Road Runner (Arcade, Atari 2600, and NES Reviews)

March 15, 2025 by 2 Comments

Road Runner
Platform: Arcade – Atari System 1
Released July, 1986
Directed by Mike Hally
Originally Designed by Ed Logg, Apparently
Developed by Atari Games
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This could have been an incredible maze chase if you just change.. well.. basically everything.

Atari Games’ Road Runner is the answer to the most useless trivia question in the entire history of video games: what game has Indie Gamer Chick attempted to review the most times? I started and stopped reviewing Road Runner three previous times before this fourth and final attempt that, if you’re reading this, must have taken. There’s very good reasons why I want to review Road Runner. It ticks every box for the type of retro reviews I seek out. (1) It’s a licensed game (2) that has no modern re-release and likely will not for the foreseeable future. (3) It has a very interesting behind the scenes story. (4) It’s a maze chase, which is a genre I’ve devoted a significant amount of my free time towards achieving a greater understanding of. (5) Finally, it’s topical in a modern conversation thanks to the recent fiasco regarding the almost fully completed motion picture Coyote vs. Acme that might never see the light of day. Road Runner might be one of the most fascinating bad arcade games I’ve played.

In the coin-op, I really struggled to get cars to hit Wile E. Coyote. I think his collision box is a lot smaller than in the two home ports I played. I guess that makes sense, since this is trying to suck quarters from players.

Road Runner was commissioned to be Atari’s answer to Dragon’s Lair and capitalize on the LaserDisc craze/fad of the early-to-mid 1980s. In fact, their intent had been to one-up Dragon’s Lair by making a hybrid game that didn’t create the illusion of interactivity, but rather gave players direct control over sprites, something LaserDisc games typically didn’t do. Only the backgrounds and death animations would utilize full motion video taken straight from Road Runner cartoons. The rest would be a normal video game. By the way, this HAPPENED, as FMV Road Runner was 100% completely finished and route tested, which means they placed cabinets in specially selected arcades to monitor the reaction to it. Usually route testing means ten-to-twenty units are produced, which was the case with the only verified “killed in route testing” video game I’ve reviewed: Nintendo’s Sky Skipper. Atari’s Akka Arrh seems to have also made it to route testing but the extent of it I haven’t been able to figure out. I have no idea how many copies of FMV Road Runner existed, but at least one unit survives to this day and is a mainstay on the California gaming convention circuit. What makes Road Runner unique is that it was killed in route testing, but was still eventually released to arcades in the time window of its development, albeit without the LaserDisc gimmick.

If they ever do figure out a way to re-release this to modern audiences, they might as well go all the way with it and release it as the FMV hybrid it was intended to be. It’s the only thing the game has going for it, frankly.

So what happened? It’s hard to know for sure, but I think I have a good guess. First, the obvious: LaserDisc video games had “fad” written all over them. A bubble certain to burst. Road Runner was NOT the type of game to bet heavily on if you expect it’s riding a fad. Road Runner, despite being a normal video game, would have still cost a LOT more than a standard upright coin-op for operators. Dragon’s Lair cost $4,000 in 1984 bucks, $1,000 to $1,500 more than the competition. Second, the technology was notoriously unreliable. I’ve heard so many stories of disappointed 80s gamers seeing LD games like Space Ace wearing OUT OF ORDER signs. They had heat problems. They had disc reading problems. LaserDisc cabinets are basically an arcade game made out of a bigger, bulkier, heavier, hotter DVD player with additional circuits attached. That’s a recipe for hardware failure if I ever saw one. But, above all that, I suspect Atari recognized that Road Runner just wasn’t a very good game to begin with. That’s why Road Runner was reworked to remove the FMV elements in favor of sprite backgrounds. The game that came out in 1986 really is the exact same game as the LaserDisc version would have been, and it was probably a very wise decision because Road Runner isn’t very fun no matter how much you dress it up.

UPDATE: Thanks to Dave Sanders, who found that the original designer of Road Runner was Asteroids/Centipede/Gauntlet/Dr. Muto (hey, I liked Dr. Muto) designer Ed Logg. It looks like “unreliable tech” is the declared reason why FMV Road Runner was canned.

The third stage is where the level design drops all pretense of fairness and just counts on players getting hung-up on the road or placing bird seed in dead-ends so you have little-to-no room to run around the coyote. Just sh*tty design that isn’t meant to be fun. It’s meant to get players off the machine by any underhanded means necessary.

You have to run around collecting bird seed while avoiding Wile E. Coyote and his various ACME gadgets. You can miss up to four bird seed piles before you die. The movement is SUPER loose and very difficult (see after the verdict for an update on this, as we found out after the fact Road Runner uses useless analog controls). This is combined with narrow, twisty-turny roads that you must stay on. There’s no off-roading in Road Runner. The coyote chases you directly for the most part, and like most games where the chaser makes a beeline for you (not all, but most), it makes for a boring chase element. For the most part, you can only scratch-out distance by running a circle around him in one of the wider parts of the road. Sometimes the coyote uses gimmicks like spring shoes or riding a rocket, but for the most part, he just runs at you directly. A maze chase with a boring chaser is a fatal flaw to begin with, before you even factor in the awful movement physics. Sasha compared the NES version (coming up) to being like bootlegs of Pac-Man where the walls are removed, and that’s a spot-on comparison. Getting stuck trying to corner is the leading cause of death in this game, which doesn’t pretend to play fair. Like, look how low visibility this cannonball is:

Because of the fast movement speed and scrolling, it’s much harder to see in motion than in this screenshot. These are basically a GOTCHA that relies on memorizing levels.

I just found Road Runner to be a huge drag of a game. The collision boxes with the bird seed are quite unforgiving, unlike the landmines or other obstacles. Plus, Wile E. seems to have a smaller collision box than you, because I wasn’t very successful at luring him into traps, which is kind of a secondary object of the game. You score points based on how many times you cause the coyote to fail, both when an incident happens and as bonus points at the end of stages. It’s exactly what you want from a Road Runner game, but because the controls are so loose and unwieldy, it’s no fun to hit Wile E. Coyote. Plus, the coyote will injure himself just as often without you having to do anything, which hypothetically should work and fit the Looney Tunes theme. In practice, it takes the zing out of a maze chase. Imagine if the ghost monsters in Pac-Man practiced self-cannibalism. It’s MY job to eat you. What are you doing? And that’s why it doesn’t work here.

The main challenge isn’t the coyote, but getting hung-up on the edges of the road, and that’s just the worst idea for a video game challenge.

I didn’t get very deep into Road Runner. I made it to the seventh level when I realized concepts were starting to recycle, and I’d seen enough that I just had to give up and play something else. Road Runner is a maddening combination of frustration and boredom the likes of which I’ve rarely seen in a maze chase game. I honestly don’t think there’s any problem with a game I hate more than basing levels around precision movement, then giving you imprecise controls. It’s dirty pool, and if I want that experience in an arcade game, I’ll play a ticket redemption game. At least there I know I’m being cheated. But, let’s assume the controls were perfect. Would I be having fun then? I can’t say for certain, but I still don’t think so. I think the Coyote is a dull chaser. I think they were aiming for the Coyote to be more like Bluto from Nintendo’s Popeye: a singular, terminator-like pursuer. But, every turn-the-tables element is indirect at best, and incidental at worst. Road Runner’s base gameplay could be made perfect and it still wouldn’t be fun. This is a low point for the genre.
Verdict: NO!

UPDATE – Analog Controls

Used analog and died immediately because I wasn’t going fast enough. Like, the coyote immediately won. You HAVE to floor it.

Dave and Btribble clued me in to the fact that Road Runner used an ahead-of-its-time form of analog based around the Hall Effect that’s all the rage these days. But if you’re using MAME or other emulators, any analog controller works (you might want to adjust the settings though). Now, I swear to God I had no clue as the Wikipedia page doesn’t mention it and Sasha, who uses the analog stick instead of a D-Pad (which I prefer because then my hand tremors don’t really factor in), didn’t report anything. It wasn’t an oversight on her part, either. It simply does not make a difference. I just tried it and, because of the speed of the Coyote, you only get fractions of a second at most where it matters. Any precision gains are negated by how closely the coyote chases you. During straightaways you literally have to floor it anyway or he’ll get you almost immediately. During zig zag courses where he uses the rocket or spring shoes, again, there’s still no point in slowing down because you’ll immediately have to jerk the stick when the coyote makes his gains anyway. That’s INSANE! It would be like putting a pedal on a driving game then giving players only enough time to win if they have the pedal to the metal the entire race. Analog really doesn’t help Road Runner even a little bit and actually makes it kind of worse, as I think I got hung up on the edges even more when I tried to feather the stick. So in addition to the NO! I’m punting the Road Runner square its virtual ass for wasting innovation.
Follow-Up Verdict: BAM, right in the ass.

Road Runner
Platform: Atari 2600
Released in 1989
Designed by Bob Polaro
Developed by Atari Corporation
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Well, on the plus side, you don’t really get hung-up on the edges of the road in the Atari 2600 port of Road Runner. That’s because the twisty-turny level design isn’t really here. It’s mostly running in a straight line. The coyote doesn’t run quite as fast as he does in the coin-op, but he still gets the occasional burst of speed to catch you. When he gets that burst, the same strategy is used from the arcade version: run around him in a circle to scratch out distance. Which is pretty much the most boring way to escape a chaser, but it works. The Atari version is MUCH easier to lure the coyote into the landmines, which actually makes this game slightly better than the coin-op. It feels truer to the cartoon. But, the gameplay is just dull as dirt. I suppose on some level, this is an impressive technical achievement, but if the gameplay is boring, who cares? Road Runner on the Atari 2600 is a stripped-down but competent port of a terrible coin-op.
Verdict: NO!
I had planned to do more ports of Road Runner but I can’t take it, so I’m only doing one more.

