from the very start. Is this what Power Ranger fans in 1994 really wanted?

The OOMPH isn’t horrible by any means, but it ain’t great either. The Game Gear version’s collision usually feels one-to-one with the sprites. That’s not the case with the Genesis version, where it often feels like you’re hitting air.

I suppose I need to remind people I’m not a fighting game expert. With that said, I found this to be a boring, basic SF2 knock-off. Special moves are nice, but most of them (especially projectiles) come at too high a cost thanks to them having too many frames. Take the Pink Ranger’s bow projectile. Input the attack and you’re stuck watching her pull out the bow, aim, then pull back on the string before the projectile is fired. Dragonzord’s Fighting Mode attack has you turn into the humanoid robot, then the attack happens, then you turn back. On the normal difficulty (4 out of whatever) the computer doesn’t fall for it, and as a two player game, I feel that even the most casual of fighting fans would have enough warning the special move is coming to respond, even if only to block. While the character sprites are great, this is so uninspired. If this wasn’t a Power Rangers game, nobody would have wanted this. It’s a generic Street Fighter II rip-off made at the height of that game’s popularity and attached to a trendy license. It doesn’t get more cynical than that.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released November 23, 1994
Directed by Hirohisa Ohta
Developed by Natsume
Published by Bandai
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Paint the putties red and they’d look like Spider-Man.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the Super NES is a textbook example of competent blandness. It really doesn’t do a whole lot of things wrong from a technical point of view. The combat feels high impact, so that’s good. Actually, that’s pretty much all that’s good. MMPR-SNES is boring. I mean seriously boring. On the six-button Super NES, you are given one lone attack button. One. If you want to count the bombs, it’s two buttons, but bombs are sort of separate from combat, aren’t they? It’s not like you can string them together with the attacks. Besides, you can only carry one bomb at a time, because god forbid anyone have any more fun than the barest minimum. Bandai ain’t running some kind of entertainment charity here.

Billy looks more like Doc Ock if, instead of becoming a man with eight-appendages, he became a farmer.

Now, some games manage to get a lot of mileage out of single button combat. MMPR doesn’t. The biggest mistake it makes, by far, is that the best combat happens when you’re unmorphed. Each stage starts out without the suits on. You don’t morph until about one-third of the way in. This is the only time when it feels like each Ranger really has a unique personality, and they all attack much faster anyway. Even worse is you don’t feel like you’ve been empowered when you morph, because the putties are still every bit as spongy with or without the suits on. The only difference is you attack much slower in the costume than you do without it. Oh, and you use your weapons which in theory gives you more range, but in reality, it takes longer to fight bad guys because it’s so much slower. You can hold UP when you attack to do a sort of smash attack. But, it doesn’t do enough damage and really only slows the combat down, since it knocks the Putty you hit down and you have to wait for it to get back up. A superhero game where you feel more powerful when you’re powered-down is lame a f*ck. What were they thinking?

Kimberly is the only one who doesn’t get a smash attack. Instead, she shoots her bow, but this takes a LOT of hits to kill the putties. It’s faster to just whack them with the bow itself, which is her basic attack when she’s in the suit and I think the weapon that has the most range.

Normally, I’d chalk this type of thing up to rental-proofing. That’s the phenomena of buffing-up difficulty in games to make them impossible to beat in a single weekend rental, thus hypothetically increasing the chances of kids who rent games ultimately buying the game at a later point in order to finally have enough time with it to beat it. Except, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers isn’t remotely hard. There’s only five normal levels followed by two Megazord battles. There’s also no adjustable difficulty, which might have come in handy. The putties are so absurdly clockable, with simple, predictable attack patterns, and not enough of a variety to become anything but busy work after a while. Hell, sometimes the environment kills them for you. If there’s something on the ceiling shooting lasers down, it usually harms the putties, who will walk right into them again and again. I didn’t lose a single life playing MMPR. The only time I came close, at least in the first five stages, was when I cheesed a boss without attempting any finesse.

This was probably the best set piece in the game, and it only lasts two or three blasts, but it will kill the putties chasing you.

I found it annoying that some of the background stuff hurt the putties and sometimes, like when barrels roll onto the stage, it goes right through them. Ultimately, none of it matters because the putties take longer to defeat using the slower Ranger attacks than the unmorphed human attacks. Who the hell wants to play a superhero game where the parts featuring the superhero are the boring parts? There’s some VERY minor platforming sections, and hell, there’s even wall jumping in MMPR SNES, but it’s kept to a bare minimum. What little platforming there is feels like it’s baby’s first video game. It wasn’t until the first Megazord battle that I actually felt there was a chance I might lose a life. That’s the other big problem: the Megazord battle, perhaps fittingly, is just an updated version of the Jet Icarus fights from Chōjin Sentai Jetman. As in literally the same set-up, with basic attacks, blocking and counter-attacking, and a meter that slowly fills up regardless of how the fight is playing out that gives you four tiers of super attacks. You’ll remember those were the worst parts of Jetman, and the best thing I can say about MMPR is at least there’s only two giant battles. Sort of three, because they did keep the “monster changes” bit from the show, sans Lokar.

To MMPR’s credit, unlike in Jetman, the OOMPH is nearly as good as the main game’s OOMPH. You can also now aim your attacks up and down. It still feels like two people clumsily play-fighting in giant rubber suits, but it does feel like there’s weight behind the attacks and real world inertia.

I’m beginning to think, whether it’s called Power Rangers or Sentai, that this has to be the most frustrating licensed game franchise out there. Unlike many of the worst licensed shovelware, these Power Ranger games (except the Game Boy one) aren’t exactly doing anything wrong. They’re all just so unambitious. That we’ve made it this far and the Game Gear version is head and shoulders above all others is absolutely shameful. There’s nothing bold or imaginative. Power Rangers isn’t exactly high art. But, there’s some imaginative things that happen on the show, and the games don’t capture any of it. They’re so effortless, and I don’t mean that in the positive sense. The Super NES version is the worst offender because, again, it got a lot of the basics right. The combat is violent, hard-hitting, and has good collision detection. And it’s SO boring and repetitive. The levels are too basic, and so are the enemies. But, for me the deal breaker was the lack of power. It seems like it takes as many hits with your weapons to take down putties as it does bare-fisted without the costumes on. It tells me Natsume didn’t get that superheroes in superhero games need to feel SUPER! In Power Rangers, you don’t feel super. You just look ridiculous.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Platform: Sega CD
Released in 1994
Designed by Tony Van
Developed by Sega and Orion Technologies
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Whenever anyone is on the ground, you’re probably going to press up. It happens a lot.

I hate FMV games, and by reputation, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the Sega CD is one of the worst games the genre has ever seen. It’s a well earned legacy. The obvious comparison is Dragon’s Lair, but at least that was created specifically to be a video game. In the Sega CD version of the MMPR, you’re “playing” clips from the first season of the show via moderately well-synced inputs. And yes, I’ll concede that the syncing isn’t badly done. The problem is there’s absolutely no effort made to create the illusion of interactivity. If you mess-up an input, or you press anything when there’s no prompt, the screen shakes, and that’s it. There’s no “choose your own adventure” clips for failure. Take for example, when you fight Goldar as Megazord. It’s a sequence taken from the pilot episode. At one point, Goldar swings his sword, and the game commands you to block by pressing B. Regardless of whether you hit the button or not, Goldar’s sword hits Megazord right across the torso, showering the screen with sparks. Why? Because that’s what happens in the episode. I guess it’s the thought that counts?

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Now, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Sega CD is not the first game that just copy-and-pasted inputs over existing footage. The most famous example is probably Stern’s Cliff Hanger, which stitched together footage of a couple Lupin III movies. With all the Power Rangers AND Zyuranger footage available, I refuse to believe they couldn’t have stitched together a handful of sequences that create even the most rudimentary illusion of interactivity. They literally just took clips from the show and laid ugly button prompts over them. And then even that element isn’t all that great. While I feel what to press matches the footage pretty well, the when is often too big an ask. There’s just not enough reaction time, and since it’s not staged for a video game, like Dragon’s Lair, it’s not always predictable what the next action will be.

I should also note that this game goes through huge periods of downtime before prompts. If the score and health bar are on the screen, you can’t skip forward. At one point I think it went over a minute in the middle of a stage between actions.

If your character is knocked down, it’s safe to assume you’ll press UP. But, in the stand-up fight sequences, those punches and kicks come in fast, or sometimes you have to press a direction and then a button. It’s the catch 22 with FMV games: the closer you watch for the prompts, the less you focus on the action, but the less you focus on the action, the less likely you are to be able to anticipate the next prompt, thus canceling out the appeal in an FMV game in the first place. I suppose the best games in the genre are the ones that allow players to do both, which is why I gave Dragon’s Lair a YES! but Space Ace a NO! For this FMV Power Rangers, I don’t think you can do both. Really, you have to memorize the prompts. I find it unlikely anyone could ace this on their first attempt. Where I took most of my damage was the button mashing sequences. It usually happens when the camera cuts to a villain charging-up some kind of attack. Okay, at least it’s not just pressing the same prompts over and over, right? Well, except the fact that you take damage every time you press a button when there’s no prompt. So, when the button mashing prompt ends, if you’re still mashing buttons, you can actually inflict more damage from continuing to mash than you would have just letting the damn thing hit you. It’s so badly done. 

I couldn’t take the screencap and mash buttons at the same time. By the way, I’m almost certain the times I did win I might have barely pressed B and was instead pressing A & C.

Why did they even bother with the Sega CD to begin with? And don’t say “to make money” because EVEN THAT doesn’t make sense. Unlike the Sega Genesis or Super NES, the demographics for Sega CD owners tended to skew much higher. That’s why the port of Mortal Kombat that was on Sega CD has no blood code, like the Genesis version required. In fact, that version is rated MA-17, because Sega didn’t stress it. Sega CD was arguably the first console marketed towards adults, with games for adults, or for teenagers who wouldn’t be caught dead with a children’s property like this. So, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the Sega CD is a bad idea, for the wrong console, and what little “gameplay” is here is executed very sloppily. What else could go wrong? How about gating out most of the levels unless you play on the highest difficulty level, which is pretty dang difficult?

The one and only thing I’ll give the developers of Power Rangers CD for is they cut the bullshIt. Level one is the pilot, and then after that, BOOM, Green With Evil. The two Nintendo Rangers games didn’t even mention the Green Ranger, but all three Sega games have him. That’s probably why they’re much more revered. Oh, one other thing I will SLIGHTLY complement: when the eclipse that drains Megazord’s power in Green With Evil happens, it actually does sap health from you. As lazy as this game is, they didn’t half-ass the button prompts and the footage actually does match the game elements. I will give them that.

Indeed, there’s three difficulty settings and nine levels, but four of those levels are gated on the easiest setting, and the final two levels are gated on anything but the hardest level. As a reminder, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is a children’s television show. This is a game that would be enjoyed most by kids under 12. What the hell are you doing, game? The only kindness is that you can earn extra continues as you go along. Golly, thanks. Being awful, I made my nieces and nephew play this. Actually, they volunteered. They’re good kids. They range from ages 8 to 12, so the perfect target demographic. They became overwhelmed pretty quickly. Since the moves come in fast and don’t pause when you take damage, the screen-shaking when you DO get hit makes seeing the next move harder. I noticed when they died, it was always as the result of an extended damage streak. Gating kids with high difficulty is kinda crass. Assuming kids would even want to play this. Even in 1994, the Sega CD wasn’t exactly the prettiest console to play. I mean, look at these, and mind you, I haven’t tinkered with any of them.

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Why does it look so grainy? For the uninitiated, the Sega CD is still just a Sega Genesis, only with a substantially increased storage capacity at a lower cost to physically produce. A 30MB game on cartridge would cost several multiples more than a 650MB CD to manufacture. That’s literally the only reason to even attempt a CD platform at this point, because the game contained within would still be a Sega Genesis game with all inherent visual limitations. So, unless you were incorporating full motion video or an orchestral soundtrack, there was no point. It didn’t beef-up the graphics capability of the console, which has a selection of 512 colors and a MAX of 61 colors on-screen at any given moment. Hence the footage looking grainy at best, and splotchy at worst. Like that one of Tommy’s face..

Yea. Honestly, it doesn’t bother me because gameplay is king, and hell, I’ve enjoyed writing about Atari 2600 games. If I can deal with that, I can deal with graininess. What I think is the bigger problem is that the Sega CD provided all this extra storage, but very few games for the platform were better for it. Wouldn’t a Sega CD-owning child have been more happy with a Power Rangers beat-em-up, maybe with FMVs taken from the TV show of the Megazord assembly? Or maybe just use the CD format to include the soundtrack from the TV show. Not just the theme song, either. Imagine playing a side-scrolling stage as Tommy with Go, Green Ranger Go! from the TV show playing. Don’t you think children would have rather had that instead of a really awful FMV game where, yes, the button prompts actually do match the footage, but it still never feels even a teeny tiny bit interactive? So, no, this wasn’t the worst game I’ve ever played, or even the worst FMV (that honor goes to #Wargames). Hell, it’s not even the worst Power Rangers game, which is especially sad. Do you know what Power Rangers for Sega CD is? A glorified clip show. Nobody likes those.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June 23, 1995
Directed by Hirohisa Ohta
Developed by Natsume
Published by Bandai
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The absurdity of having falling scenery be a hazard. “Zordon, I just saw it on the viewing globe. Aisha.. gasp.. was just killed!” “Did Lord Zed finally wise-up and send an entire army of giant monsters when she was asleep?” “No, a produce sign at Whole Foods crushed her! Ayeyeyeye!” “Calm down Alpha! Dispose of the body and tell the Rangers that Aisha.. uh.. traveled.. back in time.. to.. Africa.. where she.. is going to.. use her.. um.. veterinary skills.. to uh.. you know.. save lions or something.” “Is that what we’re going with?” “Well we can’t tell them she went to a peace conference. They still don’t know why the other three haven’t come back yet, and they’ll be inspecting that smell in the cellar any day now.”

This direct sequel to the SNES Power Rangers fixes one big thing: the putties are less spongy when you’re morphed. Since these are Lord Zedd’s putties, in theory a single blast to the Z on the chest should kill them. And, sometimes it does. There’s putties that duck, and you have to duck and kick them to make them stand up, at which point you hit the Z to kill them. Oh my god, it’s like the TV show! I mean, that’s not strictly true. I should have said closer to the TV show. Hey, that’s progress, right? The problem is the name of the game is MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE. And that’s a lie, because it’s got nothing at all to do with the movie. I’m not being sarcastic, either. This isn’t your typical “what does THIS have to do with the movie?” situation, like asking why Marty McFly is throwing bowling balls in the Back to the Future game. I mean literally zero events that happen in the movie happen in the game. It’d be like if you called Mortal Kombat 1 “The Boys” because Homelander is in it. That’s not how it works.

I watched Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie about 5,000 times as a child, and I must have slept through the scene where the Rangers run through a missile silo with ICBMs launching all around them all 5,000 times. Maybe it was a deleted scene that happened after the sky diving but before the rollerblading.

What’s particularly amazing is the movie has actual set pieces that seem like they would lend themselves perfectly to a video game. The fight in the construction site with Ivan Ooze’s Oozemen? Doesn’t happen, and the Oozemen aren’t in the game. Traveling to another planet? Doesn’t happen, though something kinda sorta not really similar to Dulcea shows up, but then goes away. Fighting the dinosaur skeletons? That doesn’t happen, and there’s no skeletons in the game. Fighting the stone gargoyles to retrieve the great power? Doesn’t happen, and THEY’RE not in the game. Battling Ivan Ooze’s Ecto-Morphicons with Zords? Not only does that not happen, but THERE ARE NO PLAYABLE ZORDS IN THIS GAME! What kid in 1995 would have wanted a Power Rangers game where the Zords don’t show up until literally the last second? Ivan Ooze is the only aspect of the movie that shows up, and there’s no level before you get to him, making this feel like it was stitched on at the last second. Once you defeat him, you have to do a Metroid-like “ESCAPE BEFORE THE BOMB GOES OFF” sequence. At the very end of that, with one second to go on the countdown, Ninja Megazord’s hand reaches out and grabs you, ending the entire game. ONLY their hand, then a picture of a celebrating Megazord before the end credits. Absolutely shameful.

Imagine the disappointment of children. It actually is a little heartbreaking.

Really, this should have been called “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 2” and the last boss should have been Lord Zedd. That’s who all the kids would have wanted to defeat at the end anyway. You know, the villain who stuck around for a year and didn’t die in his literal second encounter with the Rangers? I’d be a LOT more forgiving if this had been Power Rangers 2. It sure as sh*t wouldn’t feel like a sleazy, cynical con-job that targets children, which is exactly what this is. There’s aspects of Power Rangers: The Movie for the SNES that are a big positive. Especially the set-pieces. They have NOTHING to do with any episode of Power Rangers at all, but they’re fun settings once you get past the ultra-bland first level. Even the commonplace evil space factory setting that every game like this has is well done. There’s a snowboarding section that turns into a surfing section that honestly isn’t bad. Also, this time around, when you beat the putties, they drop little lightning bolts that fill up your power meter. When the meter fills up, it’s Morphin Time! And now, YOU control when to morph, which is so much more immersive. The graphics are better, and there actually are a couple good levels. It just takes a while to get to them.

One major annoyance is that they’ve slowed down the demorphed attacks. In the first SNES game, Zack and Kimberly were the two best characters because they had fast punches and kicks. In the sequel, Kimberly’s quick striking is replaced with a very slow slap. Because she’s a girl, you see, and girls slap. Even superhero girls who say a magic word that transforms them into superheroes who pilots gigantic robots.

The biggest gameplay change by far is the fact that there’s now two planes of existence. You use L and R to hop between the foreground and background. This could have been SO satisfying if they had allowed you to spring off bad guys when you do the transition. Well, they got it halfway right. While you do damage enemies if you flip onto them while switching planes, you also take damage yourself every time. You can’t press a button to turn that move into a dropkick. Having thought about it, it might have been too easy, but who cares? For the second straight SNES game, I didn’t have to cheat, because MMPR: The Movie is a cinch. I did lose a few lives this time, since instead of having a massive health meter, you get five hits and only five hits. While the background/foreground thing is a welcome addition, it also causes severe pacing problems. Bad guys and even bosses will hop back and forth between them, and since there’s a big pause while you flip up and down, it completely wrecks the game’s tempo.