Road Runner
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released November, 1989
Developed by Beam Software
Published by Tengen
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If there’s such a thing as “the best version of the arcade game Road Runner” then the NES port from Beam Software and published by Tengen is it. It controls the best. By far. Because the movement is nowhere near as loose, you don’t get hung-up on the fringes of the road as often. Oh, it still happens. In fact, it happens quite a bit, but that’s because the core design is just not very good. Sasha made a really good point. “Remember those Pac-Man bootlegs where they removed the walls? Road Runner is like that, only it scrolls!” (Read Pac Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t or Wouldn’t Include for examples of such games.) She’s right, too, especially when it comes to the collecting aspect. The bird seed requires you to run on top of the pile. If any part of your sprite counted, the game would be much faster paced.

There’s not a lot of practical room to avoid the Coyote in sections like this, especially when he uses his rocket skates. Imagine if your only option to avoid the ghost monsters was to wiggle the joystick. That’s not in the spirit of a maze chase.

The smaller collision box on the seeds, in theory at least, seems like a solid game plan. If you miss one and want to keep your score perfect, you have to run backward and risk getting caught by the coyote. Sound logic, right? But, it all hinges on the coyote being an exciting antagonist, and he’s just not. It would have been far more exciting to make the bird seed easier to pick up via bigger collision boxes and lean more heavily into having the world’s fastest-paced maze chase. This should have been to that genre what Sonic The Hedgehog was to the platformer. I mean, why not? So, how sensitive are we talking, here? The shot on the left is to show you how small the pile of bird seed is, and the shot on the right is me standing literally on top of it, in a way where my sprite is blocking the seed but you can clearly see I’m not collecting it.

Screw that. If you want to give players loose controls and wide roads to navigate, being that strict with the seed is asking too much. This is every bit as bad as one of those brawlers where the main challenge comes from lining up on the exact right plane of existence as the enemies. I hate those, and I hate this. Instead of being that anal about it, presumably all for the sake of making players double back and put themselves in harm’s way, they could have made the seeds easier to collect and simply added more environmental hazards so that the coyote remains an ever-present threat, but not the MAIN threat. There’s a potentially great game buried in this crap, but the way they have Road Runner now, it makes me wish they had just shamelessly copied Pac-Man and set the game in an actual walled-off maze. To hell with suing ACME. The movie should have been Coyote vs. Atari Games.
Verdict: NO!

Filed under Retro Reviews, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Desert Demolition Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote (Sega Genesis Review)

March 14, 2025 by 2 Comments

Desert Demolition Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released February, 1995
Developed by Blue Sky Software
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

PURPLE STREAK SPEEDS BY! MEEP MEEP THE ROAD RUNNER! WON’T BE IN THE WILE E’S PIE! MEEP MEEP THE ROAD RUNNER! MEEP MEEP! HE’S NOT ON THE MENU! MEEP MEEP! HE’S NOT COYOTE FOOD! MEEP MEEP! HE’S THE FASTEST BIRD ALIVE! HE’S THE FASTEST BIRD ALIVE!

When I say Desert Demolition is baby’s first Sonic The Hedgehog game, I swear to God I don’t mean it as an insult. I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and I’m almost certain I was once a little kid myself. In fact, I’m pretty positive everyone was at some point. Even George Washington needed to be burped and likely spit up on someone’s shoulder. There’s something you don’t think about, but that seems to be how life works. With that in mind, little kids need games too. Even though there was an SNES in my house long before I got my own game consoles, my father didn’t own the right games for a toddler. That’s why I admire the hell out of today’s game. Desert Demolition is a fantastic game for all ages, but I think it’s especially well-suited for kids ages 5 to 7, or thereabouts. I have no means to test this theory. All the rugrats in my life grew up, the selfish bastards. The youngest is my niece, Sasha. She’s 9 but she’s already a highly-gifted gamer and pinball player. But, she was the closest option to test this theory of mine. She really liked Desert Demolition a lot.. and said it was clearly for kids younger than her. But, like me, she’s just guessing that. Given the fact that we died a combined total of seven times between us spread across four different play sessions, yea, safe bet. And playing this twice each was necessary because this has two totally different play-styles in one. You can choose to play through Desert Demolition as the Road Runner or Wile E. Coyote. It makes a big difference, too.

Instead of rings, you collect stamps. They don’t fly out of you like the rings in Sonic, but otherwise, you should absolutely think of this as a Sonic game.

Regardless of the character you choose, Desert Demolition’s levels are more or less identical. It’s how you navigate them that changes dramatically. The Road Runner, for all intents and purposes, is just a scrawny Sonic The Hedgehog. You run as fast as you can, not worrying about exploration at all and simply trying to reach the goal. There’s the occasional hazard along the road, but mostly it’s just you and the coyote. Avoid him because he’s an instakill, and otherwise, just run like the dickens. It’s VERY Sonic like, including springs, trampolines, water spouts, and even loops. Does it feel like the cartoon? Not really. Not even close. It feels like Sonic if Sonic was facing off against one lone chaser type of enemy. But, it works really well for the twenty-five or so minutes the game lasts. Yep, it takes less than a half-hour to finish Desert Demolition, even on your first play session, not knowing where to go. It’s a pretty short game. But, it’s pretty much non-stop fun from start to finish. It controls responsively. Looks great. Excellent character models. This is a good job. Then we remembered that we had to play as the Coyote.

This takes a while to get the hang of.

Wile E. Coyote’s half of the game isn’t anywhere near as fun as the Road Runner’s. Even though you move much slower, I caught the Road Runner on the first level in literally under thirty seconds. You know, that thing the Coyote has been trying to do for three-quarters of a century now? Yea, I did it right off the bat. It’s not even how you win the game, and he respawns after a few seconds. You just have to get to the end. Touching the Road Runner just rewards you with extra stamps and time.

It completely deflated the experience. While the Road Runner’s segment NEVER feels like the cartoon series, the Coyote’s outright betrays it. The timer is basically the main challenge of the game. You have energy and take damage from everything, including jumping and hitting your head on low ceilings, but I never died from taking too much damage and Sasha only did once, during the final boss. But, we timed out several times on the Coyote stages. He doesn’t move anywhere near as fast as the Road Runner and he controls much stiffer. It speaks volumes to the can-do spirit of this game that it actually is still a little bit fun to play as the Coyote, who has a variety of ACME gimmicks at his disposal. A couple were quite clever, like this:

The tightrope helmet pulley, where you actually do have to balance back and forth while you slide down the rope. I’ve seen this type of thing in games before, but because you’re upside down, it’s never been done quite as immersive. And this is why being able to catch the Road Runner so easily especially hurts, because this type of thing totally fits the cartoon franchise. If not for the fact that they already completely ruined the connection, this would be the thing that puts it over-the-top as one of the best uses of a slapstick license ever, helped along by some of the funniest animation sprites in any 16-bit game. Seriously, the Coyote’s sprites are FANTASTIC! Genuinely laugh-out-loud hilarious. Even funnier is that I’ve never been impressed with Blue Sky Software. I think Vectorman is lame. I think the Genesis Little Mermaid game is incredibly boring. I can’t believe there’s Blue Sky fans, because I just don’t think they’re very good at making games. Remember, these guys were owned by Titus. F*cking Titus! They were a joke when *I* was a kid. They’re the Superman 64 people! Blues Brothers 2000! This is a bad lineage, but this game? Desert Demolition? It’s fan-f*cking-tastic! How come nobody talks about this one? It’s wonderful!

The final boss is the same in both versions. You have to just run back and forth activating levers that drop exploding barrels on this Acme truck that the opposite character is driving. This is an okay ending for the Road Runner’s quest, but the Coyote’s? It’s so lame. Why would the Road Runner need to drive what is, let’s face it, a monster truck? It makes no sense! I’m sure it would have been a massive pain in the ass to come up with two different boss fights, but they really should have.

I kind of get why Desert Demolition slipped through the cracks of time. Probably for the same reasons the Ronald McDonald game by Treasure on the Genesis did. It’s too short, too easy, and based on a children’s property even though the Genesis was marketed to an older demographic. Okay, fine. But, like the Ronald McDonald game, it’s proof that the Genesis really was a console for all ages. Especially with the Road Runner. In some ways, I like this even more than Sonic. There’s fewer GOTCHAs and the level layouts seem to be based around anticipating where players will jump blindly, because I think we landed nearly every “go for it” blind jump we took. We took enough of those that, statistically speaking, some ought to have failed, but if any failed spectacularly, I don’t remember it. So, either we got insanely lucky, or they did some serious studying of play testers. I’m going to assume neither myself nor Sasha were THAT lucky. That tells me that Blue Sky precisely accounted for where players would take those jumps and adjusted the level layout accordingly. That’s next-level thinking on a developer’s part. The extra effort that you don’t expect from a licensed game. Short as it is, I dare say Desert Demolition is one of the best games on the Sega Genesis. Give me twenty minutes of near-perfection over hours of great gameplay every day. Even coming close to perfect is so much rarer than great gaming.
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back to the Future (NES Review)

March 10, 2025 by 5 Comments

Back to the Future
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September, 1989
Designed (?) by Mark Morris
Developed by Beam Software
Published by LJN
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Angela is going into filmmaking and is the movie buff to end all movie buffs. She loves Back to the Future. She loves “movie magic” and special effects in general. But, besides, pinball, she’s not so much into gaming at all. However, I have a blast showing her these old video games and their, ahem, “interpretations” of films. My longtime followers will remember me reporting on her tantrum when she found out that E.T. for the Atari 2600 didn’t contain flying bicycles. Showing her this game, just the first level, she was baffled. “Is it…… Grease? They made a Grease game? Oh wait. HEY DAD, what’s that show with the Fonz? Happy Days? Is it Happy Days?” It wasn’t until I got to the map screen that said “Hill Valley” that her face turned red. “That’s Back to the Future? Are you kidding me? Wait, that’s the photograph of Marty and his siblings at the bottom? Why does he look like a greaser? Where’s the life jacket?” However, she was impressed that it had the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and Johnny B. Goode and getting to use the DeLorean.