Magnet Brain was the worst boss in the game, easily. It took FOREVER to hit him because he was constantly swapping back and forth. He also has the ability to push you backwards. I guess the Rangers are magnetic.

The other problem is that the Rangers now feel even more interchangeable than in the first game. Hell, they even use the same sprites as before. This time, you only get your weapons if, after you morph, you gather enough lightning bolts to fill your power meter again. Until then, all six rangers have identical punches, including an uppercut that’s done by holding UP when you punch. Once you fill your meter up, you regain your weapon, but only temporarily. The meter automatically activates and begins to drain. This is also the bomb, too, and if you want to use the bomb, you have to use it before the meter runs out. Oddly, it doesn’t matter WHERE in the meter you activate it, so it’s a viable option to wait until the very last sliver of energy remains before hitting the bomb button. All boss battles except Ivan Ooze will occasionally have large energy refills fly across the screen, but not fast enough to not help make the boss battles anything but a slog.

The sixth boss isn’t even from the TV show or anything. Just, f*ck it, it’s Mother Brain. Why not? Between this and the “escape the bomb” finale, I feel like people at Natsume were pleading with Nintendo to rescue them from this.

I wouldn’t actually go so far as to say Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie for the SNES is a bad game. It does feel like a cruel trick played on children. Nobody could complain about the total lack of connection to the film if they had just called this Power Rangers 2. They opened themselves to scathing complaints, and for what? Power Ranger fans would have been interested in this game either way. There was nothing to be gained from calling it “The Movie” except ridicule for not having anything from the movie except a shoehorned last boss. But, that’s not why I’m giving it a NO! I’m doing that because every single improvement made over the SNES original was undone by bad game design decisions, and because the combat is just plain boring. They didn’t improve that part at all. If anything, it feels worse this time, as the plane switching can slow things down so much and make boss battles miserable. Even though it’s a gameplay improvement over the first SNES Power Rangers, it also feels even less connected to the franchise. Not just the movie, but the larger media property. “This could have been anything” is common in 8-bit/16-bit licensed games, but this is nearly as removed from the source material as such all-time laughing stocks as the NES Back to the Future or Platoon (WTF, they made Platoon? PLATOON? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?). Imagine a 6 year old child in 1995 who gets this game, and it’s not based on the movie, and it doesn’t have any Megazord battles. Just tell them Megazord went to a peace conference, which is where this game ought to go.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released July, 1995
Designed by Yoshihide Ando
Developed by SIMS Co. Ltd
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

See that little red dot on the edge of the screen? That’s the boss. Do you enjoy brawling games where enemies are constantly either invulnerable or running off screen, past where you can scroll? Doesn’t that sound fun, having the enemies be out of sight?

Power Rangers: The Movie for the Sega Genesis DOES follow the movie’s storyline. For, like, the first two levels. Then it goes back to Season Two stuff. And.. it’s the worst 16-bit Final Final/Streets of Rage style brawler I’ve ever played. I mean HOLY CRAP, wow. It’s actually jaw-dropping how boring this game is. Want to know what to expect? At one point in the second level, you fight NINETEEN of the same one baddie, the ooze monsters from the film’s construction scene, who have been the game’s only bad guy up to this point. Each cycle of fights has a strict 60 second timer (it’s 45 seconds if you want to play on hard). Now, that section of NINETEEN enemies (I mean seriously, what the hell?) only happens in the second level, but mind you, about twenty seconds of that gets eaten up waiting for the enemies to become vulnerable to attack. They enter the screen as invulnerable puddles, then they swap back and forth between the puddles and the humanoid forms. ON TOP OF THAT, one of your attacks is grabbing, which does the least damage and creates an extended gap before you can attack again since you’re throwing the enemies away from you. This move, which you absolutely DO NOT want to do, happens automatically when the enemies get near you. Oh, and the baddies grab you too and their favorite tactic is to get behind you while you’re fighting another one an interrupt your attack.

You think I was exaggerating about enemies lingering off screen? Those white lines are the enemy firing at me. This is the absolute pits.

This is such a weird game in general in terms of structure. You start off with terrible action bits taken from the movie, fight two of Ivan Ooze’s giant robots as either Ninja Megazord or the Falconzord, then it cuts back to the beginning of Season Two with Jason, Zack, and Trini back and piloting the Thunderzords. Yes, you can actually play as the three peace conferenced Rangers in the middle of the game, before they go on strike leave for a peace conference and their powers are given to scabs three new teenagers with attitude who will work for $40,000 a year. Then it switches back to Rocky, Aisha, and Adam for the finale. I wish anything along that journey was fun, but MMPR: The Movie for Genesis has some of the worst enemy AI I’ve seen. Because of the strict time limit and the fact that enemies, especially the bosses, tend to linger off screen, most of the parts that should be the exciting, cinematic parts are instead your character standing at the edge of the screen blindly mashing buttons and hoping they hit. It’s always fun to play video games against enemies who run away from you, or in the case of Goldar, fly above you.

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Oh and speaking of running away, the fights with Goldar don’t end, because Goldar never dies. Fair enough. I guess that’s true to the show. But then in the grand finale against the final Ivan Ooze robot, which looks nothing like the robot Ivan infects in the movie, you don’t get the satisfaction of finishing HIM off either. He flies away before his last tick of battle, THEN you input your initials, then a final cutscene happens where you knock Ooze into the comet. But they cut out the gag where they knee Ivan Ooze in the balls, like in the film, because that would have probably taken a lot of extra effort to animate. Instead, they clumsily play fight until the comet arrives. There’s also a hidden boss battle against Lord Zedd, for no reason, in the middle of one of the stages. You have to smash a rock that reveals a cave that he’s inside. You fight him by attacking his hand, and then.. the level just continues. What. The. F*ck? And it even uses the exact same sprite for Zedd as the cutscenes do. It’s really remarkable how lazy this game is.

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The brawling action in Power Rangers: The Movie for Genesis is the bottom of the barrel for this genre. All the Rangers feel samey, and all of them have this powered-up hurricane kick that causes you damage to utilize. That changes to a powerful sword strike if you’re a Megazord. While it does have decently impactful OOMPH, it’s really boring because it really is just walking right and fighting one enemy type until you get to a boss. There’s no set pieces at all, really, and nothing to break up the action except boss battles. The only bone it throws is a couple times it puts a reusable barrel you can throw at enemies. Then the second-to-last level has flaming rocks rain from the sky that kill you and the putties. Since there’s so little variety, even if the combat had been good, this game would have fated to earn a NO! because it would have worn thin quickly. But the combat is really bad. The grabbing is too sensitive. Hell, at one point I grabbed an enemy falling onto the stage before his fall animation was complete, like he teleported into my arms. That’s how sensitive it is. It’s absolutely bonkers, and it’s ALWAYS unwelcome because the throwing eats up that precious time.

What a stupid idea to block the view in the Megazord battles with an overpass.

Without hyperbole, I actually had a much better time playing the Game Boy or, yes, even the Sega CD versions of Power Rangers than I did Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie on Genesis. As bored as I was playing those, they didn’t make me angry. And hell, the Super NES version looks like Ocarina of Time compared to this. Remove any one horrible deal-breaking element in this game, and it wouldn’t be enough to improve “The Movie” on Genesis because there’s so many other deal breaking elements. There’s not enough basic enemies. I counted two models total: putties and ooze monsters, and from what I could tell, there’s no variations between them. They all fight and act the same. So, that’s a deal breaker. The strict timer is also a deal breaker, given the sheer volume of enemies and the fact that they actively linger at the edges of the screen. The constant grabbing, by you and the enemies like it’s a heavyweight boxing match is a deal breaker. The fact that lining-up to even land a strike is. I could swear many times I was punching right through enemies despite being lined-up perfectly with them. I have nothing positive to say about this. It’s underrated only in the sense that it belongs on any worst licensed game list. It’s telling that the closest I came to smiling was seeing Serpentera in the background of a level. Then I smiled again when the game ended and it never showed up again. I didn’t want the game to ruin it too.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Platform: Sega Game Gear
Released July, 1995
Directed by Koji Ishitani and Takanobu Terada
Developed by SIMS Co. Ltd
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Well, this is heartbreaking. The Game Gear version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie just copies the engine from the first Game Gear game, shrinks the roster, removes the choices from Megazord battles, and adds a power move that’s almost never useful halfway through the campaign on the normal difficulty. Seriously, the AI blocks it or avoids it every time. Unlike the previous Game Gear title, I got bored this time around really quick. First off, I’ve basically already played it. Second, it’s nowhere near as clever with the pacing, as only the first two levels really feel like they’re structured like the TV show. Level four is just Ooze Men of increasing sponginess. Third, the AI is much tougher on NORMAL difficulty. Fourth, the roster of monsters you fight are just so random and uninspired. Finally, when you get to THE MOVIE part in level four and face the Ivan Ooze clones, there’s so many of them that I almost turned off the game. That’s the entire level and it’s SO boring. I might as well have quit, since the game ends with two fights using Ninja Falcon Megazord where your special moves are so worthless that you’re forced to just spam kicking and hope for the best. I was so bored playing this that I wondered if I made a horrible mistake earlier. So, I went back and checked the Game Gear original and it just FEELS better. I don’t know what went wrong here, but this rehash feels like the same type of cynical cash grab that plagues this franchise’s video game output.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Platform: Game Boy – Super Game Boy Enhanced
Released August, 1995
Directed by Hitoshi Muto
Developed by Tom Create Co.
Published by Bandai
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Jumping over a couple rocks is as complicated as the first stage gets. Two straight Game Boy games like that.

I’m stunned by how many of these Power Rangers games feature no playable Zords. They don’t even make a cameo in the Game Boy version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. What were any of these developers thinking? “Kids watch the show for the costumes and the karate, not the kickass giant combining robots. If we know anything about children, and we must know something since companies keep hiring us to make games for them, it’s that the kickass giant combining robots has very little to do with the success of the show.” Not that any of the Megazord battles in any of these games have been amazing or anything, but doing a Power Rangers game without Zords is like doing a Superman game without flying. It’s what defines the characters. Even the worst Superman games have gotten this, including the coin-op by Taito that’s awful. It’d be STUPID to make a Superman game without flying, because nobody would want that Superman game. And it’s stupid to make Power Rangers without the Zords.

Oh don’t worry. That’s not lava. It’s just bubbling water. With the Super Game Boy, whatever Ranger you pick, the stage is re-colored to match, with sometimes confusing results.

Like its Super NES big brother, this is technically an improvement over the original, and for the same reason: there’s actual set pieces this time. The combat is still awful and, this time around, often unresponsive, but hey, progress! Like the SNES game, you now manually morph when you fill-up your energy meter. Unlike the SNES version, when you fill the meter up a second time, you can activate the bomb it grants you at any time. Using it on bosses takes half their energy, and since you can’t get more energy against the bosses, you might as well save it until then. Once you’re morphed, all the putties are slain in a single hit. Sometimes they back away from you and refuse to be hit, but on the off chance you actually take damage, don’t worry: they drop life refills constantly. They also drop lightning bolts that give you a lot more energy than a single box, but I didn’t find this out until the fourth of six levels. It took that long for such a drop to happen. Oh, and you can take levels 1 – 5 in any order, even though they actually scale in difficulty as if they were linear. This includes the bosses. What was the point in letting players choose?

This bit here is ridiculous because of that middle section. You’re racing against spikes by punching through a tunnel filled with dirt. Sometimes you do a punch, and sometimes you do a kick. It depends on the sequence you use. Also this would have been an exciting set-piece if they cut the length of it by half. It just kept going and ended up boring for it.

“The Movie” is a masterpiece compared to the original Game Boy title. There’s actual effort in the level design. There’s even one of those “pick a door, any door” type of labyrinth stages, though it’s not THAT hard to find your way through it. There’s a section where you ride a hoverboard, and some average but fine platforming bits. All the bosses but Ivan Ooze rise to the level of decent, though any goodwill that would have earned the game is undone by the area before the battle with Ivan Ooze being a boss rush where you fight them all again. Still, if the combat were better, I’d probably been inclined to give MMPR: The Game Boy Movie a YES! But that combat is just too basic, too repetitive, and too inelegantly programmed to make this a fun game. It really speaks to how badly made the first Game Boy Rangers adventure was that The Movie could improve upon it by several factors and still not even be a good game. The best thing I can say about it is that they’re on an upward trajectory right before Game Boy as a brand takes over as the home of yearly Power Rangers releases. Here’s hoping the two Game Boy Color and five Game Boy Advance Power Rangers games are halfway decent.
Verdict: NO!

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September, 1995
Designed by Kunio Suzuki
Developed by Natsume
Published by Bandai
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I feel unclean all of a sudden.

Oh, hey wait. I get it. THIS is why there’s no Zords in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie for the SNES. “If the little bastards want to play with giant robots, they can pay extra for it.” I’m guessing I’m right on this one, and that they left the Zords out of The Movie to incentivize SNES kids to buy this game. Gross. Unlike the previous fighting-centric games for the Genesis and Game Gear, this one has no Rangers at all. This is 100% giant robots and rubber suit monsters. The best way I can describe this is “imagine Street Fighter II where every character is a Zangief-type of heavy.” Hey, the OOMPH is fantastic, but the combat is slow and dull. The big innovation is this “power meter” that looks like the type of gauge you would see in a golfing video game that quickly fills up and resets non-stop during battles. If you execute a special move at the very moment it fills up all the way, you “level-up” and hit harder. You can’t even say “this sounds good in theory” because the inevitable result, especially if you’re playing with mostly fighting game novices like myself and my family, is just fumbling with trying to execute special moves at “the right time” instead of just enjoying the fight.

Taking a page from the Genesis game, the battle with Ivan Ooze isn’t entertaining at all because he spends most of the fight flying in the corner of the screen, where you can’t even enjoy the satisfaction of seeing him get hit. What a truly awful fighting game. Serpentera is slumming it in these games. Coolest thing in the history of the show and they couldn’t even figure out something fun for it in the games. “Eh, just shove it in the background. Kids don’t watch the show for the giant robots, remember?”

While the fighting is plodding, what really irked me is that the roster is absolutely pitiful. Eight total fighters. Nine with a secret code that lets you play as Ivan Ooze. In the campaign mode, your only options are Thunder Megazord and Mega Tigerzord. Mind you, Ninja Megazord and the gigantic Shogun Megazord are in the game, but not available for the campaign mode. Instead, YOU FIGHT them. Yea, the roster is so thin of Zedd & Rita’s monsters that you actually have to fight nearly as many Zords as you do the monsters. Four battles are against other Megazords (including a mirror match), while five are against Goldar (naturally), Lord Zedd, and Ivan Ooze. The other two spots go to Silver Horns, which is fine because he was the monster of the week in one of the most important episodes ever, where Rocky/Aisha/Adam become Rangers. The final roster spot? Lip Syncer, aka Trini’s tube of lipstick turned evil. And that’s the whole roster. F*ck you, game. This is the most depressing Definitive Review I’ve done yet, because as a gaming franchise, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has to be one of the worst. A series of lazy and cynical cash-grabs. I have to stop here for my own sanity.
Verdict: NO!

One of these days, I’ll do the Game Boy Color/Advance games, but I think I’m Rangered out for the next decade or so.

The Simpsons Video Games: The Definitive Review Part Two – The Five Simpsons Games of 1992 for DOS, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, & Sega Game Gear

The response to part one of The Simpsons: The Definitive Review was great, and I can’t thank everyone enough. That’s why I threw in a bonus review at the bottom of this. The bonus review isn’t a Simpsons game, but it sort of is. If you got to this review by searching for a certain earthy DC superhero, that review is at the bottom. It actually belongs with this one. So, with that, on with the reviews! In this feature:

  • The Simpsons: Bart’s House of Weirdness – DOS
  • Krusty’s Super Fun House – Super NES & Genesis, and a million other ports.
  • The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Juggernauts – Game Boy
  • The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare – Super NES & Sega Genesis
  • The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man – NES & Game Gear
  • Swamp Thing (Yes, it makes sense!) – NES

REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

The Simpsons: Bart’s House of Weirdness
Platform: DOS
Released January 1, 1992
Developed by Distinctive Software
Published by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Thanks to salmonmoose for being my Troy McClure and giving me a crash course in early 90s computer monitors. I remember you from such gaming questions as “is Link mute or just shy?” and “Joycon Drift: user error or cunning plot to swindle billions?”

If any Simpsons game could be classified as “forgotten” it’s probably Bart’s House of Weirdness. I’d never heard of it before starting this project. That’s mostly due to the platform. Very few home computer games of the early 90s were played universally enough to be topics of modern gaming discussion. The ones that are tend to be upper-echelon stuff like Doom, Myst, or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Anything below that and forget about it. House of Weirdness certainly isn’t at that level. I bet another part of that is the confused nature of the game. It looks like it could be a point and click game. From the screenshots I saw, I was expecting something similar to Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. But actually, Bart’s House of Weirdness is a rudimentary platforming-shooter where you guide Bart through seven very short levels. My first impressions were, jeez, this looks great! Seriously, it looks just like the TV show. Funny enough, it didn’t utilize a VGA output, even if you find a version online labeled as such. The two options players get are MCGA and EGA. The MCGA looks SIGNIFICANTLY better. That’s the one to do, trust me.

The “House of Weirdness” in question is, in fact, the Simpsons’ house. Bart is grounded and sent to his room, which acts as the game’s hub. The first six levels come in pairs of two that can be taken in any order. Defeating both levels gives you an extra power item. No matter which area you choose first, right off the bat, the problem with Bart’s House of Weirdness will become evident: total douchebag placement of baddies and Castlevania-like extreme knock-back from taking damage. Weirdness’ exploration is done one screen at a time, and its favorite party trick is having an enemy be immediately on the other side of the screen when you scroll, kicking you back to the previous screen. This happens in Mr. Burns’ courtyard, where you have literally less than a second to react to an angry goose on the other side of the screen. If you don’t, you fly back to the previous screen.

You can tell this is early in the Simpsons run, because a goose is so random.

It’s such a boring and unimaginative way of creating difficulty, but the game largely relies on it. In fact, there’s several sections of House of Weirdness where taking damage is so inevitable that I honestly believe the game is designed that way deliberately. The best example is in what should be the stage’s 3rd chronological level, “Space Mutant Madness.” And note that’s NOT the same as the stage where you go to watch the Space Mutants movie. In this level, you need a raygun to kill the enemies, which take 2 to 3 shots each. You pick up the gun in the first screen, but you only get 10 bullets per pick-up. While there’s more refills along the way, the game simply doesn’t provide enough shots in the path to the level’s goal to deal with the aliens. They’re humongous, so you can’t jump over them, and you often have to start shooting as soon as you enter the screen since the first one is right there. Again, the game is designed almost entirely around the knock-back. I tried to cheese it and just accept damage along the way, but it’s not possible. There’s just too many unavoidable enemies. Thankfully, items respawn every time you re-enter a stage, including health refills but excluding extra lives.

Bart vs. The Space Mutants II: DOS Bart.

So, obviously you have to grind-up ammo in the first screen, right? The catch is there’s a GOTCHA alien that rides in on the train tracks. When you start the level, you can dodge that alien from the direction you’re walking, BUT, you can’t dodge it from the other side. Also, getting hit by the train causes more damage than normal. Even the guide at GameFAQs notes that the only logical way to beat the level is to shore-up ammo by deliberately getting hit by the space mutant on the second screen, which does less damage than the alien on the train does, then use your invincibility to grab the ammo. Now granted, Bart’s House of Weirdness has tons of life refills (and a few extra lives that aren’t hard to get) but this is still just very dull game design that could have easily been fixed by putting more item drops along the way. On the plus side, the entire level is only 10 screens big and you get your life back in full when you complete a stage. Fitting for a game with “Weirdness” is the title, some of the decisions on when and where to add “challenge” are strange. They do lots of GOTCHAs, but they’re also very generous with health.

This is the section in question. You have to heel-toe to avoid getting hit when the level starts. I’ve never been a fan of GOTCHA! style game design. There’s nothing clever about it. It’s not something the player can reason out. It’s uncouth.

You can carry two types of items at a time. One is a form of a gun, like the above mentioned raygun or a slingshot. while the other is either water balloons or bug spray. If you’re carrying bug spray, NEVER swap it for the water balloons since they’re mostly useless. The bug spray is needed to complete several areas, but supplies along the way are limited, so you’ll want to avoid using it to kill any enemies that you can just as easily shoot with the gun-like weapons or just avoid altogether. Like the Space Mutants level above? The bug spray is the only thing that kills the robots in that level, and while the space mutants are optional to kill, the robots are not. The logic of using bug spray to kill robots is silly, but then later you fight a giant spider, and guess what you don’t use to kill it? No, that you shoot with a suction cup dart, because to hell with logical game design. Bug spray? Working on a big bug? What, do you think we’re running a preschool here?

Most of the pits are instakill. But, when you fall into the radioactive sludge in the sewer, you just get a reset with a tiny bit of health missing. There’s no consistency to the rules at all. You’ll want to play this one with save states, but don’t bother saving making incremental progress. Just save at the start of each level and use that. Deaths send you back to Bart’s room anyway.

For all my whining, Bart’s House of Weirdness has had me on the fence. In fact, as I type this, I still haven’t made my final decision on it. There’s some quality gaming to be had here. As annoying as the gotcha-like design is, the exploration is very satisfying, and hell, I even liked how short the levels are. I certainly can’t say they overstayed their welcome. I liked the variety of the scenarios, even if that variety is a little bit of smoke and mirrors. Of those first six levels, only “I Wanna Go to the Movies” has you searching to collect objects. You have to collect five coins, then jump up where it says theater admission. This is one of the two twenty-screen stages, and probably the most difficult of those original six. But, you’ll want to take it first anyway, since the platforming is limited and the super items won’t be of much help to you.

Despite what Mr. Burns is saying, this is NOT the final challenge. In fact, this is only the mid-point of this level. I get a feeling this might be a relic of an earlier build where Burns’ Mansion was the final area of the entire game. The length of this stage, combined with it having spongier enemies and more GOTCHAS! than any other stage gives “I Wanna Go to the Movies” a climatic vibe that I couldn’t shake.

The other five stages are simply a journey to the goal, which is represented by the facade of an item. In “The Quest for Maggie’s Ball” you go from your treehouse to the roof and then down into the sewers, where you hop across barrels until you reach the ball. It’s the other twenty-screen level. Completing those two stages gives you a red hat. It doesn’t actually appear on your character sprite, but having it shrinks your collision box and puts a shield where your head is, which nerfs the remaining stages by quite a bit. I recommend going into Bart’s closet next, the location of “Space Mutant Madness” which I already talked about. Walk right, shoot aliens, spray robots, watch for manholes, and get the alien cookbook. In “Too Much T.V.” you actually go inside an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, a concept that will be recycled in Bart’s Nightmare. In this level, you can’t harm the violent cat & mouse duo and have to sprint to the finish. This was easily my least favorite stage, as it’s purely avoiding objects, and it’s not well done. The action is too fast, and the challenge isn’t logical. Like, for example, you take damage from Scratchy’s mallet even when it’s resting behind him and not being actively “swung.” Thankfully, at nine screens, this is one of the shorter levels. Finishing Space Mutants and Too Much T.V. gives you shoes that double your jumping ability.

See the mallet at rest? Yea, that’ll hurt you. The action moves so fast and frantically in this level that it’s often hard to tell what’s killing you or not. Even when Itchy & Scratch aren’t physically on screen, bombs rain down continuously in this stage, and they have BIG splash damage. It’s simply too frantic. Slowing the pace down would have made this intense by making players plot their movement carefully. This violates Hitchcock’s suspense/intensity principle. The happenings are so rapid-fire that you don’t even have time to process things like excitement or thrills.

“Grave Danger in the Basement” sees you fighting evil mothballs, bugs, the Babysitter Bandit, and skeletons, while “Secret in the Attic” has you avoiding bugs and bats before pitting you against a giant spider. Beating them gives you a pair of sunglasses that I never figured out what they do. Attic, along with Maggie’s Ball could be considered the platforming areas of the first six levels, and the level design often isn’t suitable for platforming. This becomes especially apparent in the final stage, “Adventures in Krustyland” where you must fight Sideshow Bob. This level opens with a vertical climb up a waterfall with logs. This section is so rancid that it almost ruined the game. It’s a three-screen-tall climb with logs that come out in different parts, forcing you to zig-zag as you jump. The logs barely move slower than you’re capable of jumping, causing progress to happen in teeny tiny increments. This would be frustrating by itself, but we’re just getting started.

When you make the transition between screens, there might not be anything for you to land on. The steady pace of the logs falling resets each screen. THEN, when you get to the top, you have to basically jump in place for a minute or two just to squeak out literal fractions of inches at a time to give you enough room to jump to the platform. Except, no, you have to do it twice. See, in order to beat Sideshow Bob, you need thirteen shots with a special weapon. And, what do you know? There are exactly thirteen shots in the stage, and the waterfall requires you to jump on both sides of it to get one and continue on. Any other flaw in the game I can spin in my head as gamesmanship by the designers. Not this. It’s just plain stupidity and should be either significantly nerfed or cut from the game altogether.

If you do reach the top, your reward is a brief tribute to Pitfall! It even has similar timing.

And then, in the final battle of the game, you literally cannot miss one shot on Sideshow Bob. Even worse is the fact that you have to shoot diagonally. If the waterfall is the biggest flaw in the game, the second biggest flaw is how tough it is to shoot at an angle. No jumping and shooting allowed. I couldn’t find a single satisfactory configuration for aiming diagonally. Even a keyboard didn’t work every time. That’s why I’ve been struggling so much to decide my verdict. As gorgeous as Bart’s House of Weirdness is, and it’s STUNNING for this era, it’s also one very inelegantly designed game. And yet, I was compelled to vote YES! on Bart’s House of Weirdness for three reasons. (#1) It doesn’t feel cynical at all. I didn’t get “quick cash-in” vibes from it. It has a sincerity to it, like these are exactly the types of “adventures” Bart would go on. (#2) The game flies by so quickly and isn’t really ever boring along the way, except for that waterfall part. Admittedly, that’s beyond the pale and inexcusable, but that’s the only area like that.

There’s really no way to fight Sideshow Bob without taking damage. You just have to make it to him with full health and then allow yourself to get hit once for every three shots you get on him. Miss once and you have to start the whole level over. Or, save and reload at the beginning of the fight. It’s what I did. It’s such crap design that I literally can’t believe what I’m about to do. The old me would have torn this game a new asshole. I’ve gone soft.

(#3) This is one of those instances where a game is VASTLY improved thanks to modern emulation shenanigans like save states and rewind. I wouldn’t ever want to play Bart’s House of Weirdness on its own terms. It’s too sloppily designed, and sloppiness equals frustration. If this was included in a Simpsons collection that didn’t include emulation bells & whistles, my rating would change from a cautious yet enthusiastic “you have GOT to play this game” YES! to a solid, angry “what the HELL were they thinking?!” NO! Without emulation trickery, I don’t think most people would have fun with it, or even if they did, all their goodwill would be burned away during the final level, with its miserable platforming and a boss fight that feels like an unfinished beta. Literally not allowed to miss a single shot? That’s not normally done in video games for a reason. It’s TOO MUCH, especially in a game this haphazardly designed. If you didn’t have emulation, enjoy that climb up the waterfall, because you actually do have to start the entire level again. BUT, if you have the ability to set your own terms, actually, this really is a diamond in the rough. The first six stages each successfully feel unique from one another and they’re so enjoyable to experience. And frankly, the game is a charmer. For all its many, MANY flaws, I finished this three times in the making of this review and I only got bored during those waterfall parts. This might actually be a bad game, but all I’ve ever cared about is having fun, and actually, I had a lot of fun with Bart’s House of Weirdness, warts and all.
Verdict: YES!
And seriously, indie developers: play this game. I think you’ll get inspired by it. Hey Konami?! How about a long-lost sequel themed around Treehouse of Horror?

Krusty’s Fun House
aka Krusty’s Super Fun House

Platform: NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, SMS, SNES, Sega Genesis
16-Bit Release: June, 1992

8-Bit Release September, 1992
Reskin of Rat Trap by Audiogenic
Designed by Fox Williams
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

For purposes of my sanity, I only played the SNES version past the first couple levels.

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Krusty’s Fun House, super or otherwise, is like a platformer mixed with a simplified form of Lemmings. Playing as Krusty, you have to hop around while arranging the terrain to lure a handful of mice to a contraption to be comically but sadistically exterminated. Well, that’s messed up. I’ve never said to myself “do you know what’s missing in puzzle games? Animal cruelty.” Action games maybe. RPGs for sure. But not puzzlers. It’s also one of the toughest games to review, because it doesn’t technically do anything wrong. The puzzles work, and the controls are intuitive, and it’s got a novel premise. And it’s so boring. Like seriously, this is one of those games that is just exhausting in how competently joyless it is.

Do you like waiting for elevators? You’re in for a treat, you f*cking weirdo!

The problem is obvious: the levels are simply MASSIVE, but most of the actual puzzle parts of those levels rarely are. The object of each stage is to create a pathway that leads the mice to an extermination contraption that brutally, painfully kills them. It’s okay. I think they’re alien mice. The process usually involves finding and retrieving blocks one at a time from somewhere in the labyrinthine layouts and placing them in a way where they form a staircase. The mice can only climb up platforms as high as one of their own body lengths, which is how big the blocks are. There’s also blocks that launch the mice in a straight line until they’re stopped by another wall, and blocks that are parts of pipe structures that the mice can go through. It’s not the worst premise, but levels are so absurdly big that the act of retrieving the blocks feels like busy work. Maybe it’s a personal preference, but I like my puzzle design to be tight. Here, just figuring out what exactly the puzzle is in any specific room can take a while. And you HAVE to explore, because sometimes there’s switches in the room that open up the remaining levels in the hub world.

(shrug) It’s technically okay. And boring. So very, very boring.

Krusty’s Fun House is one of those games that has a tone problem, with two gameplay genres that are at odds with each-other. The comically enormous stages seem to only exist to justify the platforming aspect of the game, but that’s the really boring part. The combat isn’t particularly exciting. You get pies to throw at enemies, but there’s no satisfaction in them. There’s superballs like in Mario Land, but you need to save those for solving the puzzles. There’s also seemingly no on-screen indicator of how much damage you’ve taken. Cobras spit at you. Lasers shoot you. You take damage from falling too high. Oh, I never died. Actually, I’m not even sure where the breaking point is when it comes to the damage. If the game tells you, it’s so subtle that I never noticed. I’m just baffled that this exists because it doesn’t do anything wrong, but it also doesn’t do anything right, either. The set pieces certainly aren’t pleasing. For a “fun house” this really isn’t very whimsical. Which, actually, I suppose that fits the Krusty the Clown character. Instead, you spend a lot of time aimlessly searching, or just waiting, either FOREVER for elevators or FOREVER for the mice. Sometimes the mechanics of the puzzle are laid out where you might have to work a single mouse at time into the contraption, then start over and redo it for each one.

I ended up putting in a password and playing later levels to see if it got more interesting. It just got more convoluted.

There’s also no way to speed up the mice. I often complain when a classic game collection is missing rewind. If a Simpsons game collection happened and included Krusty’s Fun House, I’d be pissed if fast forward wasn’t an option. This is the first retro review I’ve done in a very long time where I used it to speed up the action. This is also the first game in a long time that I didn’t come close to finishing. I had to quit, because I was afraid my Definitive Review would end here. Any other game looked good after this one. By the midway point of the second world, I hadn’t so much as cracked a smile, and if by that point the game hasn’t gotten to “the good stuff” it’s never going to. The weird thing is, nobody would call Krusty’s Fun House the worst Simpsons game, but it’s certainly the worst to review. Not bad enough to be interesting. Not fun enough to make the playthrough worthwhile. “You know, for a clown, you’re not really a lot of fun.” By golly, there really is a Simpsons line for every occasion.
Verdict: NO!

The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Juggernauts
Platform: Game Boy
Released September, 1992
Designed by Dan Kitchen & Barry Marx
Developed by Imagineering
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Moe’s Tavern Shove Fest, one of seven mini-games that make up Bart vs. The Juggernauts that sees you trying to push the female Juggernaut, then Barney Gumble, off Moe’s pool table. This made for a good screenshot, but when I discovered the running headbutt was almost never blocked or countered by the Juggernaut or by Barney, this event became the easiest one to win quickly.

Bart vs. The Juggernauts would be the first Simpsons game that’s divided into a series of mini-games. This would ultimately end up being the direction the franchise would park in during the 16-bit era with Bart’s Nightmare (it’s up next, god help me) and Virtual Bart (coming in Part Three). The Juggernauts in question are a satire of American Gladiators, and actually, this is the first Simpsons game with writing that feels somewhat true to the show. There’s banter between Kent Brockman and Dr. Marvin Monroe between games that actually got me to giggle a couple times. As for the games, this is one of those “cartoonish sports” type of releases similar to the NES anti-classic Donald Duck/Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular. I’m not a fan of the genre. I think such games usually are filled with half-baked ideas that, at best, would be more suitable for LCD type of games. Case in point, the caption below.

“Krustyland Hammer Slammer” is exactly the type of spinning plate game you’d expect to find in an LCD game, or rather, this feels like a Game & Watch Gallery “modern” version of a simpler LCD. Here, four Juggernauts slowly climb down poles, but Bart can send them back up by hitting a carnival hammer that sends Krusty’s head straight up their ass. Once again, the Simpsons predicts the future. The “hit the hammer, knock person in the ass” bit would later be used in the second Jackass movie.

Easily the best game is Dr. Marvin Monroe’s Hop, Skip and Fry, which is sort of like playing basketball and The Floor is Lava at the same time. Which, hey, I love basketball and my mother and I used to annoy my father by declaring games of The Floor is Lava (or “Love-ah” as she STILL pronounces it. Yeesh, speak American, Mom!) whenever one of his television shows bored us. “Law & Order? THE FLOOR IS LOVE-AH!” In the game, the playfield is made up of a grid of randomly changing black and white tiles. Bart has to grab a ball and hop across the white squares to cross the playfield, where a basketball goal is. Every few seconds, the entire layout of the playfield changes all at once, and while you play, two of the Juggernauts hop around the white squares. Touching them sends you flying a few squares to the side where you may or may not land on one of the lethal black squares. When you get to the other side, you can shoot the ball, but you might as well then hold the A button down and get a running start at the basket, at which point Bart will automatically dunk it. You can also hold the A button down to skip over squares. After each goal, you have to cross the playfield to grab another ball, then continue the cycle until time’s up. It’s got problems but I’d call Hop, Skip and Fry fun.

My #1 complaint is the random nature of the playfield. Sometimes it changes in a way where you’re surrounded by double-black squares on all sides. That shouldn’t be possible, nor should it be possible for, when the change happens, that the square you’re standing still on turns black. If they hadn’t done it this way, Hop, Skip and Fry might have been the best mini-game this weirdly common wacky sports genre has seen.

The other games are all problematic for their own reasons. There’s two combat focused games. One is the above mentioned sumo wrestling on a pool table. The other is just the Joust event from American Gladiators, only it’s on top of the cooling towers of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Neither are particularly fun to play, but “Nuclear Power Plant Bop `Till You Drop” is the weakest, as it feels like a slower, clunkier Urban Champion. “Herman’s Military Minefield Mayhem” sees you parachuting past knife throwers before having to tip-toe across a minefield and crawl under barbed wire, all while having water balloons thrown at you. I didn’t enjoy the collision detection of the minefield portion at all. A skateboarding game satirizes Gladiator’s Human Cannonball event. In it, Bart has to build up momentum on his skateboard via button mashing and dodging obstacles, then you fly off a ramp and deliver a flying dropkick into the Juggernaut.