Well, I did the Super Famicom quasi-sequel, so I figure I might as well do the game that I THINK is single-handedly the reason Super Back to the Future Part II gets the occasional praise. I think SBTTF2 is a horrible game, but compared to THIS? Yea, I can see people thinking they just played a masterpiece. Part of me wonders if the main gameplay was even meant to be a Back to the Future game or if they had a generic gameplay template that they just plugged in vague BTTF references. For most of the game, Back to the Future is an auto-scrolling avoider/shmup. You have to simply stay on the road, avoiding enemies and obstacles while picking up clocks. If you pick up a bowling ball.. yes, a bowling ball.. you get unlimited firepower to take out enemies. What any of this has to do with Back to the Future is beyond me.

They remembered to include the memorable scene with the bees, though. Who could ever forget that scene? The scene where Marty dies from bee stings and Lorraine starts screaming and crying at his funeral about how he’s not wearing his glasses. Oh wait, I’m thinking of My Girl. Okay, well I officially designate this the NES version of My Girl. Oh Jesus, f*cking end me.

Okay, so the degree of difficulty in turning a fantasy comedy that has minor action bits like Back to the Future into an on-trend NES game was high. There was one scene in the whole movie, and only one, that lent itself perfectly to video games. No, not the Delorean lightning scene.  He literally just drives a straight road, and nobody wants to play as Doc. No, I’m talking about the scene where Biff tries to run down Marty with his car. I love car chases. They are my absolute favorite movie trope, bar none. But, that scene is not in the NES game, because of course it’s not. How is it that these licensed games constantly forget to put the one part of the property that feels like it’s in the movie/TV show FOR the video games into the video games? Krull did it. Rollergames did it twice. E.T. did it. BUT, in the case of Back to the Future, it kind of feels like the street scenes were meant to be the car chase, and they just forgot to include the car part. The problem with road sections is they’re so damn boring, but the game keeps going back to them. They don’t play badly or anything, but it’s a boring design that doesn’t feel like it connects to the property. It feels like an immediate rug-pull.

And this is where the game falls apart for good.

There’s four other gameplay styles, though. In the first, you have to throw mugs at bullies as they enter a cafe. This scene goes on FOREVER. Like, seriously, if this had actually been in the movie, Marty would still have been throwing mugs at bullies while George watched with binoculars from a safe distance as a drunken Biff approached Lorraine to um.. well, yea. Marty then would have blinked out of existence, meaning he never went back in time to push George out of the way of a car and we’d have a major paradox. What I’m saying is this level is so bad it could end the universe. The same engine is then recycled for the next break from the road levels, only this time you have to shield yourself from your mother’s affection as she fires a continuous stream of hearts. If just one heart gets past you.. uh, what? Take me down this road. What’s the consequence? Look at it this way, Marty: it’ll make for an interesting bar story some day.

The stated object of this level is “break Lorraine’s heart.” I mean, seems a little late. I just always assumed the mom got freaky with him after he got hit by the car. She’s insatiable, and besides it was the 1950s. Ideas like consent were still purely hypothetical. Could have made for an interesting sequel. “Marty, you have a long lost older brother named Mortimer. You see, your mom.. uh.. had her way with this guy named Calvin Klein while he was unconscious and she ended up pregnant.” “Whoa, this is heavy!” “Yes, and so was your mom when she was 17. For about nine months, at least. Weirdly, he wasn’t named after his father. Actually, you were, Marty. Also, I just realized you’re a dead ringer for him, too. Hey, wait a second.. oh, oh that whore! LORRAINE!! IS THERE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO TELL ME?” I’m probably going to get in trouble for this review.

The worst of the levels is the Johnny B. Goode scene, where you hold a guitar up and down to catch music notes. The difficulty spike of this section is pretty bonkers. During my play session with Back to the Future, I only died once on any of the road scenes. They’re fairly easy to clock and, once you have the bowling ball, it’s not really THAT hard to avoid touching enemies. But, I wouldn’t have passed the guitar segment (or the cafe scene, for that matter) without cheating. The notes just come flying in too quickly, and the amount of memorization required was too much for me to handle. Thank God for save states. By the way, I had a giggle when I realized using save states alone made this more of a Back to the Future experience than any of the gameplay did.

It’s basically an LCD game at this point. Like, seriously it’s not that hard to imagine that if Tiger Electronics did Back to the Future, it would look something like this six-channel spinning plate mini-game.

Finally, you have to avoid lightning strikes (and the ground they’ve touched) and get the DeLorean up to 88 mph. There’s no sense of speed and the road is too narrow for all the lightning strikes that happen, but at least they worked the DeLorean into the game. That’s what’s astonishing about NES Back to the Future. The core gameplay could be any property BUT Back to the Future. It doesn’t look like Marty McFly and it doesn’t look like 1955. It is what it is. BUT, they did include major scenes from the film. They all suck, but they’re there. I go back to how high the degree of difficulty was to make a logical video game out of Back to the Future. Not every great movie lends itself to video games. Or, as Angela put it best: there’s a reason why there isn’t a Citizen Kane video game.

It’s an ugly game, too. Even by the standards of 1989. Remember, this came out nearly a full year AFTER Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan. I don’t expect a four-man crew to be able to pull off that kind of look. But, this is one of the lower-tier games in raw appearance. Part of the reason the game plays boring is it looks boring.

Back to the Future is yet another throwback to the Atari era, only on the NES. But, that by itself doesn’t mean the game is fated to be bad. Another LJN game based on a famous Universal Studios film, Jaws, was actually not a bad little game at all. If you actually sit and watch Jaws, it doesn’t lend itself well to video games either. So, it can be done if you focus on one gameplay style and optimize it. The skateboarding angle was probably the right way to go, and they just needed better level design and better set-dressing to make it feel more like the movie. When you play that Jaws game, you really do walk away feeling like it couldn’t have been anything BUT Jaws. Even with scenes lifted directly from the movie, Back to the Future relies too heavily on the road stages that come across like Template #048D-59, with minimum alterations. A plug-and-play engine that was never fun to begin with, only with the name “BACK TO THE FUTURE” slapped on it. Do I think this is among the worst NES games? Probably not, but I also understand how it earned that reputation. There’s a ROM hack that changes the graphics around to make it look more like the movie.

Well, slightly more like the movie.

Nope, doesn’t help. Which is strange, because the road levels control relatively well and never come across as unfair. They offer the right type of challenge. The mini-games that buffer them are all awful, but the core gameplay isn’t broken or anything. Few games on the NES play as well as Back to the Future and still have a scathing reputation that’s so well-earned. Because, plain and simple, Back to the Future on the NES is BORING! It’s certainly not what I or anyone else would want from Back to the Future anyway. Really, during this era, a point and click game similar to Shadowgate would have made a LOT more sense. Or, not making a game based on it at all. It’s not exactly the Terminator or Escape From New York. Do you know why there’s no good Back to the Future games? Because a Back to the Future video game is a dumb idea, period.
Verdict: NO!

Just tell her that she’s going to be in Howard the Duck.

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , ,

Super Back to the Future Part II (Super Famicom Review)

March 8, 2025 by 7 Comments

Super Back to the Future Part II
Platform: Super Famicom
Released July 23, 1993
Developed by Daft
Published by Toshiba EMI
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Link to English Translation Patch

19 levels of suffering to see Biff get covered in poo. Worth it. Not.

What is the only good Back to the Future game? That’s a trick question. There is no good Back to the Future game. Not the Telltale game, which is just lazily written fan fiction given a budget, and not this Japanese-exclusive platformer that gained fame through an Angry Video Game Nerd episode that declared it “a good Back to the Future game.” It’s really not good. It’s not even okay. This is a terrible game that only kind of feels passable in comparison to the Back to the Future games that came before it. It also isn’t trying to be ambitious. It’s a simple Point-A to Point-B platformer. No puzzles to solve. No time travel follies to undo. Just “get to the end of the level” gameplay, with the only twist being this is essentially a skateboarding game. Well, in theory, but the designers didn’t make a game tailored to skateboarding. Instead, they made a game that controls like if Sonic The Hedgehog handled like a shopping cart.

Sonic really is the closest cousin to this, since they were clearly aiming for a sense of speed and jumping that requires momentum. That’s why the frequent slowdown is especially face-palming. This would have been better suited for the Sega Genesis.