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Finally, there’s “Kwik-E-Mart Doggie Dodge” which feels like it might have been intended to be a level in Escape From Camp Deadly that got deleted. It’s a totally normal platform game level where you have to jump over dogs and swing across pits. Even though you start the level facing right, you’re supposed to actually go left. I didn’t know this and spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to knock down a wall, which didn’t exactly put me in a good mood. There’s also a bonus game where you throw weights down onto a Juggernaut’s barbell. Really, none of these games are god awful by any means, but only one I’d call unambiguously fun. The rest are bland and forgettable. There’s also a system in place where you have to get a target dollar figure to move on to the next week, but the games don’t really score high enough unless you play perfectly. There’s also no ELIMINATOR type of final challenge, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there had been. Bart vs. The Juggernauts isn’t a terrible game, but like most Game Boy titles from this era, it wasn’t designed to still be fun thirty years later.
Verdict: NO!

The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare
Platform: Super NES & Sega Genesis
Released October 12, 1992
Directed by Hal Rushton (SNES) Harald Seeley (Genesis)
Developed by Sculptured Software
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Again, I only did one version.

No, sorry, I don’t believe Bart Simpson would go on an adventure to get his homework back. Not even in his dreams. Suspension of disbelief gone. Verdict: NO! Bring on the next game. You know, I made that joke before I started actually playing the game. Now, I wish I had gone through with it.

The first 16-bit home Simpsons game is really five mini-games and a hub-world. For whatever reason, this is the settled-upon format for the rest of this generation, with the only traditional platformer being an Itchy & Scratchy game for the SNES. It’s as if the developers barnstormed all these high concept ideas, and decided to use EVERYTHING, only they didn’t play test anything to make sure it worked or was fun. Don’t rule out the possibility of that being what actually happened. The levels can be taken in any order, but you don’t really get full control over that order, since hub world is really about searching for the homework pages. The homework pages are caught in gusts of wind. Jumping into the pages gives you the option to choose one of two random-colored doors that take you to the nightmares. For whatever reason, the second level of Itchy & Scratchy requires a second page from the hub world. Get eight pages and that’s the end of the game. There’s no final level. Instead, you get a grade based on your score. You have to score 125,000 points to get the best ending. So, let’s look at the hub and five levels of Bart’s Nightmare individually. This ain’t going to be pretty.

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Hub World – The Streets of Springfield

In the hub world, you simply walk up and down a two-lane road, avoiding some enemies while jumping over others. You get a limited amount of watermelon seeds to spit at baddies, assuming that it even works. Sometimes I had to play FOREVER to get a page to appear. For the most part, the hub world spawns Jebediah Springfield heads, which you have to jump over to slay, and fairies shaped like Lisa that turn you into a frog. If this happens, you have to find an old lady to kiss you. When you take damage, you can blow bubble gum at the “Zzzzs” to add to your life, but only if you hit the z’s in a way where they hit your life bar. But, they scroll WITH you. It’s hard to explain but basically when you move, they move, and what do you know? They tend to linger outside the boundaries. If you jump over a basketball, you spawn a skateboard, but there’s subtle cracks in the sidewalk or various other debris that might knock you off one immediately. Oh, and school buses come out of nowhere on the street. This might be the worst hub world in gaming history. We’re off to a great start.

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Yellow Door – Itchy & Scratchy

Itchy & Scratchy enter the Simpsons’ house and try to kill Bart with various cartoon gags. Functionally, this round plays like a brawler/shooter. Both the cat and the mouse take turns running in with weapons, then retreat when you hit them once. After you repeat this a few times, you move to the next room. Along the way, you get various weapons, including a hammer, a toilet plunger gun, and even soda cans that you shake up. The problem with Bart’s Nightmare becomes obvious shortly into the Itchy & Scratchy segment: extreme difficulty. Much like with the Itchy & Scratchy level in Bart’s House of Weirdness, the action is too frantic. But I prefer the DOS game’s stage, because at least it’s not full of GOTCHA instakills. Even though you have a health bar, anything that has fire kills you in one shot. So naturally there’s a ton of background elements that do just this. The rules make no sense. A bomb can explode next to you that does a tiny sliver of damage, but an oven spits fireballs at you that kill you instantly. Oh, and the kitchen floor is slippery, like an ice level. The second page (which you start from the hub) is more of the same, only with mouse traps, more bombs, and knives as big as the screen. The only significant difference is you fight a furnace boss. This was pretty awful, with almost none of the instakill elements providing enough warning. While smashing Itchy & Scratchy with a hammer is satisfying, offering plenty of OOMPH, it’s just a sloppy half-assed brawler with bad movement physics.

Apparently the person who made this level never worked in gaming again. Good riddance.

Green Door – Bartzilla

Meet the worst game in the collection, and one of the worst video games ever made. Bartzilla is absolutely unplayable. An auto-scrolling game where you go on a rampage, only it’s next to impossible to aim your laser eyes and fire breath at ANYTHING! Helicopters and tanks fly in taking shots at you, but your lasers often go right past them, behind them, or THROUGH them. This seems to be because the obstacles are set at an isometric angle while YOU are walking in a straight horizontal line across the screen. The sheer unresponsiveness, combined with non-stop bullets and damage, led to me being unable to finish this EVEN WITH CHEATING! After twenty minutes, I gave up in despair of trying to make sense of the controls and consulted GameFAQs. Except even the literal guide couldn’t make sense of this either. I had to heel-toe my way through, rewinding frequently and mashing buttons multiple times to get the shots to actually go the direction I was pushing. Eventually, I made it to the next stage. Everyone involved in the production of Bart’s Nightmare should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this dumpster fire to reach shelves with this mini-game playing as it does.

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In the second part, you climb a building and dodge things thrown by pedestrians. Occasionally a giant Mom-thra will fly by that’s easy to avoid if you just stay near the bottom of the screen. When you reach the top, electrocute King Kong Homer and that’s the stage. This was as bland and basic as it gets, but at least it was quick and the controls, you know, responded to my commands. Oh and, when you reach the top, you have to come in from the right side because Homer is punching down on the left. I’ve never been a Crazy Climber fan, and this might actually be the worst version of that formula I’ve played.

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Blue Door – Bartman

I actually think Bartman was probably the best stage in the game. It’s good enough to reach the level of mediocre. In it, you fire a slingshot at various enemies and dodge hazards. The first three bosses are okay to fight and are probably the one and only highlight of Bart’s Nightmare. The rest of the game is pretty lazily designed and sort of awful. There’s really no PING to Bart’s bullets, but that’s fine because there’s really not a whole lot to shoot. It’s mostly Nelson, who flies in on a hang-glider. If not him, it’s clusters of rockets. There’s also storm clouds that chase you and radioactive clouds that feature TMNT-Dam-like impossible squeezes. These pretty much eroded any goodwill I had for the first three bosses. Then, the fight with Mr. Burns that caps off the whole thing is one of those uninspired “the boss dives in and you only have a split second to ping a teeny tiny bit of his health” types of battles that, by necessity, go on forever. It’s surreal that this still managed to be the best of the six games in Bart’s Nightmare by a hefty margin.

How sad is it that Mehtastic Voyage is the second best game in Bart’s Nightmare?

Purple Door – Bart’s Blood

Think of the Bloodstream level like Dig Dug……in…..SPAAAAAACE!! In it, you swim around, jab a syringe into germs, then pump them a few times to blow them up. The controls are horrible and the enemy bullets are often barely visible, which is made worse by the loud visuals in the background. When you pop the more advanced germs, Smilin’ Joe Fission icons float in from the bottom of the screen. Catch six of them to move on. If the controls were a little more responsive, and if the bullets were more visible, this might have joined Bartman and reached the level of mediocre blandness. The lack of visibility was the deal breaker on this one. It’s probably the easiest page to get, so if you’re going to attempt to beat Bart’s Nightmare, this might make a good confidence booster.

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Orange Door – Indiana Bart and the Temple of Maggie

Actually, I take it back about Bartzilla. THIS is the worst segment. I simply refuse to believe the people who made Bart’s Nightmare were proud of the finished product. This was the final insult. Here, you have to hop around various stones of various heights searching for a pathway to reach the end. When you hop on some stones, others pop-up. Jump on a stone that’s too low and you die. It’s never exactly clear what stones will raise up others, and finding yourself getting stuck with no possible move is common. Again, I decided to utilize the ability to rewind, and sometimes, even hopping around to all possible stones, I had to rewind five or six spaces backwards in order to create any potential to move a single stone forward. Once again, the controls are unresponsive, and like the Godzilla game, it’s hard to judge the angles because the action is set on an isometric plane (in this case, Maggie’s pacifier) while you’re not. It’s rare that I play a game so unplayable that it’s shameful, but everyone involved in Bart’s Nightmare should hang their heads in collective f’n shame. This is as bad as licensed games get. The first Simpsons game that feels like a cynical cash grab.
Verdict: NO!

The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man
Platform: NES, Game Gear
Released December, 1992
Designed by Barry Marx, Dan Kitchen, Roger Booth, and W. Marshall Rogers
Developed by Imagineering (NES) Teeny Weeny Games (Game Gear)
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I sampled this a few years back and didn’t like it at all. I must have been in a bad mood or something, because this was pretty okay.

Part of me wonders if Sunsoft cancelled their NES Superman game (read my review of that debacle) because they knew a quickly made Simpsons NES game absolutely slayed it. Bartman works as both a Simpsons platform game AND an alright superhero game. Even though the appearance carries over from the previous two NES Simpsons games, the controls have been tightened-up. There’s no ridiculous A+B jumping, and while A-Running instead of B-Running makes a return, it just feels better now. There’s no items to fumble through. B shoots your superpower projectiles, while A jumps.. and sometimes flies. Players have to make their way through three fairly large game worlds and fight four bosses, the final one of which is a team-up with Bart’s comic idol, Radioactive Man. It really feels like they leaned on a 60’s Batman theme, and you even do Batman-style BAP! BANG! POW! karate moves when you use your punch.

If you find a power-up that looks like a flickering planet, you enter this bonus stage with floating rocks. Zap an alien with your laser eyes and it drops an icon that allows you to fly for a while. It’s really well done.

Where Bartman really shines is in its level design. The first stage is really the only one that’s a straight-forward point-A to point-B platformer. Levels 2 and 3 might contain straightforward segments, but they also contain mazes with branching pathways that are pretty joyful to navigate. No convoluted hidden pathways. Just “pick a door, any door. Whoops, wrong door, try again” type of structures. While the set-pieces aren’t exactly visually spectacular, I enjoyed the navigation quite a lot. It helps that Bartman is certainly the easiest of the NES Simpsons trilogy. By the time I beat the game I’d banked over thirty extra lives. You get five hit points per life, and health refills are plentiful. So is the ammo for your laser eyes. There’s a lot less bullets for freeze breath, but when you NEED it, the game spits out an unlimited supply. The laser eyes are basic pew pew bullets, while the freeze breath is incorporated into some of the platforming, along with a boss fight against Lava Man.

Up to this point, Bartman was doing pretty good. So, when a section where you have to use your freeze breath on falling mud monsters to create platforms popped up, I got pretty nervous. Thankfully, this set-piece isn’t overdone. You don’t have to climb up a mountain the size of Everest. One screen. Lasts a minute. Really well done.

Bartman is a fairly basic game that adds just enough pace-changing breaks in the platforming to work. A couple times it does take those breaks a little bit too far. A flying section that’s structured like a space shmup and an underwater sequence outstay their welcome, but not enough to come close to wrecking the game. Actually, this means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but my #1 complaint about Bartman is just how ugly it is. Ideally, you want a Simpsons game to be playfully colorful. This is just muddy and dirty looking, with basic backgrounds and bland textures. I think they were aiming for a gritty Batman-like noir type of platformer. Instead, it just looks sort of cheap. Thankfully, gameplay is king, and this might be the most underrated Simpsons game of them all.

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The four boss battles are pretty decent, too. They each have a gag, like punching the bad guy through a wall, then chasing them through the hole they made. That’s fun! I mean, the whole game is. It even put a smile on my face that the last boss is fought the same way you fight Ganon in Zelda – Wind Waker. Don’t get me wrong: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man isn’t amazing or anything. Hell, it’s not even so interesting that I felt the need to beat it twice, but I did sample the Game Gear version. I have concerns about the cramped screen, but otherwise, it feels identical. And this was the end of the Simpsons on the NES. Except, there’s sort of one more game in this series that most people don’t realize is actually a Simpsons game. Well, that’s because it’s not a Simpsons game. But, it does use the nearly exact same modified Bart vs. The Space Mutants engine that Bartman Meets Radioactive Man used. It was even released in 1992, making it perfect for this feature. The response to The Simpsons: The Definitive Review has been outstanding, and I really want to show my appreciation for the support. So, anyone up for a bonus review? Oh, and..
Verdict: YES!

What game used the Bartman Meets Radioactive Man engine? I guess I already spoiled this above.

Swamp Thing
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1992
Designed by Daniel James Kitchen and Barry Marx
Developed by Imagineering Inc.
Published by THQ
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Honestly, with emulation tomfoolery, this isn’t bad.

The NES version of Swamp Thing is indeed the dizygotic twin brother of Bartman Meets Radioactive Man. They were developed side-by-side, and play nearly identically. Same engine. Same control scheme. Same sound effects. Same A-running. Same basic but acceptable platforming hijinks. In fact, it’s so close that ROM hacks exist that turn this into a fourth Simpsons NES game. And, like many Simpsons games, the #1 complaint is the difficulty. This really is a spin-off/sequel in all but name. The “twins” analogy has never been more fitting in gaming. But, if they are twins, Swamp Thing is the evil one. That difficulty curve. Yipes. 

I have two major complaints, and I can’t decide which is worse. The first is the collision is bad, and this is made worse by the inconsistency of WHEN and WHERE it’s bad. Just walking or running around, your box is a little bigger than the character sprite. Big enough that it’s VERY annoying, as stuff damages you when it doesn’t really come all that close to your sprite. But when you duck, it seems like a perfect one-to-one box. Stuff that would damage me when standing doesn’t when ducking, even though the actual distance from the top of my sprite to the offending object is exactly the same.

Actually, the brutal difficulty is mostly caused by one specific thing: hold-your-breath last-pixel jumping. They’re all over Swamp Thing, and after a while, it becomes repetitive and sloggish no matter how the pixels you’re jumping on look. It’s the same jump with the same distance nearly every time, and it gets old. While Bartman does have a few last-pixel jumps, this is negated by a game that’s much more generous with 1ups and ammo. Swamp Thing offers no such generosity. 1ups are relatively rare, you only get 10 bullets per pick-up (Bartman’s laser eye pick-ups double that), the pick-ups themselves are much more spread-out, and ammo doesn’t even carry over from level to level. Your unsatisfying punch (why did they drop the combo-animation from Bartman?) doesn’t work on what feels like over half the enemies, and your bullets are a LOT more limited than in Bartman. Hell, when you kill an enemy, whatever they drop goes FLYING in alternating directions, left or right. It’s not rare that whatever they drop ends up out of play entirely.

Not all jumps in Swamp Thing are cruel. This section, for example. Let this be a lesson to developers: this is equally, if not more exciting, than last pixel jumping. I think that nerves alone can offset any entertainment value that insane last-pixel, edge-of-ledge jumps would induce.

Unlike Bartman, which relied on mazes, Swamp Thing is mostly about hopping around massive playfields. Only one level was really “maze-like” and in that level I took a massive leap of faith when I reached a dead end, fell the length of the playfield and ended up next to the door for the last boss. But mostly, it’s just hopping up gigantic structures, hopping around a graveyard, hopping around a toxic waste dump. Hopping around a mausoleum. There’s really no memorable set-pieces because the same basic design runs through the game. At the same time, as brutal as the difficulty is, I never really got bored with Swamp Thing. With save states, I found it enjoyable enough. Nothing special by any means, but not a complete waste of time, either. Now, whether or not it feels like a Swamp Thing game or not is another question. There was apparently a Swamp Thing animated series in 1991 that ran for (checks notes) FIVE EPISODES. Which, hey, that’s four more than Defenders of Dynatron City. 763 short of Simpsons, though, as of this writing. Oh, and the theme song is set to the tune of “Wild Thing” which legitimately made me LOL. Anyway, this is based on that cartoon.

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The one and only twist is the ability to enter flowers to regain health, and at one point, I entered what looked like a cherry to roll around and avoid enemies. I didn’t even know this was a mechanic until late into the second half of the game, when a lotus-like flower appeared on screen that I entered and got a life refill. So, I started over and went searching for such things in the early stages and saw nothing. I quit searching by the time I reached the third stage. It’s a fun gimmick that’s completely underutilized. This is even considering that the third of four bosses requires you to merge with one of the four trees in the background and shake your fruits off to damage it. Come on! That’s a great gimmick and a memorable set-piece, and still, it feels like the game only scratched the surface of that potential. Gotta save stuff for the sequel, I suppose. Anyway, like so many Dan Kitchen games, this is a title that is better with modern emulation trickery. I imagine a child who was a big fan of that.. ahem.. five episode long cartoon, would have given up in despair with Swamp Thing. It’s tough. But, unlike the Simpsons, the dark tone works for it. I love the use of purples, greens, and blues. Much like its twin brother Bartman Meets Radioactive Man, it’s not the deepest game, and in fact, I’d call it “barely okay.” But, what was here aged better than most.
Verdict: YES!

Continue to Part Three: Bart & The Beanstalk, Virtual Bart, two Itchy & Scratchy Games, and Treehouse of Horrors: The Game!

The Simpsons Video Games: The Definitive Review Part One – The Five Simpsons Games of 1991 for Arcades, DOS, NES, Game Boy, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, & Sega Game Gear

Simpsons Arcade for the.. NES. Yes, really. Oddly, it’s not a ROM hack of Ninja Turtles II, like you’d expect. It’s a “demake” completely built from scratch by NESRocks, the genius behind multiple of the best NES ROM Hacks, including IGC-Approved Goonies II: Revised. Simpsons Arcade NES is not close to ready yet, but if you want to support this project, he has a Patreon. He’s worth it. He really is one of the best makers of games in the world.