Super Back to the Future II is one of the worst controlling platform games I’ve reviewed. Building on the Sonic comparison, imagine if Sonic was heavier. Sonic The Plump Hedgehog. Now, imagine playing through Sonic 1 or 2 if the character built up speed slower and lost momentum faster. That’s what this game is like. Whoa, this is heavy, Doc. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the problem. Sonic worked because the levels were tailored around the sense of speed and momentum, but Super Back to the Future II’s levels aren’t. Actually, they often feel like generic, arbitrary platform stages. It’s so bad that, at one point late in the game when there was a series of platforms with architecture built around the hoverboard, I nearly fell out of my chair. “Hey look! They remembered what game they were making!” The fact that it stood out that much was one of the most damning things I’ve ever experienced in any game.

“Oh my God, skateboard ramps! In a skateboarding game!”

For the most part, the levels are designed around precision jumping, but then you get into the contradictory controls. Jumping is heavy, but basic movement is loose. So when you need to just turn around a little bit to jump, you move too far. If you’re on a small platform, you might fall off it. BUT, if you don’t, you might not have enough momentum to make the next jump anyway. SBTTF2 does this constantly. Most of the game’s challenge is based around platform placement that isn’t optimized for the physics. Any remaining challenge is based around trollish enemy placement and poor collision detection. The combat is standard hop ‘n bop gameplay. There’s no attack button, so all attacks must be done by leaping onto enemies. But, collision isn’t 1-to-1 with the sprites, and because the enemies and Marty are exaggerated to the degree they are, sometimes you take damage from a jump that should work. There’s also an overemphasis on spikes and disappearing platforms that go against the whole idea of running and jumping as fast as you can through the levels. The sprite work is great, but if it results in bad combat, it’s hard to consider it a net-positive.

The best thing I can say about SBTTF2 is it has one of the longest “blinks” in gaming history. You seriously get around five seconds of invincibility after taking damage, which often allowed me to circumvent large sections of levels. This also allowed me to accept damage against bosses in exchange for getting two or three free shots in. They weren’t fun to battle straight-up, so I was at least grateful the option to cheese ’em was so easy.

While the game tries to have set pieces that match the movie, they’re just not fun levels and there’s nothing that changes up the gameplay. There’s no event stages. You never drop the hoverboard. It’s boring. You can tell that most of the energy went into making this look great in screenshots, because the bosses look fantastic. Excellent character models, truly. But the bosses play no better than the main game. First off, a few of the fights started with the bosses going instantly into their damage animation, even blinking. I’ve never seen that before. It happens because there’s usually methods to cause environmental damage to the bosses. Sometimes there’s switches in the arena, and pressing them causes something to happen that can hit the boss. Okay, that’s different and kind of neat. Except, you can also damage the bosses by jumping on them. I wonder if this was a band-aid. The relatively large bosses are fought in cramped arenas, and their collision detection is especially unforgiving. I wonder if being able to damage them via jumps was added because their elaborate plans to use environmental factors to win battles (as befits Marty McFly) didn’t work without players dying from damage. Then again, you seem to instantly come back to life during boss battles, but ONLY during boss battles. Die during a level and you return to the start.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Super Back to the Future II is one of those cynical “made to look great on the back of a box” games that irks me. It feels like karmic justice that it never came out globally, but then it gained a reputation as being an underrated classic that American fans got shorted on. Even that rep didn’t last long after that AVGN episode aired, and there’s a reason for that. People found it, played it, and realized this is AWFUL. It’s Marty The Heavyweight Hedgehog, on the wrong platform, with terrible boss fights. I totally get the appeal in Japanese-exclusive games, especially when they’re based on American properties. I didn’t even grow up in the 8-bit/16-bit era and I get excited for them. Of course I do! I’m here to have fun and find hidden gems. This is the stuff I’m seeking out.

Behold: the one semi-clever bit in the entire game that works. Your jumping move is always spinning (again, Marty The Heavyweight Hedgehog) and works as soon as you press the button. In this section, soda cans rain down on you, and by doing the jump attack, you have to basically guide yourself up this tall shaft by hitting the cans on the way up. Great idea, but then they recycle it at other times in a way that doesn’t work because they chose to include spikes and/or enemies that fire projectiles along the pathway, which your spin attack does nothing against. Any game that turns its best idea into a negative is a truly putrid game, indeed. You hate to see it happen, but SBTTF2 does it multiple times.

This one hurts. I’ve never seen a licensed game that more people wanted to be better than it is than Super Back to the Future Part II. What a strange thing, right? A one-off, generic platform game based on the second film of a trilogy. But, it’s yet another reminder why so many of these weird Japanese licensed games exist. When you first find out about a title like Super Back to the Future Part II, it combines all the excitement of a lost treasure and a forbidden fruit. But, the genuinely good ones usually manage to find a cult following on their own and rise above the level of “historic curio.” That’s not the case with Super Back to the Future II. It has some fans, but every game has some fans. E.T. has fans. Like the Tokyo Disneyland Mickey Mouse game I did last month, this thing fell into obscurity for a reason. Or to put it another way, when Biff crashed his car, he was coated in copies of this game.
Verdict: NO!

(insert BOING noise)

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (NES Review)

March 5, 2025 by 2 Comments

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released February 6, 1989 (JP) August, 1989 (US)
Developed by Winkysoft
Published by SETA
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

So much for “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” because this is a sin against gaming.

There are, in fact, two Tom Sawyer NES games, but I’m not reviewing the Japanese-exclusive RPG by Square, and not even because it has some seriously questionable content. It’s Tom Sawyer. “Seriously Questionable Content” is basically the novel’s 21st century title (and also makes for a great metal band name). I just don’t want to play a Japanese RPG. In fact, I only picked this platform game because I wanted a game I could knock out in under an hour that was bad in an uncomplicated way. And hey, for once I got what I wanted with that. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is certainly not a good game. It has loose controls, unfair enemy placement, and some boring level design.

It’s so generic that it almost feels satirical.

To be honest, I’m not even sure what the point was in making a Tom Sawyer game in 1989. I know kids in my lifetime (which, granted, started in 1989) didn’t give two wet squirts about Tom Sawyer (and Huckleberry Finn was always cooler anyway), but did the generation before me care, either? I know there was a Disney movie with the kid from Home Improvement, but that was years later. I guess this exists because, for whatever reason, Tom Sawyer is popular in Japan. Who knew? But, this is as generic as a game gets. Well, with the exception of the river rafting sequence that makes up the entire second stage. It’s basically a shmup with jumping, and while the stage overstays its welcome by quite a margin, it’s also easily the highlight of the game. Well, except for how it handles jumping. When you jump, you can move around mid-air, except the raft doesn’t stay under you. I lost most of my lives on this part until I figured out to just not move mid-air at all. Otherwise, this feels like it could have been the whole game and it would have been much better off.

When you jump on the river rafting level, for god’s sake, don’t move after pressing the button until you land.

The rest of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer features boilerplate platforming gameplay from the era. You scroll. You jump. The hitch is that the game is more combat focused. You have an unlimited supply of rocks that you lob at enemies. Well, unless you pick up a slingshot, which I found to be mostly useless. Upon pick-up, your projectiles will travel straight across the screen for a limited time. Except, the enemies seem more tailored for the normal attack, so lining up to hit them is significantly harder with the item, and a couple bosses I’m pretty sure can’t be hit at all with it. Go figure. The combat is all the game has going for it. Besides that second level and a segment in the cloud section of the game where you ride the world’s worst controlling cloud, the level design couldn’t be more phoned-in. Not that I think it would be better if it changed-up the formula more. Your sprite barely “binds” to ladders when you start to climb them and falling off the sides is too easy. There’s some very mild climbing sections, but otherwise you just scroll and engage enemies, some of which spawn literally right on your sprite. Like this part:

I fully admit, I used rewind in this section.

I died the very instant a fish appeared on the screen multiple times while climbing up this waterfall. Now that’s the last level of the game, so maybe they felt the pressure to increase the difficulty in order to feel more climatic. But the actual result is this GOTCHA! crap forces players to heel-toe their way up the waterfall to “tempt” the enemies into spawning away from you. It totally ruins what should be Adventures of Tom Sawyer’s grand finale. This is level design 101 type of stuff and it shouldn’t be that hard to grasp why that type of design mentality is a terrible idea. Then again, by the third level of the game, I was already so bored with the combat that I was ignoring enemies and legging it for the finish. Maybe their play testers were too. Maybe that’s why the home stretch before the last boss does that. Wouldn’t surprise me, especially since most of the development energy seems to have been put into the boss fights, all of which feature gigantic sprites.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

They look great, but in terms of gameplay, they’re not that they’re much better. Both the first and last bosses only managed to fire off one single attack before I won. The fourth boss was a total slog that continuously summons demons you have to jump up for your rock to reach, and only when it’s lower to the ground too. The more interesting boss was a multi-tiered battle with a blimp that felt more like a shmup boss if, instead of a spaceship, you were piloting a shopping cart with a broken wheel. Please note that I didn’t say “good” but interesting. Then the game ends with Injun Joe riding the Loch Ness Monster, because at this point, f*ck it, why not? I just played through Tom Sawyer twice and my brain is already hard at work deleting my memory of it. There’s really nothing to it, and while it’s not putrid by any means, it also really doesn’t feel like it’s trying to stand out in any way. Paint by numbers levels (and a single last-pixel jump before the final boss), easy bosses, overrated graphics (it’s not ugly, but it’s not THAT amazing looking), loose controls, and even forgettable chiptunes. What was the point of this? Is there such a thing as anti-ambition? If there is, I think the Adventures of Tom Sawyer has it.
Verdict: NO!