Ah, the Simpsons. I’ve never known a world where it doesn’t put out twenty new episodes a year. Its debut episode, Simpsons Roasting on An Open Fire, aired only 159 days after I was born. By the time I was 7 years old, the controversy about a crudely drawn cartoon family that cussed and fought and acted like fools had died down and the Simpsons was a bonafide institution. One so ingrained in pop culture that I don’t have a first memory of it. It’s practically been omnipresent in my lifetime, like how almost no child can cite any specific first memory of Sesame Street, Jeopardy, or the evening news. Bart Simpson saying “damn” wasn’t that big a deal and the show was now much more centered around the adventures of “Captain Wacky” Homer. In a post-Cosby Show world, they were America’s first family, animated or otherwise. It was hard to imagine why they were even controversial in the first place. After all, the Simpsons were the only family on television that went to church every Sunday. Lisa Simpson reminded us that intelligence is a virtue, and Bart almost always aspired to his better angels in the end, something many of the stuffed-shirts criticizing it didn’t do. That’s probably why it’s still chugging along nearly thirty-five years later. While the franchise has seen better days, there’s near universal consensus that the first seven or so seasons have no peer. In fact, there’s really only one aspect of the Simpsons’ early existence that most people agree wasn’t successful: its video game presence.

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By my count, there’s sixteen Simpsons video games for classic gaming platforms, which for the purposes of my retro review exploits, covers Atari through SNES, with an exception made for Game Boy Color and Advance that are basically handheld versions of the NES and SNES anyway. So, no Simpsons Wrestling, and no Hit & Run. Of these sixteen games, only one is universally regarded as being good: the coin-op. I’ve already reviewed it once, but it’s been over twelve years, so I gave it a clean slate and a second chance. In fact, all sixteen games are getting that same clean slate. I’ve never attempted to play any of these games all the way through to the end (except the coin-op). Is the Simpsons really one of gaming’s worst licensed franchises? Let’s find out, starting with the first batch of releases when the Simpsons were still brand new to television. Believe it or not, each of these games came out in 1991, with one obvious exception that I had to include for reasons you’ll see.

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

The Simpsons
Platform: Arcade
Released March 4, 1991
Directed by Kengo Nakamura

Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade1Up’s Simpsons Cabinet
DELISTED ON PSN/XBOX DECEMBER 20, 2013

After replaying the coin-op I was certain I would lose 99% of the readers with this one. Thankfully, I checked Cutting Room Floor, found out the Japanese version was different, and booted it up. So stick around.

Nobody wants to be the one person who isn’t a fan of a famous game. Despite what people think, it’s actually not good for clicks. Given the fact that I worked really hard on this feature, I wasn’t looking forward to starting it off with a review certain to drive people away. I really did give a good faith effort to find the fun in Konami’s famous Simpsons beat-em-up. Besides, it’s been over twelve years since I reviewed it. I’ve changed my mind on a few games I didn’t like in my overzealous youth, so I figured, hey, maybe I’ll change my mind on this. Except, it hasn’t been twelve years since I played this. Actually, I played it with my family on our MAME cabinet less than a year ago. The kids enjoyed it, but most of my amusement came from them saying the same types of things I said when I first reviewed it. “Bart’s shirt is the wrong color! Sideshow Bob is a helper! Nothing looks quite right!” The biggest problem with the Simpsons Arcade Game is that it came out so early in the show’s life. They had very little to go on, and I couldn’t get into it. Well, it turns out, I was playing the wrong ROM. But, before I get to that, let’s talk about the “international” version. That’s the one us yankees got.

Mind you, they had no idea Treehouse of Horror was a thing when they did this.

I’m going to assume that a lot of these early Simpsons games were victims of studios rushing games through development under the assumption that the Simpsons craze was a fad that could end at any moment and they had to strike while the iron is hot. Hah. Can you imagine the show making it another 35 years on the air? Don’t be ridiculous. That’s why the arcade game shocks me. It should feel thin compared to the modern Simpsons, but it doesn’t. Instead, it features strong set pieces that feel true to the show, and a relatively decent variety of baddies that, while generic, feel like they COULD be characters. My problem has always been that the combat just isn’t that exciting. Besides the boss battles, Simpsons can be a repetitive slog to get through. The striking moves lack that satisfying rhythm to them that I feel carried the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game over the finish line. I’m sure it can’t be easy to get that sensation right. Even Konami messed up the sequel to Ninja Turtles badly. At least in arcades, Turtles in Time lacked that graceful OOMPHfulness to the attacks. The Super NES port did better, but in arcades, the satisfaction of the first game’s combat was just gone, with no reasonable explanation of why. That has nothing to do with the Simpsons, but I thought about that horrible Turtles in Time coin-op a lot while playing this. Again, that oh so satisfying cadence to the button mashing must be harder to achieve than it seems.

I think the presentation is a big part of why the Simpsons is beloved. It was probably the first video game many people played that looked almost EXACTLY like the cartoon they watched. Even more than Ninja Turtles. And it IS a gorgeous game. Top notch, especially for this era. I just wish it was as fun to play as it is to look at.

SPLIT DECISION – US/INTERNATIONAL ROM

Sadly, I’d put the arcade Simpsons in the same boat as the arcade Turtles in Time. Combat lacks that sense of almost dance-like fluidity of the first Ninja Turtles game. Simpsons is a lot rougher, with no real flow to the combat. I know that fans will probably say “that’s the joke! They’re the Simpsons, not turtles that spent a lifetime studying ninja sh*t!” True as that might be, the joke is going to stop being funny long before the credits roll. To Konami’s credit, they included a lot of throwable scenery and even a few weapons. Yea, it’s funny that you can pick up Santa’s Little Helper and throw him like a lawn dart at enemies. But, by the midpoint of the game, I found the baddies tended to interrupt my attempt to use the background stuff. Even when I played with the kids this last Christmas season, I would guess two-thirds of the throwable items were lost during the act of picking them up. Well, it turns out, if I had played the Japanese version, a lot of my complaints would have been addressed. So let’s make it interesting and say VERDICT: NO! to the American version of The Simpsons Arcade. But, this review isn’t over.

Actually, I found out that The Simpsons was much closer to the YES! than most games that I give NO! to. It just needed the combat to be a little more seamless. And that happened.

SPLIT DECISION – JAPANESE ROM

The Japanese build of the Simpsons released five months after the US version, and man, did they make the most of that time. Cutting Room Floor has the details, but in short, the difficulty is toned down. I guess that explains why I just cut a blistering pace through the game. You can literally feel the difference, as even playing solo, the slog was almost non existent. Given the fact that I’d just played through the Simpsons Arcade not even three hours earlier and spent most of that play session being fairly unhappy, this should have been pure agony for me. It wasn’t at all. Part of me wonders if there’s more to it than the stuff Cutting Room Floor mentions. The combat felt a lot smoother, like my attacks had more weight and inertia to them. I can’t help but wonder if the faintest hint of tinkering to Simpsons’ collision detection happened. I just re-replayed the US version, and it was the same “this ain’t doing it for me” feeling, but the Japanese version felt fine. Maybe it’s the placebo effect, or maybe it’s a little more post-release polish working its magic. Either way, this go around, with enemies dying faster and the bosses 100% for certain having less invincible moments, I’m willing to say that Simpsons is alright.

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With the faster pace, I was able to appreciate all the things Simpsons got right. I know I said this already, but for a game that was rushed through development, it sure has some wonderful set pieces. The first level looks exactly like the TV show, and the dream sequence is so bonkers that I kind of wish they’d done something like that for the whole game. As for the boss fights, they’re easily the highlight of the whole experience. Especially if you play the Japanese ROM, where they’re just more fair and more open to finesse and strategy. And thank god for it. I went from barely not liking the Simpsons to barely be fine with it. It turns out that it’s not a bad little brawler at all.

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Even though I’m flipping my verdict, I do still think this game is crazy overrated. It’s fine, but one of the best games ever? I imagine this is one of those “you had to be there” situations that I literally cannot recreate. At the same time, I can’t believe we’ve gone thirty-three years without a sequel. There was a terrible mobile remake, but that doesn’t count. Imagine if something like Shredder’s Revenge, only the Simpsons, was released today. It’d be a license to print trillion dollar bills. If a Simpsons Collection comes out that’s based mostly around the Acclaim games, and that hypothetical compilation doesn’t include Simpsons: Hit & Run or the 2007 EA game, whoever has the Acclaim library needs to get Konami to the negotiating table and work things out. I might not be in love with the Simpsons coin-op, but a collection of Simpsons games probably needs it to anchor the set. Three decades later, and the first Simpsons video game is still everyone’s favorite. Except me, apparently.
The Simpsons – Japanese ROM Verdict: YES!

The Simpsons Arcade Game
Platform: DOS
Released in 1991
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Look at that face. Homer Simpson, on PCP, begins his rampage.

When I played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game on the NES, I heard from many older readers who said they were SO EXCITED that the NES was getting a port of the coin-op. It didn’t matter at all that the final product barely resembled the arcade game they loved so much. They were happy and content with the end result. By the time the Simpsons coin-op came around, what gamers wanted more than they wanted to live to see fifty was a home port of the Simpsons Arcade Game. But, apparently Acclaim and Konami couldn’t come to terms on a home port. I mean, it HAD to be discussed, right? Ports to the SNES and Genesis would have been a license to print money. Without question they would have been more successful than Bart’s Nightmare or Virtual Bart. But, the only home ports were to home computers. Those were the only rights Konami held. I did briefly try the Commodore 64 version of Simpsons, and..

I couldn’t get the controller working anyway, but come on! I have sixteen games to play!

I stuck with the DOS version, even after it locked on me. A lock that I actually figured out the source for. Right before the boss fight with the bear on level five, after the battle with the lumberjacks, the game simply refused to continue. Homer’s jumping became much higher and now also included his “level beaten” dance animation. I was stuck, the boss wouldn’t load, and the game was over. I almost quit, but I’m sure there’s interest in this review so, screw it! I started over and chose Bart this time. I was also much more conservative with save states, and that helped me figure it out. What happened? Apparently I had scrolled past enemies that hadn’t yet been defeated, erasing them from the active game, but without giving me credit for having beaten them. Since you can’t scroll backwards, and since those enemies were no longer loaded into the game, the very next segment, the battle with the bear, didn’t load. I’m not sure why Homer’s celebration loaded into the game, but either way, I couldn’t rewind far enough back to undo it. Since I’d saved states after the enemy vanishing act, there was no possibility of unlocking the game. The second time around, I was able to deliberately lock myself, and actually, it’s stupid easy to do it. I imagine many players triggered it, especially since the final enemy of the waterfall area that caused the lock spawns much later than others. Despite the convincing graphics, you can tell Simpsons Arcade DOS is rushed and largely unpolished.

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I’ll give this to the DOS version: it looks the part. Simpsons Arcade is one of the most visually impressive coin-op ports gaming had seen up to this point. If you were a fan of the arcade original and had a quality home computer in 1991, I imagine seeing screenshots of this made it a no-brainer of a purchase. It’s not a perfect one-to-one conversion, but it’s better than anything 8-bit consoles of the era were pushing out. Not to mention that 16-bit gaming had really just started, now that the Genesis was picking-up steam and the SNES was set to launch. Simpsons DOS had to look the part, or else it would look old fashioned and outdated as soon as the SNES hit stores. Konami, developers of this port, knew Turtles in Time was coming to the SNES and would set a new home arcade standard. Actually, given the fact that there was no Simpsons console port at all, I imagine there had to be people who bought a DOS computer just to play this. Even the cut scenes are there and, despite being compressed for a floppy disk, they look good. Well, except for the fact that the scene after the bear boss has coloration that makes it look like the Simpsons celebrated Whacking Day a little too hard. I swear to God, I didn’t doctor this photo.

😶 Jesus Christ!! JESUS CHRIST!!!! IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’VE BEEN MASSACRED!

Unfortunate coloration aside, pretty much everything from the original is here. In fact, only one major set-piece is missing from the game: the elevator portion of level three, following the graveyard scene. Interestingly, the level ends when you jump into the hidden entrance in the graveyard, instead of having you fight the big and little goon boss. Instead, that boss OPENS level four, Moe’s Tavern. The stage then continues until you fight the barfly thug. So, even though the lead-up to the fight with the twin goons is gone, they left in the boss itself. I kind of admire that. The effort was there. All the weapons are here. The hammer? The slingshot? The mop? Yep. The fight with the robot mini-boss at the news station? It’s here. The letters M-A-G-G-I-E-! in the dream sequence, and the headless power plant workers? Yep, and now, the clouds that make up Marge’s head have to be slain. This, by all appearances, should be a great port!

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The Simpsons talks the talk, but sadly, it doesn’t walk the walk. The gameplay is HORRIBLE. The DOS version of Simpsons Arcade features some of the worst side-scrolling brawling action I’ve seen. This is one of those games where lining up with enemies is the biggest challenge. Thankfully, once you’re occupying the same plane as them, your attacks don’t even have to connect. Enemies have ridiculously massive collision boxes, so hitting the air a half-a-character-length in front of them will connect. As far as I could tell, this only goes one way. While your own collision box isn’t perfect, the enemies have it much worse, so you don’t have to worry about cheap shots. Not that the combat would be satisfying anyway. The OOMPH is almost non-existent in this port. Most of the animation has been removed, so you really only have one attack animation for punching, and one animation for “becoming dizzy” when you mash buttons too much. The game might retain the cartoon look, but the cartoon animation is just gone. Hell, you can’t even do the attack+jump one-hit superkill move. They didn’t include it. All that’s left is the basic attacks and jump kicks. This alone would be a deal breaker, even before I factor in the god awful enemy attack patterns.

Honestly, this means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but the mini-games were not remotely responsive to my button presses, whether I used a keyboard or a controller. MAYBE this is an emulation issue, or maybe it’s just badly made.

Enemies in Simpsons Arcade DOS are completely brain dead. The only ones that pose a real risk are the weakest bad guys, since they keep a distance and aren’t as easy to confuse into a stuttering stun-lock. But, the fat businessmen guys? I think they must have misprogrammed their behavior, because if you close the distance on them, they mostly (not entirely, but mostly) stop attacking you and just sort of wiggle while staying behind you. Annoying, this does make them a little harder to hit, but then again, they’re really no longer a threat anyway. All the “advanced” enemies are here. The fire fighters, the donuts, the bigfoots, the saxophones, the Bart devils, etc. But, most are easily defeated by either spamming jump kicks or by using the layout.

You can’t see Bart here, but that’s the point. The enemies are very easy to confuse and get easy shots on.

If there’s an enclosed area, like a wall with a corner, most enemies stop attacking AND dodging and start to just kind of wobble in their walking animation back and forth. I think what’s happening is the geometry messes with their preset attack pattern or something, since they’re TRYING to walk. I could see it in the donut section in the above picture. Since the Simpsons uses a lot of platforms and walls and buildings, there’s a lot of places you can use to trip-up the enemies. In fact, any corner seems to work, a tactic that applies to bosses as well. The third boss, most of the fifth boss, and almost the entire Mr. Burns fight saw me not take any damage at all while just teeing-off with basic attacks at the top of the screen. As a result, the bosses were some of the easiest I’ve ever seen in any brawler. They’re not as “smart” as in the arcades, so getting them stuck in a corner and going to town on them is a cinch. I never died once, on any of them. The ones that don’t go to corners can be slain by jump kicks. I could also swear that most, if not all, have had their health reduced significantly from the coin-op. As far as brawlers go, the DOS version of the Simpsons is just about as unsatisfying as any I’ve seen. It’s the pits, folks.

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Normally, I’d feel heartbroken for my older readers. But actually, I suspect that the DOS port of Simpsons was probably convincing enough in 1991 to not feel like a total rip-off. It looks spectacular, instead of being a massive downgrade like gamers were used to with the NES. Seriously, I didn’t like this game at all, but I’d much rather play it than Konami’s NES port of the arcade Ninja Turtles. Both ports are in the same boat. They weren’t the deepest coin-ops, but they were loaded with personality, most of which didn’t make the journey home. But, in the case of Simpsons DOS, it’s not completely devoid of charm, like TMNT II: The Arcade Game for the NES was. Having said that, personality only gets you so far. Video games have to be fun to play, and this just isn’t. Not without any fluidity to the combat, or enough of variety in how the attacks look. Removing most of the animation to the attacks, along with the nuance to enemy behavior and boss strategy, has left the Simpsons Arcade a brainless button mashing snore. One that probably was good enough in 1991, but nobody in their right minds would convince themselves it’s a good port in the 2020s.
Verdict: NO!

The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants
Platforms: NES, Sega Master System, Game Gear, Genesis
Released April 25, 1991

Directed by Garry Kitchen
Developed by Imagineering 
Published by Acclaim (Flying Edge on Sega Platforms)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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No matter what anyone thinks of Acclaim, you have to give them credit. CEO Greg Fischbach snatched-up the license for The Simpsons before the first episode even aired. A prime-time animated series hadn’t been a hit in nearly 30 years. Not since the Flintstones, in fact. But Fischbach read the tea leaves perfectly. Sadly, he followed the moment of clairvoyance with a moment of greedy stupidity when he offered directing duties to my dear friend Garry Kitchen. Oh, Garry wasn’t the stupid part. Actually, he was a good choice, especially considering how poorly received many Acclaim’s other licensed games had been up to this point. Nah, you’d want Garry, his brother Dan (even if he did make Double Dragon for the Atari 2600. *SHUDDER*) and Pitfall! creator David Crane along for the ride. They knew what they were doing. There was just one catch: Fischbach had already promised the Simpsons/Fox people that a Simpsons game would be out for the Christmas, 1990 season. The deadline was missed by a couple months. That’s why not one, not two, but three Simpsons games from the gang at Imagineering hit in 1991. I imagine any other studio would have just done a basic point-A to point-B platformer. Garry Kitchen came out of the golden age of Atari games, where the kookier the idea, the better. You cannot fault The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants for ambition. I just wish it had polish.