“Oh my God! It wasn’t a dream! I performed a hate crime!”

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Rarest Video Pinball Game – The Reviews Start NOW!

March 1, 2025 by Leave a comment

My family is lucky enough to have some of the rarest content EVER released on any Nintendo platform. We own the original version of The Pinball Arcade on Nintendo Switch that was released April 6, 2018, then was immediately delisted after a window that can be measured in minutes. It was apparently up for under two hours. These are gone forever and have been for a long time. But, years ago, before the review codes were destroyed, someone who appreciated our hard work on the Pinball Arcade guide at ThePinballChick.com hooked us up. So, what to do with these? How about putting them head-to-head with the versions of the tables that are actually for sale. Who will win? Did pinball fans miss out? Is it apples and oranges? Right now, we have 30 tables to compare, and counting. These will also double as the definitive reviews of Pinball FX’s Williams lineup on Nintendo Switch. The first review is up at The Pinball Chick, and OF COURSE we started with Addams Family! Hope everyone enjoys!

The Addams Family on Nintendo Switch Review: Pinball FX AND The Ultra-Rare Pinball Arcade Version

Filed under Pinball

LCD Games XI: The Quest for the Crystal of Liquid Displayfulness

February 26, 2025 by Leave a comment

Haven’t done one of these since Christmas of 2023. We’re overdue, and since Super Mario Wonder is taking me forever and I’ve also been binge-playing our AtGames Legends Pinball with Sasha the Kid and the rest of my family, I’ve not been posting enough updates to IGC. When in doubt, LCD games to the rescue. So, for the first time since 2023, here’s some LCD games of the 1980s and beyond. From here on, LCD features will include six games per feature. All of these are done by Itizso. If you have any mint condition LCDs laying around that haven’t ever been translated like this, you should hook him up and preserve them FOR EVERYONE. Trust me, the nostalgia for these is off the charts. My LCD features are among the most read here. Even after taking a year off LCDs, I’m still “that girl who reviews LCD games.” I had someone tell me “you should do another spin-off. The LCD Chick!” Yea right. I need LCDs for THIS site. They’re the best pinch hitters I got! Make sure to check out my retro review index for a full list.

Go play some LCDs. Retrofab has tons, and even more coming!

But, when you look at all the LCDs that have ever been made, even with as many as I’ve done, I’ve not come remotely close to scratching the surface of this genre of games. I’ve taken atoms off the surface at best. There’s tons of LCDs I’d love to do. There’s an Attack From Mars LCD! Are you kidding me? It’s pretty rare too, so rare most databases for LCDs don’t list it. The Handheld Museum doesn’t. This one doesn’t either. That should be f’n alarming. As much as it makes Nintendo furious, I think it’s nothing short of miraculous that ROMs for every classic game console, complete libraries, are readily available. I see zero evidence it affects sales of classic games or even the second hand market. But, with LCDs, 99.9999% of them will never be in compilations. Digital Eclipse will never do a Gold Master Series release on them. When they’re gone, they are GONE, and only a handful have been preserved by translating them into digital form like the ones reviewed in these features. If you happen to own LCDs that you cherish? They’re rotting. There is nothing you can do about it. The plastic will last essentially forever, but the game stored inside it will last about as long as your average human being, give or take. The majority of video games are preserved forever. The majority of LCDs are in danger of being lost for all time. If that doesn’t make you sick, I don’t know why you even clicked this feature. So, donate your LCDs to wizards like Itizso, which is basically giving them to the entire world.

Anyway, on with the feature. And yea, two of these I’ve already posted in my daily updates that I abandoned. Whoever guessed those would last a month wins a smack in the face for being right.

SPLATTERHOUSE!!
Varie/Namco (1988)
Gameplay Type: Cross-the-Road/Combative

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I just reviewed the arcade classic Splatterhouse and its not so good Sega Genesis sequel as part of Kung-Fu Master: The Definitive Review (it makes sense, trust me). So, why not start my first LCD feature in fourteen months with the handheld version many (including myself) didn’t even realized existed? Well, it’s not famous for a reason. I don’t know if Itizso’s port plays right or not, but without exaggeration, this was easily the fastest game over I ever suffered on an LCD in my life. If it was even two seconds, I’d be surprised, and the next several games didn’t play out much better. Even after ten or so games, I spent more time listening to the intolerable opening chiptune than I did actually playing Splatterhouse. To help you visualize this, here’s what that was like in game review form. The object is to catch DEAD. The Object is DEAD. The DEAD GAME OVER. Want to try again? The object is to catch laddDEAD. ThDEAD are you f*cking kidding me on that one? The object is to catch the ladders in order to DEAD GAME OVER. Excuse me, I’m going to go have a cry now.

Seriously, that’s what it’s like when you first start. There’s no grace period for enemies, and the knives that come in from the bottom left of the screen basically spawn on the same space you occupy, meaning some double kills are inevitable. The object is, in fact, to jump up and catch ladders so that you can zig-zag three stories and fight a boss to rescue your girl. The combat and safe zones are NOT intuitive, and it takes a lot of practice to figure out the timing. It doesn’t feel even a little like Splatterhouse and actually would make for a better Donkey Kong game, but after an infuriating start, I admit, there’s SOMETHING here. It took me a long time to get the timing down for the enemies, and I’m still not comfortable describing how to beat the boss. Basically.. stand back and don’t attack when he does, I guess. I can’t say I had a good time because it’s a busy game with tiny enemies, quick deaths, and one of the most ridiculous jump animations I’ve seen, but it wouldn’t take much fine-tuning to make this worthwhile.
Verdict: NO!

BURGERTIME!!
Bandai (1982)
Gameplay Type: Cross-the-Road

On the most basic level, this plays like Burgertime. Preschool Burgertime that completely misses the point of the genre, but Burgertime nonetheless. You shimmy up and down ladders and knock exactly two patties and four buns to the bottom of the screen, and then you do it over and over again. There’s one enemy patrolling every floor that you can pepper when they’re next to you. After one level, a little bar warps around and might temporarily block a ladder. At first, I wondered how this could feel like a maze chase since there’s no maze. The answer is “they didn’t even try to replicate that.” Instead, you basically play Red Light-Green Light with the enemies and wait for them to waddle away from the burger parts. Well, unless you kill them, and you might as well do that. Unlike the coin-op, you get all your peppers back between stages. If you can’t even wait that long, you get refills from ice cream and coffee mugs that appear on the first and second floors. So unless you screw up the timing of when to use the pepper, this is just too easy. I don’t even know why they bothered releasing this if this was the best approximation they could do of Burgertime. Um.. seriously? Two channels? TWO? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to turn the screen on its side so the playfield could be bigger?
Verdict: NO!

WESTERN BAR!!
Casio (1984)
Gameplay Type: Shooting Gallery/Quick Draw

How many games have you play as an alcoholic sheriff who gets ashtrays thrown at them? At least one! And actually, Western Bar is one of the better shooting galleries I’ve played in this format. You can tell the designers took a long, hard look at the Game & Watch franchise, because this is very Nintendo-like, and I mean that in the best way. Levels are divided into two parts. In the first, you have to shoot targets that pass from the right of the screen to the left while dodging objects thrown by two patrons. From the second cycle onward, sticks of dynamite are thrown from the left of the screen that you do NOT want to shoot (when are you ever going to learn to read the instructions, Cathy?). From the third cycle onward, the bartender will catch the sticks and toss them onto the playfield, and you have to walk next to them to dump your whiskey out on the fuse. I spent far too much time on Google trying to find out if that would actually work or just blow you up faster. I never got a clear answer. Either way, the second part is a quick draw match against an outlaw. You hide behind a table. He hides behind the left of the counter, and when he pops out to shoot, all you have to do is press the fire button. But, he’s capable of faking his move, so make sure not to draw until he’s actually in his shooting cel. Western Bar is a busy game (you’ll want this on full screen) but it’s genuinely a lot of fun and one of the best LCDs I’ve played that isn’t from Nintendo.
Verdict: YES!

WESTERN SHERIFF!!
Casio (1987)
Gameplay Type: Shooting Gallery

It even looks boring.

I had high hopes for this pseudo-sequel to the previous game, but Western Sheriff has none of the intense gameplay or charm of Western Bar. You gallop automatically on a horse and when bandits pop out, you shoot them. As you ride, if you hit a barrel, your horse loses 3 out of its 10 energy points, but they can be refilled with carrots. There’s tons of carrots. Far more than enemies, actually. From the second cycle onward, enemies throw dynamite from houses that have to be avoided. So, a fairly generic, mundane LCD experience, but there is one novel twist. Despite only having left and right directions, your gun can aim in multiple different channels. So, for example, if you move left, your gun will remain pointed the same way, but then moving left a second time will adjust your gun, then moving left again will move to the next space. So, that’s interesting, I suppose. But Western Sheriff is a total slog to play. If you want a good multichannel gunslinger, Konami’s Lone Ranger is so much better. and it’s on Retrofab.
Verdict: NO!