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Each of the levels in Bart vs. The Space Mutants is a different fetch quest, though only the fifth and final level requires you to collect every possible example of the target item. It’s also the only level that plays out in a non-linear fashion. The first stage is the most memorable, as the mission is to remove all the purple you can find. Instead of “collecting” you have to vandalize various purple objects. Most of this is done by spray-painting them red, but even this has several variations. Moe wears a purple smock, so you prank call him using one of your coins at a phone booth, and when he comes outside to kill you, you tag him with the paint. Other objects might require you to spill them, shoot them, or scare them off. I really wish the whole “vanish all the purple” gimmick had been the sole object for the entire game. Levels 2 – 5 see players simply collecting items, and the only real variation is level four has you shooting exit signs with a suction cup dart gun. Maybe the purple gimmick would have gotten repetitive, but I still wish they had rolled the dice on it, since what replaced it wasn’t that interesting. Also, that’s two paragraphs in a row that ended on “I wish..”

There’s only one item that carries over the entire length of the game: your x-ray glasses. You have to use them to tell human characters apart from the space mutants. Basically, Bart vs. The Space Mutants is the closest we’ve gotten to a THEY LIVE! game. Just replace Bart with Rowdy Roddy Piper, and don’t forget to take all his bubble gum away. If you jump on the head of a human, you lose one of your two hit points. If they’re a space mutant, jumping on their head kills them and gives you a letter of the name of the family member that acts as that stage’s boss assistant. It’s worth noting that, in the Sega versions of the game, I never once spelled L-I-S-A in the third stage. In fact, I usually only got the L. The game just plain didn’t spawn enough pedestrians, space mutants or otherwise, for me to come close. Thankfully I didn’t need her.

That’s the thing with Bart vs. The Space Mutants: it really had so much potential, but it also didn’t have time to go through the type of fine tuning that would weed out bad ideas. The post-NES games work a little better, but they all have different quirks. The Master System/Game Gear builds give players a lot more grace with the bottle rockets. The fickle accuracy of the rockets from the NES build returns in the Genesis build, but the enemies seem to have much better collision detection. They had four attempts to make the best version of Space Mutants and none of them came even close. While the collecting aspect is usually fun, it’s the level layouts that make this first console Simpsons game too brutal to be fun. I really thought emulation tomfoolery would make it fine. When I sampled the game years ago, having save states made those first couple levels alright. I didn’t play far enough to see how punishing the third and fourth levels were. This time, I did. I only finished the NES and Game Gear versions, and if I had to choose one to recommend, I’d probably give the nod to the Game Gear, where platforms are a lot more clearly marked than the NES, and items like the bottle rockets give you a LOT more wiggle room. But, the sad truth is Bart vs. The Space Mutants isn’t a good game. Don’t worry, because this story is going to have a happy ending. Just wait.

This was the part where the YES! was lost for good. See the part I’m standing on? That’s the only solid platform. The white skeleton just behind where Bart is standing is an instakill tar pit. So why draw that? This game has all kinds of problems that you can’t fix with basic emulation features like rewind or save states.

Originally, I planned to review each of the four versions individually. But then the Sega Master System version kept crashing in the third stage and the Genesis version was too flimsy with the long-jumps for me to even consider playing past the first stage. On the Genesis, even with the extra face buttons, running is mapped to the same button as jumping. OH COME ON, really? Do you know what’s the most telling thing about the Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants? Almost nobody likes it, but nobody calls it an E.T.-like disaster, either. EVERYONE loves the concept. Bart vs. the Space Mutants, more than any game I’ve ever played in my life, is failed by a complete lack of elegance. It’s also way too difficult for its own good, made even worse by a clunky interface. I was curious how the Master System would handle item selection with no START or SELECT buttons. It’s done by pressing DOWN, since Bart doesn’t duck. It works better than you’d expect, but it’s still a clunky game. The sad thing is, the three games that followed the rushed NES game still used it as a template. That’s why they’re all in the same boat: ambitious game design but ultimately unrealized potential.
Unanimous Verdict: NO!

But, what if that potential could be realized? Almost thirty years later, it was.

Bart vs. The Space Mutants Redux
Platform: Sega Genesis
Fan-Developed ROM Hack
Originally Designed by Garry Kitchen
Remastering by BillyTime! Games

Link to Patch at RomHacking.Net

I’m very happy to include this ROM hack in this feature. I’m all about classic games reaching their fullest potential through the magic of emulation. Thanks to BillyTime! Games, I get to see all the potential Bart vs. The Space Mutants had.

Bart vs. The Space Mutants Redux is purely a quality of life ROM hack. BillyTime! Games opted not to change the level design, enemy placement, objectives, or graphics of the Genesis build of Bart vs. The Space Mutants. The only gameplay change is that levels 1 – 4 require less objects to clear the stages. I’m not a fan of that decision, but if you felt this game required too much collecting, you’ll be happy. BillyTime!’s primary focus was on revamping the controls. Redux utilizes the Genesis’ six button controller, giving it a much more slick and modern feel right out of the starting gate. Running is mapped to its own button, and you wouldn’t believe how much that changes things on its own. I really think they could have left it at that and Bart vs. The Space Mutants would have been largely fixed. But BillyTime! also completely revamped the jumping physics as well, and suddenly this is the Simpsons platforming game that everyone wanted in 1991.

Platforming-centric areas are now more along the lines of the type of physics you would expect in a Mario game.

The changes made in Space Mutants Redux don’t nerf the challenge entirely. Instead, it changes the challenge. It’s not as if the tricky jumps are eliminated. They’re just much more balanced. Last-pixel jumps are gone, and good riddance. But, you’re still forced to be mindful of the act of jumping. You skid a little upon landing, so you have to aim your jumps and be a part of the process from the approach to the lift off to the landing. Yes, the jumps are easier, but it’s not an easy game. In fact, the only reason I was able to defeat it without cheating is from all the extra lives that the original designers put in the game. So many that my reserve lives went higher than the counter itself. Also, giving players higher jumping might make hopping around buildings in the first level easier, but the payment comes due in the final level, where it’s much harder to jump under enemies. BUT, that’s not a bad thing, because it becomes the type of challenge that works within the boundaries of perfectly reasonable and logical difficulty scaling.

Indeed, the fifth level is a doozy of a stage. If BillyTime! continues to tinker with this hack, I’d say it’s actually okay to redo some of the graphics. Specifically, I think the uranium rods that you gather in the fifth and final level should glow a lot brighter. They’re easy to miss. And updating character models would be fine, too.

My expectations were Bart vs. The Space Mutants Redux would handle decently, be fun to play, but nothing special. That’s what I expected, and all I really dared to hope for. A satisfactory Simpsons game. I was wrong, because actually, Redux reveals that Bart vs. The Space Mutants had all the ingredients for a great game all along. It simply didn’t have the right movement physics or control scheme. All those platforms that annoyed me before are now breathtaking, so much that you’d swear that the designers intended the physics to be this way all along. I do think that lowering the amount of items required to beat each stage was a big mistake. I’d advise undoing that as soon as possible, and here’s why. I think if players found the collecting minimums were annoying before, it’s only by virtue of how punishing Bart vs. The Space Mutants was to play. With THESE movement physics, the collecting factor is no longer held back by demoralizing difficulty. Now, it’s a joy to explore and experience Space Mutant’s set pieces, the unique take on boss battles, and the whole They Live! x-ray specs concept.

Oh, and let it be said, I’m happy it was the Genny version that’s patched. Things like what is and isn’t a platform being too ambiguous doesn’t factor in. I think an NES remake would require a slight overall in the graphics that the Genesis version doesn’t have to deal with.

And now, with this version, the flaws that are actually based around the game design come into a much sharper focus. Like the cleverness reducing significantly after the first level. The hunt for purple objects is easily the highlight of the game. While the middle stages do feature some thrilling moments, they lack the one-of-a-kind creativity the first stage had. In fact, that’s really the only level in the game that feels like you’re playing a no-doubt-about-it Simpsons game. From prank calling Moe to seeing the sights of Springfield to skateboarding with Bart, that first level really does feel straight out of the TV series. And frankly, the “get rid of the purple” feels like the type of off-beat mission that 3D platformers would utilize when the polygon generation started. The Simpsons is famous for predicting the future, and it turns out, even the game did it. It perfectly predicts the direction the platforming genre would take in the coming years. Level 2 has one creative bit where you have to knock hats off pedestrians. That feels true to the concept of the game: Bart’s mischievousness saving the world, but the cleverness ends there. While level 5’s non-linear maze layout was quite well done, it could have been any game. I still enjoyed the maze layout. In fact, I wish there had been a couple more stages like that. At least one more, set at the school, with Principal Skinner or Mrs. Krabappel (or both) as the boss.

A *huge* missed opportunity is the passkeys for the doors in Level 5. They’re the same combination in all four versions of the game. You “get” the codes from Lisa on each floor, but you don’t need to. In fact, you can brute force guess them. It’s what I did a couple times. What would have made a lot more sense is a 3 digit combo that’s random every time. I know they’re capable of being random, because Maggie’s location changes in each playthrough. She’s randomly assigned a room in the Power Plant, and is always the last “uranium rod” you pick up. In fact, after you get all but one rod, you just have to walk up to her to win the game. Making her random WORKS. But the combos should have been too. Oh, and the graphics don’t really show Maggie with the uranium rod in her mouth. It might not be clear to most players that she’s the final piece and can’t be collected until all the other rods are found and “banked.”

I also think that the coins go vastly underutilized. As far as I could tell, they served no point past the third stage, besides scoring points. I suspect that Garry and his team had a lot of plans that they had to cut because of the time crunch. I feel bad for Garry because, like with Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 (see Atari 50: The Games They Couldn’t Include – Part Two), he actually did a pretty good job given the time limits. He could have done a basic platformer. It was the Simpsons! The hottest property on TV at the time. Easy money. But, he knew he was better than that. He would never have done a game like Monster in My Pocket. It was beneath him. The ambition was amazing, and unlike historically maligned games, Space Mutants had potential to be amazing. This ROM hack proves it. The development team didn’t have a reasonable development cycle to work with, nor did they have access to focus testing. If they’d gotten to see kids play Simpsons, I think most of the more famous drawbacks would have been fixed.

Like many games in this feature, I’d love to see a 2020s remake. Which of course would now star Kang & Kodos.

That’s why I’m happy I played this redone version of Bart vs. The Space Mutants. It doesn’t change the game. The game was fine. BETTER than fine, actually. It just didn’t play well. It reminds me of the history of basketball. When James Naismith first invented the sport, it was played with peach baskets that required a ladder to retrieve the ball when a goal was scored. It took them a while to cut a small hole in the bottom of the basket, so the ball could be poked-out with a stick. It took TEN YEARS for them to replace the basket with a hoop and a net, and then SIX MORE YEARS to cut the bottom of the net so the ball just fell through. Even if the first version was deeply flawed (it was also full contact, and very violent), the concept was unmistakably fantastic, with so much potential. That’s why I’m so happy for Garry Kitchen, who gets credit for inventing a great game. And credit where it’s due to BillyTime! for cutting the hole in the net. Redux is a fantastic effort by fans of the game who saw the same potential everyone else saw in Bart vs. The Space Mutants. They just took it one step further and said “let’s unlock it!” And they did, and it’s awesome. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why ROM hacks are real games.
Verdict: YES!

Bart Simpson’s Escape from Camp Deadly
Platform: Game Boy
Released November 1, 1991
Designed by David Crane, Mark Klein, & Barry Marx
Developed by Imagineering 
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Excellent likeness of Nelson there. I’m not sure why everyone’s eyes are so bloodshot.

Do you know what’s weird? Escape from Camp Deadly came out almost a year before the famous Kamp Krusty episode. It even has the same basic plot: Bart has to deal with a summer camp that tortures kids. Isn’t that all summer camps? This take on the Simpsons is much more basic, with simplistic level design and repetitive action. For the most part, you walk in a straight line, jumping over pits or across logs on a river. You can climb trees, and occasionally a boss-like encounter is up in tree houses, but you’ll spend most of the game just walking right and occasionally turning around to throw a weapon. There’s a handful of caves that feature obstacles to dodge, but again, they’re as flat as a pancake. Variety is nice, but it doesn’t feel different enough because it’s just so straight-forward.

The caves are the best part, as they offer the most challenge. Not that Camp Deadly is a hard game. See those donuts in the status bar? That’s your health. I didn’t even need to bother with cheating in this one. I had so much health built up that I think I could have left the game unpaused and taken an extended bathroom break and not died.

Sometimes Lisa appears and gives you boomerangs, which work the way boomerangs ought to: -1 to your inventory when you throw one, then +1 if you catch them on the return. I just wish the level design was much more exciting. I think the problem stems from the decision to use large, cartoonish sprites. On one hand, it’s the Simpsons, and I’m sure there was pressure to look the part. On the other hand, when you factor in the floor, Bart is nearly 1/3 the height of the screen. It doesn’t leave a lot of room to create complicated levels. It makes me appreciate the Game Boy Batman‘s decision to use a much smaller character sprite. As silly as it looks, it allows for a lot more gameplay. You can see the problem play out in those limited instances where Camp Deadly does more than just walking right across the ground. It’s so cramped. They should have called this Cramp Deadly!

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It’s not that Escape from Camp Deadly is bad. It really isn’t, because frankly, there’s not enough game here to actually fall to the level of bad. What’s here is limited and bland. Just the same series of enemies falling in from the sides that are little more than cannon fodder, with the same types of jumps or the same types of enemies to fight and/or dodge. And, thanks to an overpowered health bar, there’s no stakes at all. It’s not until the final stretch that it feels like you’re not just playing a glorified LCD game. The climb up Mt. Deadly was a very welcome change of pace, but it comes far too late. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some clever bits. The food fight levels stand out, as you collect food and throw it at the bullies that run at you. But, you have to eat the food if you throw one in the presence of the cafeteria monitor. Of course, like much of the game, this area is one flat horizontal pathway. I thought it was fine the first time, because I’d never seen a challenge like it before. When it happened a second time, with the same flat, repetitive hallway, the novelty had worn off. I imagine a child in 1991 who was a big Simpsons fan would have enjoyed this during an otherwise boring car trip, but this never had a shot at surviving the test of time. Hell, I don’t think it could have survived the test of next year in 1991.
Verdict: NO!

The Simpsons: Bart vs. The World
Platform: NES, Master System, Game Gear
Released December, 1991
Designed by Dan Kitchen, Roger Booth, & Barry Marx
Developed by Imagineering (NES) Arc Developments (SMS/Game Gear)
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Bart vs. The World is a more traditional platformer than Bart vs. The Space Mutants. Which isn’t to say it’s unambitious. Whereas the first game was focused on trying to recreate Bart Simpson-like mischief in the 2D Nintendo space, Bart vs. The World is more about creating memorable set-pieces. It’s also yet another game that predates what would be a staple of the Simpsons TV show: globetrotting. Yes, Bart went to France in a season one episode, but the makers of this game had no idea the show would eventually feature over twenty more trips abroad for America’s first family. In fact, of the game’s four themed locations, the Simpsons have gone to three of them: China, the Arctic (the movie sent them to Alaska! IT COUNTS!), and Hollywood. The only one they haven’t visited is Egypt.. and yet, the episode with bible stories features ancient Egypt, making Bart vs. The World 4 for 4 in predicting future episodes.

You would assume that the “Egypt” stages would be typical oasis-style sand and palm trees. Oh no. You’re going through pyramids and flying past the Great Sphinx as Bartman.

If you don’t care about getting the good ending, Bart vs. The World is simply about finding the exit in each stage. Instead of just being a “scroll right, jump over pits” type of platformer, World requires exploration to find the exit of each of the nine stages. A few are maze-like, and most require intense precision platforming. My biggest complaint with World is that the controls and jumping physics from Bart vs. The Space Mutants are back. It makes ZERO sense now that you don’t have to shuffle between items to complete the various tasks and mini-games. B button throws weapons while A button jumps. So far, so good. But then, holding A after jumping is the run button, and if you want to do long-fast jumps, you have to press A & B together. Come on, guys! No! Tradition states that B runs! Super Mario Bros did it, and it worked fine! If they did this to accommodate the weapons by not costing a player one piece of ammo, it didn’t work. You often accidentally throw your weapon anyway when attempting the long jump. Besides, there’s plenty of ammo just laying around. So much, in fact, that I’m pretty sure I finished every stage with a surplus. They might as well have done the Adventure Island thing where once you find the weapon, you keep it until you die, with unlimited ammo. It wouldn’t have hurt the game at all, but with the levels designed around precision movement, the A+B jumping hurts a great deal.

I mean, look at it! This would be tricky enough without fumbling between two buttons.

What’s most frustrating is that the levels are actually pretty fun. The sightseeing concept works wonderfully, with such highlights as skateboarding down the Great Wall of China, floating on icebergs that you speed-up by jumping up and down on them, or throwing on a cape and flying across the Great Sphinx as Bart’s superhero alter-ego, Bartman. The platforming is tricky, so, for this review, I used save states to effectively give myself infinite lives. By the time I reached an extended section in the ninth level where I had to jump across a series of RIP markers in a mausoleum, I was good enough to not need to cheat anymore. I got the hang of it by the third stage, which is the endless series of tiny ice platforms pictured above. Of course, I got the hang of it because that level overdoes the identical shafts of platforms that are all measured out the exact same distance. I called it “platform spamming” and my one and only complaint about the level design are those two sections. The same pattern of platforms is repeated, and it becomes so tiring after a while. There’s nothing remotely clever about it. I know the Kitchens are better than this. These two segments go on FOREVER, without any twists. It made me long for the climbing areas in Wizards & Warriors, because at least that varied-up the distance and angles of the jumps. Each of these segments just copy-and-pasted the same set of jumps, over and over and over and over and over and over and over..

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If you want the good ending, you have to search for a hidden Krusty the Clown trinket in each stage. Even though the sprite is the same, Krusty heads aren’t 1-ups like the previous game. They’re also not the “trinkets” as I call them. The trinkets are more like trophies branded with the cantankerous clown’s likeness. Well, actually the 9th and final trinket is just the same Krusty head icon, only it’s green now. Pretty lame, Millhouse. Each of the nine hidden items are unlocked by a different means. Thankfully, there is some help, as each item is tied to finding a member of the Simpson family in the stage, so when you find them, the trinket is nearby. The only one that gave me trouble was the 7th one, where you have to fly up to the Great Krusty Sphinx and smash Homer’s fingers. Getting all the trinkets opens an extra stage in the Hollywood world that’s so memorable that I can’t believe they hid it behind a strict unlocking requirement. You literally leave the filmstrip at one point. It’s awesome!

It even works a sort of puzzle into the design, as this opens up one of three possible areas, only one of which has the exit.

SPLIT DECISION – NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

Really, if not for the rough jumping physics and awkward control scheme, I think Bart vs. The World would be remembered as one of all-time classic licensed games on the NES. Okay, so those two spam platforming sequences sucked. There’s no point in pussyfooting around it: those segments were terrible. But, that’s a small portion of what is an otherwise really enjoyable experience. The boss fights against various relatives of Mr. Burns are decent enough, at least on the NES, and the third one even features a clever bit where, instead of jumping on his head or throwing something at him, you pull the string on his flying carpet. That put a smile on my face. I won’t argue that Bart vs. The World is a masterpiece. It’s got problems. But, its reputation as being the best of the NES Simpsons trilogy shouldn’t be considered a default win. There’s a fun game here, and while it doesn’t reach its fullest potential, Bart vs. The World on the NES is certainly still worth a look today.
NES Verdict: YES!

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SPLIT DECISION – SEGA MASTER SYSTEM

Bart vs. The World on Sega platforms has a LOT of issues. First off, I would have done the Game Gear version but the ROM wouldn’t load. I was fine with that after playing the SMS port. This version’s Krusty Trinkets unlock NOTHING. I think a big part of that is Sega’s ports of Bart vs. the World are missing entire levels. The games seemed identical at first, and I figured with Sega’s superior graphics, this version would be the clear winner. The first gameplay change happened in the iceberg level, where you no longer have to destroy the igloo to find the Krusty Brand Ice Cube. In fact, it’s just sitting there. There’s no secret to revealing it. Weird. Then came the pyramid stage. Or rather, didn’t come. The pyramid stage that I enjoyed so much in the NES game isn’t in the Sega versions at all. What? Of course, that meant no hidden trinket for that stage. And then, the Mausoleum platform-spam area of the second Hollywood level was also missing. Now, that section was ridiculously repetitive and overstayed its welcome by several factors. Deleting it SHOULD be a positive thing, except that’s where the trinket was hidden in the NES stage. I spent an hour searching both the game and the internet for the new location. Even Cutting Room Floor doesn’t mention the NES levels deleted in Sega’s ports, but several YouTube commenters seemed to confirm my findings: there was no trinket. Not that it matters, because there’s no unlockable third level to world four, either.

The ending to Bart vs. The World on the Sega Master System in its entirety.

Given the fact that the unlockable stage is easily worth the effort in the NES version, I was pretty peeved about the pointlessness to the Sega versions of the trinkets. It off-set any gains that were made by deleting the game’s most tedious section. What sealed the Master System’s fate is how badly two of the bosses play out. Both the first and fourth boss fights require you to jump up and throw your ammo at them. For whatever reason, on the Master System, the act of throwing mid-air is incredibly unresponsive specifically during these two fights. It seemed to be the only time that happened, too. After the first boss fight saw me jumping without the attack button registering, I found myself checking other games just to make sure my controller wasn’t worn out. When I found out it wasn’t, I made a point of jumping up and throwing my weapons at other points in the game, just to make sure it worked. Sometimes it wasn’t even deliberate and instead a side effect of the ridiculous A+B jumping. The game had no problem wasting ammo when I needed to make long jumps, but during those two boss fights, which REQUIRE you to jump up and throw to hit the bosses at all, it didn’t work most of the time. As a result, those boss fights each took me significantly longer than their NES counterpart, and were just frustrating more than fun. That was the final straw for me. Deleting levels on a “more powerful console” is ridiculous enough, but I draw the line at total input unresponsiveness.
Sega Master System Verdict: NO!

READ THE OTHER PARTS!

Part Two– The five Simpsons games of 1992, including the first SNES Simpsons titles: Krusty’s Super Fun House and Bart’s Nightmare! Plus NES/Game Gear’s Bartman Meets Radioactive Man, Bart’s House of Weirdness for DOS, and Bart vs. The Juggernauts for the Game Boy. Part Three Virtual Bart for the SNES, along with Itchy & Scratchy’s games for the SNES and Game Boy. In fact, Part Three will be Game Boy heavy, with Bart & The Beanstalk, Itchy & Scratchy’s underrated mini-golf game, and Game Boy Color’s Night of the Living Treehouse of Horrors.

Monster in My Pocket (NES Review)

Monster in My Pocket
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released January, 1992
Designed by Shiro Murata & Etsunobu Ebisu
Published by Konami
United States Exclusive

NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Konami games often look glitchy in screenshots. It’s because their techniques create graphics that look great in animation but poor in screenshots. Monster in My Pocket looks fine, but it’s certainly one of the lower-mid-rung games in their lineup.

Monster in My Pocket was a short-lived toy line that was like M.U.S.C.L.E. with monsters instead of wrestlers. Like Dynatron City, there was a failed TV pilot (which they cover the failure by calling it an “animated special”), and an NES game. This one is by Konami, who was the obvious choice for this. I imagine MIMP creators Morrison Entertainment Group did their research and decided the Castlevania people would be PERFECT for their game about bite-sized monsters. You can’t fault their logic, but sadly for them, Konami completely phoned this one in. I think Konami assumed this was a media franchise aimed at little kids, so they built the game accordingly. I’ve played plenty of NES releases that I guess are made with younger kids in mind, but I don’t have to guess this time. It’s baby’s first horror game. That’s the only explanation that makes sense, given the circumstances.

This could have just as easily been a Honey, I Shrunk The Kids game. Replace Dracula/Frankenstein with the boy and girl from the film, and the monsters with bugs. Boom, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. It’s not even much of a stretch, really.

Konami was capable of creating amazing gameplay and awe-inspiring set pieces by this point. Monster in My Pocket has NONE OF THAT. It’s a shockingly bare-bones platformer with the only real twist being a double jump. You have one attack, and one attack only. There’s no weapons. There’s no power-ups. There’s no items beside a single type of health refill. The level design is incredibly basic, with only two “moments” that change-up the gameplay formula: a brief section where you run down a staircase rail and a brief section where you ride a crane. Either of those could have easily happened in any game where the concept isn’t being small. Hey, I think the idea of tiny creatures having an adventure in a giant-sized world has legs, but it can’t carry the game all by itself like Konami seems to believe it would. It’s just a facade. We, the player, know that it’s just the background theme, which in the limitless world of video games can be made to look like anything. You could replace the background visuals in Monster in My Pocket with any other theme and it wouldn’t change a single thing, because Monster in My Pocket just doesn’t do enough to make you feel small.

Hell, some of the level themes don’t even lend themselves to the concept. The caves that make up the final stage are a gaming staple, and it comes with having no sense of scale at all. I have no idea how big Dracula could or couldn’t be by looking at this. But even when it does have scale, it’s not like the gameplay is better for it. It put the mildest smile on my face when I had to hop-up a chain link fence, but that smile quickly vanished, because that’s the gag in its entirety. You’re only small because the background graphics say you are. Nothing in the gameplay does anything clever to make the concept feel consequential.

Besides completely botching the theme, I can honestly say that Monsters in My Pocket does nothing wrong. Which is not to say it’s good, because it’s not. Ironically for a game that’s about being tiny in size, it’s too short. At only six normal-sized levels, I think the average gamer will only need around 30 minutes to finish it. Combat is okay, but nothing special. You just sort of swipe at enemies with your hands, creating a “force wave” in front of you. It’s satisfying enough at the start, but when you realize it’s the ONLY thing in the entire game, it gets old quickly. In fact, by the midpoint of Pocket, I was often opting to instead leg it. The only thing players are given to break-up the monotony is the occasional oversized item to throw at enemies. In the first level, it’s keys. Which is really confusing the first time you play it. Keys are the universal gaming symbol of having doors to unlock. Here, they’re just generic crates to throw. Reusable, though. If you wish, you can keep picking them up and tossing them at more baddies until you get bored with them. Which you will.

I’m getting bored again just looking at these screens.

What irks me is it didn’t have to be this way. You can choose to play as Dracula or Frankenstein, but both play identically. Talk about a missed opportunity. A quick check of the toy franchise shows that there’s literally hundreds of figures. Even by 1991, when this went into production, the variety was staggering. Only having two playable characters that have identical skills, attacks, and jumping was, frankly, a little lazy. This seems to have been done for the sake of co-op, so neither player would be stuck with “the bad one.” With the sheer variety the figures offer, why not give players four to six characters? Or maybe have a different character with different abilities for each stage? Or maybe even a Mega Man-like adventure with six to eight characters who then join your party when you beat them? Konami was literally handed a license to go nuts and they turned in one of the least imaginative platformers they’ve ever done. It’s shocking, frankly. They really did make a children’s Castlevania game, only with none of the fun parts of Castlevania. Or, if not Castlevania, they were trying to do for the platformer what Ninja Turtles did for the brawler. Either way, this is one boring game, and one I think even little kids will grow tired of.

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Oh, and it ends on that laziest of tropes: a boss rush! Only this boss rush has no health refills between the first five bosses in the sequence. Thankfully, you do come back to life immediately after dying. It’s padding, plain and simple. Again, it’s not that Monster in My Pocket does anything wrong. But, it is proof positive that all the talent in the world doesn’t mean anything if you don’t apply it. There’s nothing memorable about Monster in My Pocket. That by itself is frustrating, because you know Konami is capable of so much better with these themes and characters. It’s so basic that you’d think this came out a year before Dracula’s Curse, not two years after. Or, to further put it into perspective, this came out just after Super Castlevania IV. Inexcusable. Monster in My Pocket is as shallow as the flop sweat it seems to be covered in. I’m not mad at you, Konami. I’m just disappointed in you.
Verdict: NO!
And why the hell is this an NES game? Shouldn’t it be a Game Boy release?

Defenders of Dynatron City (NES) and The Cheetahmen (NES & Sega Genesis) Reviews

Defenders of Dynatron City
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released July, 1992
Designed by Gary Winnick
Developed by Lucasfilm Games
Published by JVC
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Cheetahmen and Cheetahmen II
aka Game #52 in Action 52

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System & Sega Genesis
The Cheetahmen Release Date: 1991 (NES) 1993 (Genesis)
Cheetahmen II: Work-in-Progress Prototype “released” in 1996

Developed by Active Enterprises (NES) Farsight (Genesis)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Pictured: Defenders of Dynatron City. That is one ugly game.

Sometimes, I don’t really want to chain myself to a bad game long enough to actually write-up a review. Today, I found Defenders of Dynatron City, and then about an hour later, I quit Defenders of Dynatron City having never made it out of the first level. It comes from the co-creator of Maniac Mansion, and boy oh boy, is this awful. If you’re curious what a game review about a game so bad that I couldn’t stick it out to the end would look like, well, this is it. This soulless 1992 NES title was supposed to be part of a massive media rollout about a new team of superheroes. They had planned the whole nine yards, including six Marvel comics that actually did come out, a children’s animated series, and presumably action figures, lunch boxes, and this very NES game. I just watched the pilot for the TV series, produced by DIC, and it’s absolutely dreadful. A cynically bad origin story with characters pathetically desperate to be TOTALLY RADICAL, DUDE! in order to appeal to children. It’s got a DUMB GUY and he shoots his head off! And it’s got a girl with a buzzsaw for legs, and it has a dog except it’s green and it flies. And then, f*ck it, the inorganic toolbox just comes to life and becomes the smart one. Ain’t that quirky? It’s so forced and insincere, with some of the worst writing I’ve seen in any children’s show from this era, making it brutal to sit through. But, I can honestly say the game is a lot worse.

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Dynatron City is a pseudo-brawler type of action game where the biggest challenges come from a confusing navigation system, and the act of lining-up your attack with enemies. You start with four superheroes, but you can swap them out with two others along the way. It doesn’t matter who you use, because enemies only register damage if you’re on one very narrow plane of existence in front of them. Naturally the enemies tend to wobble up and down, especially as you get deeper into the level. The object to navigate the city within a VERY strict time limit and defeat all the waves of enemies. This is the first retro review I’ve done in a long time where I didn’t finish the game. Frankly, I didn’t try. Dynatron City doesn’t deserve it.

“He’ll be like our Michelangelo! The dumb, fun loving one. I’m telling you, the kids will throw away their Ninja Turtles. They’re going to LOVE Jet Headstrong!” Oh, and as a fun aside, the villain, Doctor Mayhem (oh my god, did they take all of five seconds to come up with these names?) was originally voiced by none other than Christopher Walken. Then, after they recorded the voice, they FIRED HIM and replaced him with someone more “villainous” sounding. Presumably they then tugged on Superman’s cape and then told Michael Jordan he needed to work on his jump shot.

It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t sound good. The combat, when you actually CAN score damage, doesn’t have a nice crunch to it. It’s so flimsy and ugly and unlikable. LucasArts, subsidiary of one of the most famous fantasy filmmaking studios, really put out a game this visually bad? And the characters aren’t fun to use. The best is the buzzsaw lady. She’s the only one that makes sense, since she runs fast and her attack has range. You’re on a VERY tight time limit here. Using the slow main character, Jet Headstrong, will lead to you timing out. Oh, and the game encourages exploring and then penalizes you for doing it with that timer. Really, the timer is the ruinous element. It was straight-up dumb to put this type of design on such a short timer, or any timer. It’s not a risk/reward thing. It’s just thoughtless.

Allowing players to swap with the SELECT button would have helped a teeny, tiny bit. But, nah. START and SELECT both do the same thing.

Would it have really been that hard to make the map make sense? Instead of going down streets, why not just have blocks, and then a map that’s grid-based? Or would it have been so bad that you can pick up an item for another character and just assume they got it, instead of forcing players to pause and swap characters? Not that it matters. When you base your entire game around rushing through combat, then deliberately dick players around by making the combat as sluggish and frustrating as possible, you are a waste of mine and everyone else’s time. Look at this sh*t! I try not to assume bad intentions or “review developers” here, but this wasn’t some fly by night operation. A LOT of money and resources went into this. Did those making this game play this, see how impossibly hard it is to line up your attack with enemies, enemies who are LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, and say “this is fine!”

And please note that the “specific plane of existence” rule only applies to you, the player. The baddies can hit you from many more angles. It’s not fun. It’s not challenging. It’s intentionally frustrating. Which, hey, at least one aspect of Dynatron City succeeded as it seems to have been intended to be that way But, given how transparently desperate this franchise was to appeal to kids, you would think the video game that this whole endeavor seems to have been banking on would try to be appealing to all ages and skill sets. Instead, it’s a complete slog, with some of the worst combat of any action game on the NES. You ever seen Action 52? The notoriously unplayable collection of lazy games that retailed for a couple hundred bucks? Dynatron City looks like one of those games! And it’s every bit as cynical as the Cheetahmen games from that series. Dynatron City is one seriously ugly game, with bad graphics, ugly character models, and ear-ripping music. This has to be one of the worst NES games out there. I really wanted to play this more, but given that enemies get even more evasive as you go along, along with the strict timer and the sprawling map, and I just decided that I owed this as much effort as it made. Which is to say, none.
Defenders of Dynatron City Verdict: NO!

The fact that the cynicism of this entire property made me think of Cheetahmen says it all. You can imagine grown-ups in 1992 saying “KIDS WILL LOVE THIS! IT’LL BE LIKE NINJA TURTLES, ONLY BIGGER! EASY MONEY!” I got the same vibes from Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa, but at least Konami didn’t phone that sh*t in. So, let’s take a look at Cheetahmen, which was released to both the NES and Sega Genesis. And honestly, does Cheetahmen look THAT much worse than Dynatron City?

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Cheetahmen was the flagship title in Action 52, a notoriously grift collection of fifty two games that retailed for $199.99 in 1991 dollars, or roughly $460 in today’s money. It was sold on the value, because instead of paying $30 to $50 for one game, you were paying $200 for 52 games. It was marketed specifically at gullible parents, because the people who made this were complete bastards. None of the games had anything resembling effort or quality. Each was probably coded in less than a day, with one exception. Cheetahmen is your flea market Ninja Turtles highlight of the set. It genuinely feels like the type of off-brand toy you’d find at a thrift store. It’s humanoid animals that do kung-fu crap. What more could your parasitic little crotch goblins want? I know it’s probably mean of me to say that Dynatron City feels like it shares the same cynical DNA, but it absolutely does. In fact, the best thing I can say about Dynatron City is that it couldn’t be part of Action 52 on account of the fact that it actually works. Like all the other games in Action 52, Cheetahmen is a badly coded, often not-working, and damn near impossible to play crime against gaming.

Saddam Hussein is one of the enemies, because he’s one of the sprites in one of the other 52 games. And no, I’m NEVER reviewing the rest of Action 52. At least on the NES. It’s a waste of my time. I might do the Genesis version at some point because at least that seems to have had something resembling effort.

I’m sure fans of LucasArts will lose their sh*t for me saying it, but I was close to saying Cheetahmen was better than Dynatron City. The only thing that stopped me is that Dynatron City, as bad as it is, isn’t fundamentally broken and Cheetahmen, you know, is. In fact, I don’t even think it’s possible to finish it. I couldn’t get past the fifth level, where you’re a giant sized sprite that shoots arrows, and you get swarmed by heat-seeking enemies that aren’t in your attack range until they hit you. There’s absolutely zero effort to make this a decent game, and it combines with the rest of Action 52 to be truly gross. Parents were conned into spending $200 for 52 “games” that would rank at the bottom 52 in quality on the entire NES platform. AND, that’s even assuming the games work! While playing Cheetahmen, the game got frozen from the act of pausing, though that wasn’t consistent. Neither was the collision detection. Levels just end without any warning. So do boss fights. I wasn’t disappointed at all when I couldn’t finish the fifth level. After twenty minutes with this thing, I was ready to do anything else with my life. Like suddenly I found myself staring at my toilet and saying “I wonder what a swirly feels like? I bet it’s actually a relief when the flushing part happens!” Totally nailed that one.