BEAUTY SHOP!!
Bandai Electronics (1981)
Gameplay Type: Spinning Plate

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Well, this is a different theme, at least. In Beauty Shop, you have to cut and shampoo hair. While there’s only three spinning plate channels, there’s seven movement “stations” in the game. Two of them are essential towards maintaining the spinning of the plates, while two of them can score optional bonus points: a tea tray on the left of the screen and a cash register on the right. These both blink in and out of existence rapidly, though you can actually get a rhythm for when they will appear. The sheer amount of movement for a three channel game is staggering, and this is further compounded by the fact that the customers won’t always get up as soon as you perform the action. They could require multiple button presses to satisfy. The game wisely created indicators to let you know which of the three is the one about to cost you a miss. The customers raise their hands, then get “steamed” if they wait too long. Beauty Shop is a shockingly intense game, but a flawed one. I feel that I only lost after 3,000 points because I kept making plays for the cash register and tea tray. Had I ignored them completely, I really think it’d be easy to just maintain the plates indefinitely. The two bonus channels don’t really score enough to justify their risk. I hate it when LCDs do that. Beauty Shop does a better job than most at the genre, but the risk/reward balance is completely wrong.
Verdict: NO!

CUPHEAD!!
“Homebrew” by Itizso
Gameplay Type: Spinning Plate

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Cuphead is an original creation by recreation master Itizso. While it’s a typical six-channel spinning plate game disguised as a gallery shooter, there’s a big twist to this one: you’re not scoring points. Instead, you’re just trying to survive for as long as you can, with scoring measured in minutes and seconds. Unfortunately, there’s no auto-fire here. You actually do have to mash the shooting button. This isn’t a game I could put extended playtime into without annihilating my hands. I suppose the question is “does it feel like Cuphead?” And the answer is “not even a little bit.” The pea shooter’s noise, that now apparently iconic clicking sound, is here for the LCD, but otherwise, nah. I think most fans of the franchise would be disappointed that the LCD is themed more after one of the platforming segments instead of an encounter with one of the humongous, transforming bosses. But, while I don’t think this necessarily works as a Cuphead game, the addition of leaderboards makes this a one-off spinning plate experience that I enjoyed, in small doses.
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dr. Seuss Pinball Reviews are up at The Pinball Chick!

February 18, 2025 by Leave a comment

The next IGC review will be up in the coming days as I continue to look at Mario games in celebration of Mario’s 40th birthday in 2025. While I work on Super Mario Bros. Wonder, thanks to Sasha the Kid’s hard work, we’re finally posting regular content to The Pinball Chick. Reviews of all seven Dr. Seuss tables for AtGames Legends Pinball are live at The Pinball Chick. We’ll no longer be posting reviews to both sites, mostly because we don’t need to. I know most of my readers are annoyed by the pinball stuff, but thankfully, the pinball audience is finding these reviews at the blog they truly belong to. A blog that will now be posting smaller, single table reviews like the ones found in the features for AtGames’ Dr. Seuss and Natural History pins. a couple times a week from here out. So, check out the Dr. Seuss reviews, which you hopefully enjoy reading a lot more than we enjoyed playing. These were mostly pretty awful.

AtGames Legends Pinball – Dr. Seuss Pinball Pack 1 & 2 Table Reviews

Filed under Uncategorized

AtGames Legends Pinball: Natural History Pinball Pack 1, 2, and 3 Reviews.

February 14, 2025 by Leave a comment

Huge thanks to Sasha the Kid, all of 9 years old, who actually wrote a lot of this. She is heir-apparent to Indie Gamer Chick and The Pinball Chick and a very talented pinballer who set her first world record at the ripe age of 8 (she was briefly Exploding Kittens world champion for Pinball FX and since then has claimed a few other records that held on longer). Sasha got the AtLegends Micro for Christmas in 2023 and she’s been putting more time into it than we have our other AtGames pins. She’s worked very hard with all of us to put this together. Like all Pinball Chick reviews, this is the product of my whole pinball-playing family debating the merits of these pins. With that said, each Natural History pack costs $25 and comes with four tables. Presented to you here are quick reviews of all twelve tables in that series so far, along with general thoughts on the Natural History franchise. Enjoy!
WE DO NOT OWN THE 4K MODELS YET, but these reviews should cover those builds as well.

Scoring System

MASTERPIECE: 5 out of 5, the cream of the crop.
GREAT: 4 out of 5, an elite pin.
GOOD: 3 out of 5. A decent but flawed pin. To be clear, GOOD means “good” at The Pinball Chick.
BAD: 2 out of 5, a poorly designed pin or a competent pin that’s just not fun.
THE PITS: 1 out of 5, an actively abysmal pin with a multitude of problematic elements.

Award System

CERTIFIED EXCELLENT: A scoring average of 3.6 or higher awards a Certificate of Excellence. We generally consider a table that’s awarded this certificate to have a value of $15 by itself.
PANTHEON INDUCTEE: A scoring average of 4.6 or higher earns the table a space in our Pantheon of Digital Pinball. We generally consider a table that enters the Pantheon to be a must-own table.
CLEAN SCORECARD: An otherwise decent table that, while not amazing, earned no ratings of BAD or THE PITS. We don’t place a set value on this award and suggest our readers decide what a table we ultimately all approve of is worth to you.
💩CERTIFIED TURD💩: A scoring average of 1.4 or lower earns the table a place in the Sewer of Digital Pinball. While we don’t penalize a set for having a Certified Turd, it certainly isn’t a positive thing.

NATURAL HISTORY GENERAL REVIEW

  • Natural History, generic as it is, is also one of the most consistently good franchises in digital pinball. Most of these are basically Zaccaria Pinball Deluxe models by Magic Pixel. A couple are more like their Zaccaria Remake line due to really simple layouts, but all twelve use LCD scoreboards and overall, these are pretty ambitious pins.
  • The LCD scoreboards are awful. The animations are too slow and too frequent. Some tables might see players go quite a while before they can even see what their score is because animations are constantly going off. We’re not fans of Magic Pixel/Zaccaria’s LCD scoreboards in general. They’re cheap looking, ugly, and pretty slow, and we think a lot of the bugs were related to the gameplay happening faster than the scoreboard could keep up with. We’d beg them to update every table with new scoreboards if we felt it would make a difference.
  • Out of the twelve tables, a whopping nine earned positive marks across the board. In total, there were four tables CERTIFIED EXCELLENT and five that won a CLEAN SCORECARD.
  • Every Natural History pack has at least one table that won a Certificate of Excellence.
  • No MASTERPIECE votes were cast at all. Dinosaur Dynasty 1 would have gone four-for-four if not for the ROM not reading every lit shot.
  • The best overall pack is a little bit murky. Technically, Natural History 3 is the only one that made up its $25 price tag via certificates, as it has two Certified Excellent tables. But, it also has the only 💩Certified Turd💩 in the franchise. Natural History 1, on the other hand, had no votes of BAD or THE PITS cast at all.
  • Four different tables were named “best overall Natural History table” by the four Vice Family players. Cathy named Dinosaur Dynasty 2 her #1. Sasha was the only GREAT vote at all for Amazonia and declared it her #1. Insect World was Angela’s favorite, while Oscar preferred Egypt. We’re all in agreement that if Dinosaur Dynasty 1 is fixed, it’ll be our unanimous #1.
  • Some of the tables crash, which means it just takes you back to the table’s page on the launcher. One time, a table froze so badly we had to restart the whole machine. Nobody suffered worse than Angela. She had multiple high-scoring games that would have easily been the family high scores, one of which was even a world record pace. We couldn’t figure out any reason for this.

AFRICA

Like most of the Zaccaria Deluxe models, Africa is a zoner. If you don’t like that style of pin, you’re not going to like this one. I think all the Vices are fans of Zaccaria Deluxe pins, but they all have the same basic problems. Zaccaria DMs always shoot a little clunky, but I like that. I like that they use non-traditional angles that have to be learned for the first time instead of basing the angles off of famous earlier pins. Africa’s targets are built especially off the supplementary flippers. This is a shooter’s pin, with an emphasis on tight shots off the sup’s. Like most Zaccaria DMs, they never quite learned full scoring balance. The upper right hand corner has three targets that light a spinner that can practically open a scoring floodgate. When it works, at least. Sometimes the ball goes right on target and the spinner doesn’t budge. They need to patch this for Oscar and Cathy to bump their scores to GREAT. I think the overall thrilling targets make up for it. Africa is one of the best Natural History pins.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 274,732,360 (#26 All Time)
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.5 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

AMAZONIA

They could have just as well based this table on the Panama Canal for how wide the flipper drain is. There’s a drain pin that can be highly effective with practice, but it’s never quite predictable when the ball will lose its bounce on it. It doesn’t help that the table mechanics themselves are unpredictable. The South American Jaguar hole kicks the ball out multiple different strengths and angles, sometimes right between the flippers. So, when playing Amazon, prepare to play defensively. On the other hand, like most of Magic Pixel’s Deluxe line, Amazonia goes BIG with a mixture of classic pinball and a virtual wonderland of ramps, secondary and, uh, third..an..ary flippers. How come “thirdanary” isn’t a word? Modes are short and pay off huge. Completing rows of stand-up targets pays off huge. Like with Africa, there’s a heavily unbalanced and relatively low-risk mini-field that puts a damper on everything because the logical strategy is to go for it and grind-up easy points. None of us hated Amazonia, but none of us loved it either. Except Sasha, but she beat the crap out of us on it.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Cathy “IGC” 117,029,540
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.25 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

DEEP OCEAN

One of the few bad tables in the Natural History series, Deep Ocean should instead be renamed “Deep Drain” from all the angles the drain swallows-up live balls. Most of the return angles are shallow and aimed at the drain. You’d swear this is a Zen original with how trollish those angles are. A sharpshooter can get away with a table based around rapid-fire transitions from offense to defense, but not a big, complicated monstrosity like Deep Ocean. Also, those left rails are among the consistently deadly of any rails we’ve experienced. This is a table that crosses the line into demoralizing, but it lacks the fun shots that make up for it. The best thing we can say about Deep Ocean is that it speaks to how strong the Zaccaria Deluxe line’s premise is, because it’s not even close to THE PITS for any of us. Instead, it’s just frustrating to the point of boredom.
KICKBACK – Oscar: How did I raise such soft kids? Deep Ocean’s problems are entirely related to how easy it is to work the bumpers for high-yield, low risk points. The return angles are dangerous, but you can defend against them. What was the point of buying an expensive table with relatively accurate nudge detection if you kids aren’t going to use it to defend the drain? Magic Pixel has got to start learning some semblance of scoring balance, but the challenge Deep Ocean presents is hardly insurmountable.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 76,847,980
Cathy: BAD – Sasha the Kid: BAD – Angela: BAD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 2.25 – BAD

DINOSAUR DYNASTY

Dinosaur Dynasty is the definition of a pinball killer app and potentially one of the greatest Magic Pixel pins ever. But, it’s not, because it’s one of the most problematic pins. Angela especially has a legitimate beef with it, as it became the first table to crash our AtGames pin, and it was after she had a 90,000,000+ ball (a top 50 pace). It also had an uncanny tendency to not recognize made shots during modes. Since all scoring halts during modes, it’s a dinosaur-sized problem to have even one shot be made, complete the circuit, and not count, for whatever reason, towards progress. This happens a lot with Zaccaria’s Deluxe line, but Dinosaur Dynasty 1 is the absolute worst with it. Now, here’s the good news: all four Vices are ready to roll out the red carpet for Dinosaur Dynasty to enter the Pinball Chick Pantheon of Digital Pinball. This DESERVES to be an elite pin, with a killer layout and a wide variety of satisfying shots and targets. The mini-tables never feel like a grind. The layout feels fully optimized for multiball. Look, we all hate the Magic Pixel “no scoring during modes” setup. It’s lame and I hope they mature past it eventually. But, Dinosaur Dynasty is easily one their best tables ever and worthy of a perfect score, and it’s only not getting one due to terrible coding. Magic Pixel, you have GOT to fix this. Dinosaur Dynasty should be your flagship pin. The ROM seems to be pretty slow in general, it takes FOREVER to count up points, but if you fix it and it recognizes every made shot, we will induct this in the Pantheon.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 119,203,200
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 3.75 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

DINOSAUR DYNASTY 2

Yep, this is a franchise now. Actually, thanks to the ROM issues with the first table, right now the sequel has a high scoring average. 0.25 points higher, but higher is higher. We greatly admire that this follow-up to Dinosaur Dynasty plays NOTHING like the first. You feel it in the modes, which have a wider variety of targets and no timer running against you. Well, not exactly running against you. You can’t time out, but every mode is potentially high-yielding if you can get your shots off fast enough because they have hurry-ups attached to them. Good thing, too, because DD2 is one of the easiest Magic Pixel pins. This is a positive, though. Dynasty 2 can be an excellent trainer table for the more complex pins in the Deluxe line. On the downside, this is a pretty boring multiball table, which is a shame because it’s an easy multiball to activate. Dinosaur Dynasty isn’t the most exciting table, but it also makes very few mistakes.
Pack: Natural History Pack 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 289,935,470 (#10 All Time)
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 4.0 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

EGYPT

Egypt is so full of burst-scoring mini-modes that it’s almost a surprise this is a Magic Pixel table. The mini-modes are based around different Egyptian Gods, and each mode is quick to activate and scales based on how many times you activate each mode in a single ball. You can get up to five million per shot with these, if you grind-up the value. Other than the transfer shots required to make your way to the basement, they might be too easy. The transfer from the basement to the primary playfield is done via the plunger in a way that directly feeds the primary flippers. Because of that, the basement isn’t merely low-risk, but no-risk. Unless the game crashes. Angela, yet again, was the victim of a crash, during the basement when she built up a massive value of the easy-to-shoot HORUS mode. At least it was only once this time and there were no instances of the table just not recognizing made shots. The main modes feel like extended versions of the mini-modes, only there’s no timer and optional bonus points to be had by completing an extra task while the mode is live. Ancient Egypt is a digital pinball staple and, while this offers nothing new, the layout is pretty fun, even if the thrills are low thanks to the basement and the main table being so disconnected from each-other.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Oscar “OEV” 430,481,570 (#7 All Time)
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 4.0 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

EXOPLANETS

If Exoplanets were revamped to be more inline with the current crop of new Zaccaria/Magic Pixel Deluxe pins, it’d be one of our top-ranked tables. Magic Pixel’s fatal flaw has long been the fact that all other scoring pauses during modes, but that really hurts Exoplanets. There’s so many fun targets that go unloved during modes. Of course, Exoplanet has the shortest modes of any Zaccaria Deluxe Model. Like, seriously, the first mode is done in a single shot. Not one shot done three times. ONE SHOT! Exoplanet is a great trainer table for pinball newcomers. It also carries over the concept of portholes that act as the multiball locks and suck the balls in, ala the Zen Studios classic Ahch-To Island. Only these seem to create a gravity sink whether they’re “lit” or not. It’s also worth noting that this was the AtGames exclusive we’ve reviewed so far that didn’t merely crash but froze the entire device and forced us to recycle the power. So, beware this one. The good news is that Exoplanets is likable. Almost like the logical spiritual successor to PIN*BOT. We really hope Magic Pixel realizes that there’s nothing inherently sacred about their original builds for all these pins and revamps them all with new rules that open the game up during modes. We think Exoplanets would be a shoe-in for a Certificate of Excellence. Right now, it’s only okay.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Sasha the Kid “KID” 173,538,420
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GOOD – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.0 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

THE INSECT WORLD

Wait, didn’t Magic Pixel already do a butterfly-themed table? Farfalla Deluxe, right? No? Okay, well, this is a solid table too. It’s one of the easiest tables to juggle a combo with any of us have ever played, but Insect World flows so smoothly that the endless passing between four orbits, two of which are ramps, never gets old. In fact, we were putting up monster scores without even starting modes. It wasn’t until Angela went crazy and shot the lights out after crashing a nine-figure first ball (seriously, don’t make her mad. It just makes her shoot better) that we even found out how to start a mode at all. The mode start is a six-shot locker that’s tucked away from other targets. It’s an odd choice, to the point that it felt like they almost forgot to make a mode start target and just shoved it wherever they could find room. Insect World is such a well-flowing table that we’ll grant them that one instance of inelegance. We liked that each set of lane lights are independent to each flipper, something we’d like to see a lot more of in the future. Angela wants to stress that they need to patch this, because she crashed it a couple times and was ready to quit AtGames reviews altogether. It started to feel spooky that it was only happening to her. It speaks to how good this table can be that Angela wanted to finish what she started. In a solid pinball franchise, Insect World is a standout. Get rid of the butterflies swooping over the playfield, though.
Pack: Natural History Pack 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 494,643,600 (#8 All-Time)
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GREAT – Angela: GREAT – Oscar: GREAT
Scoring Average: 4.0 – Awarded a CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE

THE LAST ICE AGE

Last Ice Age is a potentially great table that’s about one-third worse off just based on the violence of the bumpers and slingshots alone. We’ve had entire 60 second timers eaten up by balls bouncing around the bumpers. Mind you, you’re scoring NOTHING that entire time, too. This is one of those pins where the rest of the targets take a nap during a mode. The bumpers are too close too close to each-other, and for a few of the modes, they’re basically unavoidable because the lit shots feed them. The slingshots are equally as violent, so 60 seconds to finish a mode is NEVER sixty seconds of actual chances at winning the mode, especially since so many angles drop the balls straight on those ultra-violent slings. Ice Age is hypothetically a close cousin of Egypt, with lots of mini-modes that would be fun if not for the fact that the slings and bumpers prevent you from even being able to shoot the ball in the first place. This is also one of those tables where you shoot saucers instead of targets or cellars, and even if the shot is on point, it’s a coin flip if the ball will actually score the saucer or just roll out. Ice Age is a GREAT table rendered barely okay. There’s nothing it does wrong that Magic Pixel couldn’t adjust. They should, because the modes are good enough that this should cruise to Certificate of Excellence.
Pack: Natural History Pack 1
Vice Family High: Oscar “OEV” 250,082,060
Cathy: GOOD – Sasha the Kid: GOOD – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.0 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