Cheetahmen is game #13 on the Sega Genesis version of Action 52, and it’s actually worse than the NES one, in my opinion. At least the NES version has an Ed Wood like campiness, even if you have to ignore that because it’s a product made with bad intentions. The “improved” Genesis version is just boring. Punching has basically no range. The first level, which is the only one I would play, has cheap enemy placement and one-hit deaths. Also, you die from falling too far and there’s too much graphical noise blocking most of the action. It’s every bit as lazy and cynical as the first Action 52, and dressing it up in a working engine and nice graphics doesn’t change that. The best thing I can say about it is that the game didn’t crash.

A lot of people have found humor in Action 52. I find it to be morally reprehensible. It was aimed directly at exploiting one of the more expensive hobbies children can have by presenting itself as an incredible value for their parents. The last game your child would ever need. Do you know who bought Action 52? Well-meaning parents who loved their children with all their hearts. And sh*tty people preyed upon that. It’s disgusting. The only thing that’s funny about the whole situation is Cheetahmen II. These chucklef*cks actually thought they had such a good thing with this Cheetahmen concept that they started thinking “FRANCHISE!” Now THAT is laughable. The developers had to be the most clueless mother f*ckers alive to look at how the first Cheetahmen was coming along and think they had anything of value. The game never actually got an official release, but 1,500 copies were discovered housed in Action 52 cases. Those are now a highly sought collector’s item among Nintendo fans. It’s more or less the same game with character sprites too big and enemies too small. It’s inept and awful, and I can’t believe anyone would spend the type of money that could score you a quality used arcade game on it.

Cheetahmen II. Just think, they had a third game planned. (shrugs) Civilization was a mistake.

My favorite quote comes from Conan O’Brien, and I’m paraphrasing here: “I hate cynicism. It doesn’t lead anywhere.” He wasn’t whistling dixie. That’s why the games of today’s feature rubbed me so wrong. They don’t feel like they came from a true place of creative merit. They feel like ploys for quick cash that vastly underestimate their audiences. It doesn’t matter if it comes with a multi-company synergistic campaign, like Dynatron City’s rollout, or if it’s the type of shady, money-grubbing operation that birthed Action 52. Kids can detect heartless cynicism. They might not know what it means, but they know it when they see it. Do you know who is a lot less likely to recognize it? Their parents. One the tragedies of growing up is that the majority of us will lose our ability to detect bullsh*t along the way. I consider myself to be a pretty cool person. I mean, you know, relatively speaking. But, I’ve found out that I’m just as guilty. I have two nieces and a nephew who are all preteens. I have managed to embarrass each one of them at least once by misjudging what they would or wouldn’t find “cool.” That’s why products like Dynatron City or Action 52 get attempted in the first place. It isn’t the kids buying this crap. It’s their parents. That’s why you have to give credit to the children of 1992. They’re the ones who rejected Dynatron City from the moment it was born. So, to all you game developers out there: listen to your kids. They know what’s what.
Cheetahmen Verdicts: NO! to all of them.

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak (NES Review)

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
aka The Flintstones II

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1993
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Barney was always the real star, anyway.

Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak is one of the three games in a trilogy of Taito NES games, along with Little Samson and Power Blade 2, that are worth a buttload of money. All recent copies listed on eBay sold for around $1,300. It’s one of the reasons why I can’t help but wonder if Taito is leaving a lot of money on the table by not putting out a collection of their Flintstones games. At first, I thought maybe they would be too generic, but then I played Surprise at Dinosaur Peak. It retains the engine from the previous game, Rescue of Dino & Hoppy. Fred’s sprite and various poses are virtually identical, as is his club attack. So, you can imagine my surprise that everything wrong with the first game has been cleaned-up here. Collision detection is improved enough that your club doesn’t clip through enemies, and it now feels like it has real world weight behind it. And, they even added a reason to charge up your club, as a fully-powered strike now creates a rumble that shakes the entire screen. As a result, the combat is very satisfying in Dinosaur Peak. It’s one of many elements that makes this not only the superior NES Flintstones game, but one of the most underrated titles on the entire platform.

Sports are back, only this time there’s no superpowers to be won. You really are just getting 1ups this time, I think. There’s only two events, with hockey going first and basketball returning for the second. I literally couldn’t believe they brought back basketball, almost identically as it was before. Except, this time you can do a running jump shot. If you time it right, it almost looks like a dunk. Oh, and this time around, each game is divided into two 30 second halves with Fred going first and Barney second. These are terrible, and since there’s a pause every time a score happens, they take a LOT longer than 60 seconds. If Dinosaur Peak gets a re-release, I sort of hope they cut these.

The biggest change is the addition of Barney. They couldn’t have implemented this better, as pressing select instantly swaps Fred and Barney. No special effects. No puff of smoke. No delay at all. In fact, there’s a couple moments built around this. Fred’s ability to grab most cliffs and pull himself up returns for the sequel, a maneuver his neighbor can’t perform. Instead, Barney can hang from wires or poles, then pull himself up and stand on them for a brief moment. He can even jump once he pulls himself up. Fred can’t do any of this, and there’s moments in Dinosaur Peak where you have to pull yourself up a wire with Barney, then jump up and swap to Fred mid-air in order to grab a cliff. It’s actually a lot trickier than it sounds to pull-off, which is why I’m thankful that type of design doesn’t show up until the end of the game. I should also note that the final sequence before the last boss requires some of the most precision movement I’ve seen, so you’ll want to practice. Thankfully, this go around the gameplay is smooth and the controls are damn near perfect. If there was a flaw in the last game, chances are it’s corrected for Surprise at Dinosaur Peak.

There’s even a brief shmup sequence that takes you to the final couple levels. A lesser game would have leaned too hard into this, but the Flintstones II’s shmup stage is over really quick, making it an enjoyable distraction.

Most of my complaints are really minor ones. Barney’s slingshot weapon is nowhere near as fun as Fred’s club, nor is there really any point where it feels like it’s necessary to use. Dinosaur Peak does a remarkably good job of mixing the platforming elements equally between Fred moments and Barney moments, but that didn’t carry over to the combat or enemies. Admittedly, I was fine with that since the club is so much more satisfying to use anyway. While the level design in general is consistently good, it never reaches the heights of true greatness. As much as I enjoyed Flintstones II,  it never once managed to produce a single moment that made me sit up and go “wow!” It’s a game stuck in cruise control, and perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it’s that rare game where the cruise control doesn’t drive it right off a cliff. That’s a minor miracle itself, because the bosses are very generic and the set pieces are unmemorable, except for the aforementioned shmup portion that’s really a glorified mini-game. Really, the most remarkable thing about Flintstones is that it proves the previous Flintstones had potential to be one of the best games on the NES, only the lack of polish wrecked its chances. This Flintstones realizes the potential and becomes one of the best platformers on a console defined by platform games.

This donut is actually a relentless chaser and an instakill nightmare. Dinosaur Peak made being chased by a killer tire a thing before the 2010 horror classic Rubber made people afraid to get their tires changed.

Easily my #1 complaint is the sudden extreme difficulty spike that happens right before the final boss. After nine stages of relatively breezy platforming hijinks, the game introduces a malevolent tire that relentlessly chases you through a series of narrow corridors. There’s spikes everywhere, and while they don’t instakill you, your damage animation will take long enough that the tire, an instakill element, will certainly catch you. It’s not a short segment, either. It goes quite a long time, culminating with an astonishingly brutal final stretch. In it, you have to use Barney to climb up a shaft of tightropes, THEN switch to Fred to smash rocks in your way THEN switch back to Barney to climb the ropes again. The last boss in the next room is a cakewalk compared to this crap. It’s one of the most frustrating and difficult precision movement sections I’ve played recently. Up to this point, I think Flintstones II was right up there with Wacky Races in the “excellent game for children under 10” category, but that final area makes me second guess that, as it doesn’t allow any room for error. I think the average child will probably need a lot of help getting through it. I had built up 16 lives by this point, and hell, I’m pretty okay at this gaming thing. I ended up burning through all 16 lives and ultimately ended up reloading a save state. I literally couldn’t believe how overboard they went with this! You can almost hear the developers say “let’s see the little bastards get through this!”

Actually, the Haunted House before this was a tricky one too. In it, you have to hit switches that briefly open doors, then sprint to them while not stopping for even a moment to do battle with ghosts that can be stunned but not killed. A few sections in this stage took me multiple attempts to finish. BUT, I don’t think a player is likely to die on that level. That wheel gauntlet at the end, on the other hand, is so cruelly brutal. I don’t understand what they were thinking. Perhaps this is one of those cases of “rental proofing” that I’ve heard about, where difficulty is ramped up in order to assure children can’t beat a game in a single weekend rental. Well, except for the fact that they didn’t produce many copies.

Even with that wheel section, I would call Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak one of the all-time most underrated NES games. I’m now officially operating under the assumption that the post-Super Nintendo era of the NES was secretly a second golden age for the console. And instead of continuing this Hanna-Barbera marathon, I’m now much more interested in exploring this. What’s most heartbreaking of all is Flintstones II is so rare that it carries that wallet-busting $1,000+ value. That tells me that NES fans in 1993-94 likely never got to play it. Sure, anyone can use an emulator these days, but that doesn’t help an NES owning child in the mid-to-late 90s, does it? Dinosaur Peak deserved to be one of the titles that ushered the NES officially into gaming’s past. A wonderful title to remind everyone why the Nintendo Entertainment System was the savior of console gaming. It’s really good, and as a member of the NES’ most popular genre, it should have been celebrated as one of the final standard bearers of arguably the greatest gaming platform of all-time. That Flintstones: Dinosaur Peak is instead famous only for its holy grail rarity is a bonafide gaming tragedy. Hey Taito, it’s time for a compilation. Here’s your anchor game.
Verdict: YES!

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper! (NES Review)

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1992
Directed by Isao Matono
Developed by Natsume
Published by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

“Stop playing your own game on the job! You’re having another seizure!”

And yea, before I get to the review, I have to note that if you are photosensitive in any way, you probably should not play The Jetsons on the NES. Every boss has violent strobe effects when defeated, as does every instance of activating a switch that reverses gravity, which happens several times. There’s multiple other areas where the same violent flashing effect happens. These days, with my medications and the precautions I take, it’s rare that I have to stress about a game giving me a seizure. So, it’s pretty telling that my father felt compelled to literally yank the controller from my hand while physically blocking my view during the final boss fight. Because gravity-flipping factors in so much, the final stage has a LOT of strobes, but the moment you enter the boss chamber, the NES Jetsons starts to strobe continuously, to the point that it doesn’t stop until the credits start to roll. Literally, as you jump straight from that sequence to the end credits. It’s so excessive, unnecessary, and reckless even by 1993’s standards. I have never heard of any game that strobes contiguously for the entire final boss, a strobe that continues after it’s defeated, where you then have to make your Metroid-like escape. Had the Jetsons come out during the NES’ prime, I’m certain some child would have discovered their epilepsy directly from this game. It’s THAT bad. If this were to get a re-release, there’s no way even a disclaimer would be enough. The game would require alterations. No modern publisher would allow this much flashing. Here’s the video, and needless to say, BIG EPILEPSY WARNING! Thank you to my nephew T.J. who finished the game for Aunt Cathy.

Now then, game review. Jetsons is one of many games that rode the coattails of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, building an entire platformer that’s based around picking up and throwing crates at enemies. As much as I love the first Rescue Ranger, those aren’t as strong of coattails as you would think. Look no further than the game I believe started life as the Game Boy version of Rescue Rangers, Mickey’s Dangerous Chase. Or, if we’re being honest, the second NES Rescue Rangers was kind of a disaster. If done right, crate-throwing will assure satisfying combat for the full length of an NES platformer that lasts an hour or two, but you still need fun level design and stand-out set pieces to make it over the finish line. You also have to assume that the game doesn’t have technical issues, and Jetsons does. As a post SNES holiday release, I’m guessing that Isao Matono, the man who led Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy and the Jetsons’ Game Boy release, felt pressure to push the graphic capabilities of the NES so that it didn’t look too old fashioned now that the 16-bit era was well underway. The result is a game with a consistently chuggy frame rate, albeit one that never devolves into full-blown slowdown.

It looks great in still images.

And Jetsons IS a looker, but it doesn’t remotely succeed in replicating the look of the show at all. Instead, Cogswell’s Caper has a rough hand-drawn appearance with so many sharp edges to the sprites that it looks more like the cartoons of my childhood from the 90s and early 2000s. That look, combined with the less-than-smooth frame rate gives Jetsons an almost homemade vibe, like a big fan of Rescue Rangers tried to make their own sequel to it. That said, the box combat isn’t a complete rip-off of Rescue Rangers. You only throw screen-length line-drives like Disney’s rodents when you jump up and throw the box. Otherwise, George Jetson sort of bowls the boxes along the ground. Thus, aiming in general takes much more effort in Jetsons. You also lob boxes in a way similar to Simon Belmont’s axe from Castlevania games. Several boss battles seem tailored to this style of throwing. Overall, the combat works, especially with the BAM graphic from the Flintstones NES game returning, only this time, the OOMPH is there.

Talk about extra effort. When you meet Elroy at his school, kids are playing basketball. If you get the ball and throw it at the hoop, the ball makes the same BANG that happens when you hit enemies and then falls down through the hoop. It doesn’t do anything, as far as I could tell, but it’s a nice touch. Meanwhile, the Detroit Pistons are going to see this review and be like “quick, when is this Jetson guy set to be born? Maybe we can pick him up in the second round!”

Jetsons features nine full levels, plus a handful of “event” type stages. While I’m the latest in what seems to be a long line of critics who compared Jetsons to Rescue Rangers, I actually think this does set pieces better. There’s several memorable sequences in Jetsons, including a flying sequence set during one of Judy Jetson’s rock concerts, and a race against giant gears that were both really exciting. Both these segments run out of gags really fast and go too long, but they still manage to be welcome changes of pace. At the same time, I’m disappointed that the Jetsons often forgets its supposed to be “futuristic.” Half of the stages are archetypal of the platforming genre with little in the way of Jetsons-like gags, with the exception of the occasional (and seizure-inducing) anti-gravity sections. Unlike the Game Boy release that did such a good job of incorporating the anti-gravity into the level design, I feel it’s just a gimmick here with little to justify having it at all.

Reverse-gravity boots are also one of five superpowers you get during the game, though it’s baffling why they decided to do that. Whenever the level design utilizes reverse-gravity, there’s always a switch to activate it first. Giving to players whenever they want is beyond stupid. It’s even worse because the sky is functionally a pit, and if you use the boots when there’s no ceiling, you die. I never felt a need to use them.

I suppose the argument could be made that the baddies being robotic or aliens fits in with the Jetsons setting, but those types of things aren’t that special in the land of video games. Not that the Jetsons couldn’t do the clichés like lava or gardens, but it doesn’t do enough to make it feel like you’re in the universe of the franchise. Like, for example, a giant spider fight happens, even though it really doesn’t thematically fit with the Jetsons. Thankfully, a couple factory-based stages feel quintessentially Jetsonian, and I can’t stress enough how much that rock concert scene really did feel almost like a music video on the NES. My gripe is that it just doesn’t consistently maintain the theme. At times, Cogswell’s Caper feels like it could have been based on any cartoon series. But, overall, Jetsons offers enough enjoyable settings and surprises to never be boring. I don’t know if I’d call it “clever” but the stages are well made and the enemy placement is spot-on, along with the placement of the crates that are used for the combat. The boss fights stand out as well, with that battle against Cogswell being pretty enjoyable. Really, this is a pretty underrated game. I’ve noticed a lot of post-SNES 8-bit games tend to be. Bonk’s Adventure got no love either. The NES seems to have had this low-key prime of life after the Super NES launched.

The flying stage goes about a minute too long, but it’s not bad.

The biggest flaw in the Jetsons involves the five “superpower” types of items that are accumulated over the course of the game. Four of them are completely useless, while the first one you collect is insanely overpowered. Using the powers requires you to collect pills (yes, really! Jetsons is basically a pharma-game) with each power taking a fixed amount of points to use. Except the previously mentioned gravity boots, which cost 1 point per second. They’re one of four useless items. There’s an invincibility shield that takes a whopping 20 points to use (pills are picked up 1 at a time, max 99) for a pitiful 3 to 4 seconds of invincibility. There’s a screen-clearing bomb for 10 points, and finally a platform that you can float on that vanishes as soon as it hits anything. It’s so clear they were taking a cue from Mega Man’s dog, only the powers all lack the NEED to use them. Well, except the first item you get. It’s a drone that, for 5 points, will kill any one enemy on screen. It works to do one damage per hit on the bosses and can nerf the challenge significantly. I’d have used it a lot more, but like the Game Boy release, SELECT goes unused, so you have to pause the game to activate your powers. Why not use SELECT, then hold UP and press B? I’ll never understand why so many developers from this era did that.

Speaking of Mega Man, the battle with Cogswell is remarkably similar to various NES battles with Dr. Wily. He even has three forms in his spaceship. AND, like the Mega Man games, it’s a fake-out, as there’s one final level and boss after this that I can’t comment on as I didn’t get a chance to play it due to epilepsy concerns.

As rough as it is, Jetsons is a far superior game to the Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy. I don’t think it’s the best of the NES Hanna-Barbera games, as I think children would probably enjoy Wacky Races more, especially since that game seems tailored more for younger kids via its low difficulty. Jetsons requires much more precision platforming and has some pretty intense moments. It’s not an elegant game by any stretch, but it is a pretty dang fun game from start to finish. And yet, I can’t help but wish that the NES game was just a bigger version of the Game Boy release. That game felt like a truly inspired effort that built around the superpowers the different characters have. Jetsons NES gives you all these powers and no reason to use them. That could have been costly if not for the fact that the level design was solid enough and had just enough set pieces to allow the excellent combat to do the heavy lifting. It’s strange too, because Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy had a much more professional appearance about it. It felt like a big tentpole release that didn’t quite live up to the effort. Jetsons feels sloppy as all hell, with graphics that look hand drawn in Mario Paint. Yet, it’s the better game of the two. In fact, it’s not even that close. I don’t know what it says that, as good a time as I had, I still wished this played more like its Game Boy counterpart. This whole Hanna-Barbera gaming franchise is weird. Anyway, fun game, but lose the strobe lights.
Verdict: YES!

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!