NATURE’S FURY

Nature’s Fury was going to be the worst of the Natural History pins even if it didn’t make some of the most mind-bogglingly dumb design choices of any AtGames exclusive table. This is a house ball machine, with several auto-plunges ricocheting off fixtures and down the drain in a way you can’t possibly defend against. Seriously, this plunger needs to be taken out back and shot like Old Yeller, then replaced with a new plunger that actually sends the ball up and into the playfield. It doesn’t matter though, because randomly killing balls is this table’s thing. We only managed to play the first two modes, the first of which is lightning strikes. You have to hit the flashing ramps five times, and while you do this, the table shoots your ball with lightning, stopping the shots dead in their tracks. We’re not kidding. Anyone want to play a pinball table where literal sky magic stops your ball from completing a shot that’s on point? More than once, the ball was literally on the ramp when the lightning hit it and sent it backwards. The final straw was that getting into a shooting rhythm isn’t possible because if you make the ramp shot too close together, the game likely won’t count it. This is one of those tables where the ROM is so slow that you have to wait for it to finish processing the previous made shot before you can make it again. So even making the ramp five times doesn’t guarantee you win because it just plain might not count some of the shots. Hey, Magic Pixel: your scoreboards don’t need as much animation as you do with them, because those animations are breaking the games! They’re scoreboards, not Hollywood productions! Stop it! This table themed around disasters lives up to the theme in the worst way possible.
Pack: Natural History 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 364,172,320
Cathy: THE PITS – Sasha the Kid: THE PITS – Angela: THE PITS – Oscar: THE PITS
Scoring Average: 1.0 – 💩CERTIFIED A TURD💩

POLAR EXPEDITION

We assume they gave this a polar theme because the pace is glacial. Did this table REALLY need seven jet bumpers at the top? Seven! It slows the gameplay to a crawl, especially since so many angles lead to the eight lanes that feed the bumpers. Yikes. Well, at least they didn’t do anything truly moronic, like tying a high-scoring two-ball multiball to the bumpers. Oh wait, they did. Yea, it doesn’t take that many bumps to activate Antarctic Multiball, where you can juice the jackpot values by shooting the SEAL saucer. Okay, well, tell me that they didn’t further compound this problematic design by, say, tying the ball save to the slingshots, which are basically unavoidable. Oh wait, they did that too. Both Angela and Sasha had 200,000,000 point multiballs from this easy to get multiball alone. So, why aren’t they the world champions? Because they couldn’t avoid starting the low-scoring modes, where all other targets stop putting up any points. Since basically every shot is tied to a different mode start, you could end up stuck grinding out the lit mode shots when multiball will earn you 50x their value. Any table where you DON’T want to start modes is guaranteed to fail. Ignore the 2.0 we gave it, because Polar Expedition’s entertainment value is sub-zero.
Pack: Natural History Pack 2
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 396,258,060 (#14 All Time)
Cathy: BAD – Sasha the Kid: BAD – Angela: BAD – Oscar: BAD
Scoring Average: 2.0 – BAD

WORLD OF MICROBES

Easily the most odd of the Natural History tables, World of Microbes has a fairly conventional layout that’s made “wacky.” The mini-field is mostly (but not entirely) accessible through a whiparound loop, which is shaped like a half-moon dimple on the left wall and basically acts as a transfer if shot correctly. It’s so satisfying to shoot, and the mini-field pays off high enough to make it worth shooting. The rest of the table is downright tame, but there’s one final twist: Magic Pixel’s best use ever of digital targets. The “modes” see players shooting at different viruses that roam around the table. While they make for good targets, they’re not as good as they could be. Because the whole Zaccaria Deluxe engine is apparently slow, the little viruses and bacteria sprites that you shoot don’t die on impact. There’s a pronounced delay from the time contact is made until they go into their death animation. Thus, there’s no OOMPH, and without that, it takes away all satisfaction these targets should, by all rights, be loaded with. In general, we’re not happy with the performance of the ROMs for any Natural History table, but World of Microbes is the first one where it actively sucks the excitement out of the gameplay. If they fix this, it’s another game that can cruise to a Certificate.
Pack: Natural History 3
Vice Family High: Angela “ADV” 208,916,960
Cathy: GREAT – Sasha the Kid: GOOD – Angela: GOOD – Oscar: GOOD
Scoring Average: 3.25 – Awarded a CLEAN SCORECARD

Filed under Pinball Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Where’s Waldo? (NES Review)

February 12, 2025 by 4 Comments

Where’s Waldo?
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released July, 1991 or September, 1991
Developed by Bethesda Softworks
Published by THQ
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Riiiiiiiiiight.

During Christmas at my house, we have a rule that everyone must get everyone else two specific gifts in addition to all the cool stuff we actually want. One must be something homemade (or as close to homemade as you can get) that’s “from the heart” and the other is everyone has to give everyone else a joke gift that’s usually a little kid’s toy. Angela, my adopted sister and the future Spielberg of her generation, is the absolute best at picking out the joke gifts, because the stuff she gets us is actually stuff we always end up playing around with. I got a Slinky this last Christmas, which my little deaf wiener dog Kunoichi absolutely despises and growls at even if it’s sitting still on my desk. I’ve walked into my bedroom more than once to see her up on my bed and snarling at it because she can see the Slinky being used as a paperweight. We assume she thinks it’s a skeleton of her breed. So that’s fun and kind of insane. But it was the year before that where Angela gave me one of the best “joke” gifts ever: a complete box set of all seven main-series Where’s Waldo books called “The Ultimate Waldo Watcher Collection.”

Genuinely a ton of fun and I recommend it to everyone of all ages.

Everyone laughed when I opened it. They weren’t laughing soon, though. No, we were all gathered around, calling out when we found each thing. “Found the scroll!” “Found the wizard!” “Found the camera!” And the best thing is, if you owned the original version of the books, they moved the locations of Waldo around AND added the Wizard, Odlaw, Woof, Wanda, and tons of other stuff to find. It’s for sure a top-10 all time Christmas present. I got it for Christmas of 2023 and didn’t finish the whole thing until around Thanksgiving of 2024. We didn’t mark the pages either, so after it was finished I gave it to my nieces and nephew and they enjoyed it. So, I’m a big Waldo fan, and in my authority as a fan, ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?

What the f*ck is that sh*t? Now a Waldo video game where Waldo’s location changes from game to game isn’t the worst idea, but if this is the best the tech can do, you need to apologize and get your money for the license back. This is embarrassing. Can YOU spot Waldo in the above picture?

HE’S NOT EVEN WEARING RED!! Apparently that’s a twist they added to NORMAL/HARD for difficulty.

Jeez louise. Now fine, it’s the NES so it’s not like the elaborate pictures of the books could be recreated here. Hell, it can’t even recreate the two early books where the pages weren’t completely spammed with characters like the later books tended to do. But those books weren’t just about finding one guy dressed in stripes. Even if you ignore the other four characters, Waldo books have other things to look for and tons of skits and sight gags to admire. When you finished the book, there was even a checklist of more things to find involving those gags. They had genuinely funny bits and memorable character design. Waldo isn’t about Waldo. He’s a means to an end. The chucklef*cks who made this game didn’t understand that at all.

Uh, no.

And it is only Waldo you have to find. No books. No cameras. Now granted, I don’t even think Whitebeard, Odlaw, or even Woof had been invented yet when this came out. But, there were always more things to find than just Waldo, but for the five total “find Waldo” screens it’s really just him, and they’re awful. Waldo often doesn’t look like Waldo, and there’s no humor or personality or gags to be seen. Just these “find Waldo” screens alone would have made this one of the worst NES games I’ve ever played, but then you get to the grasping-for-straws mini-games and that’s the point when it becomes clear they had no passion or drive to make a quality game at all and simply did not care. In the cave, you have to just move around at random until you see Waldo moving, then click him.

In the Subway, you have to change the direction of these different octagonal pathways and find both Waldo and his glasses. While you do this, at least on NORMAL and HARD difficulties, a wizard jumps around to the empty spaces. BUT, instead of being limited to jumping on only a space next to him, the wizard can teleport from anywhere across the playfield directly on top of you. Sharing a space with the wizard quickly drains the time you have remaining, and because his only rule is that he doesn’t go on the playfield edges, there really is no way to plan to avoid him. Are you serious? Hell, you can’t even time it, because the intervals of when the wizard jumps aren’t fixed. More than once I waited for him to move before moving spaces only to have him immediately teleport to that space. So there’s no excitement to the chase because it’s not actually a chase. It would be like if the ghost monsters could randomly teleport on top of Pac-Man. I’ve never seen the likes of that level of thoughtlessness. How stupid can game design get?

And then there’s the grand finale. Is it one of the “find Waldo” segments that’s really the only reason anyone would want a game like this in the first place? OF COURSE NOT! It’s a slot machine! Yes, really! With all the time you have remaining, you have to time the three reels so that each one comes up Waldo.

Total time to beat the game: probably around five minutes.

I’m actually really angry about Where’s Waldo because kids in the know weren’t this game’s target audience: their clueless parents were. Where’s Waldo was released in 1991, at the height of the books’ popularity. It’s not hard to imagine a well-meaning parent who knows their kid loves the Waldo books buying this for them, and it’s so unlikable and lazy. There’s only five “find Waldo” screens total, along with the above mentioned “mini-games.” Five whole levels that give players the type of Waldo they’d actually want. Shameful. It’s not like this was the best they could do at those, either. The cursor only has one speed, and that’s full steam ahead. Just aiming the cursor at Waldo when you find him is an act of frustration. But the fact that they ended the game on a slot machine instead of a puzzle or anything remotely related to Waldo was the final straw for me. This really is the worst NES game, and a legit contender for worst video game ever made. For all the crap E.T. for the Atari 2600 gets, at least that feels like the developer had the best of intentions. Not this. Where’s Waldo is right up there with Defenders of Dynatron City and Action 52 in the heartless cash-grab hall of shame.
Verdict: NO!

Christ, this is a franchise.

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →