Gyromite

The Short

Pros
- Fun two-player puzzle game
- Awesome music
- One of the only two games in existence that supports R.O.B. the robot.

Cons
- Playing with R.O.B. is actually less fun than playing with another person
- Because of R.O.B.'s handicap, the game is scaled down in difficulty and can be pretty easy
- Extra mode, where you guide the sleeping professor, is extremely boring

And now we have Gyromite...or...Robot Gyro? Eh?

The Long

Ah, the early days of the Nintendo. Coming off the big fat video game crash of the 80s, Nintendo wanted to bring the video game market back, in a big way. However, most consumers were pretty turned off to the concept of video games at the time, making any attempts to revitalize the market dangerous if almost impossible.

Nintendo's alleged "counter" to the stigma against video games was to market the NES not just as a video game console, but as a toy. After all, people were more likely to buy toys that video games at this point in time. They solidified this position with crazy attachments like the light gun and tons of other crap they put out, but really the icing that solidified this idea was the R.O.B. the robot. And I just realized the icing analogy didn't work. 

The future of toy technology. 

R.O.B. (which stood for "Robot Operating Buddy") was a toy that could interact with your NES games, specifically two NES games: Gyromite and Stack-Up. Each required a buttload of things you had to plug into his base for it to work, so you had to have both the attachments and the robot to make the stupid game work. R.O.B. took a truckload of batteries and was generally pretty cumbersome, so in truth he wasn't the best with regard to being a "Buddy" to play games with.

How was R.O.B. controlled? Well, since I'm waiting further time before this review, I'll explain. Using some sort of TV devil magic, when you issued commands to R.O.B. in the game the screen would flash in specific ways (kind of like how the screen flashed for the Zapper). R.O.B. would see the flashes with his robot eyes, and those would translate into commands. Crazy. 

On to the game. 

Gyromite was called such because of the way R.O.B.'s base was set up. There was a motorized spinny thing that, aside from taking its own set of batteries, spun around a gyro (not the sandwich) next to R.O.B.. R.O.B. would then pick up said gyro and put it on specific platforms, which would push buttons on the NES controller for the second player. He could press up to two buttons at a time (and hold it down, not just tap it) and that, in a nutshell, is how he "played" with you.

So how the crap do you play Gyromite? Well, it's actually pretty simple. You play as a professor stuck in a room full of bombs. Your goal is to collect all those bombs to end the level. The trick is there are red and blue...pillars? I guess? that block your way to the exit. These corresponded to the red and blue buttons on R.O.B.'s gyro controls. By pressing and holding the A or B button, you could raise or lower these pillars. Since the professor can't jump (though he can climb), you'd have to issue commands to R.O.B. to move the pillars for you to collect all the bombs and beat the game.

If only I had a capable robot buddy right now!

As the professor you have a few options. A batch of enemies called Smucks are running around trying to kill you, but you can distract them by picking up and placing radishes. You can also smosh the Smucks under the pillars if you could get R.O.B. to time it right.

The problem is that R.O.B. sucks as a playing buddy. He's extremely imprecise, and often will pick up the gyro incorrectly or set it down wrong on a button. The gryo also had to be "re-revved" up after every couple of stages, which was a pain. R.O.B. was also painfully slow when moving, making stages that would normally take a few seconds take quite some time. Hence the generous timer. Overall, playing with R.O.B. was novel but hardly idea.

Because you could always just turn this into a two-player co-op game. Which makes it much more enjoyable.

Yeah, like you literally cannot play it alone.

While the puzzles are dumbed down to account for R.O.B., which makes playing with another person quite a breeze, it's still a charming co-op game. You can switch off levels to decide who does the pillars and who controls the professor, and if you want to spite your buddy you can squish the professor under a pillar. It's much more fun that playing with R.O.B., that's for sure.

There's also another side game that I'm pretty sure is R.O.B. only, if you want to have any fun, that is. The professor is sleepwalking beyond your control, and you have to move the pillars out of the way to get him across the screen. It's stupidly easy, but hey...with a handicap like R.O.B. it might be enjoyable. I guess.

Or you can just smoosh his slow-walking butt. Like I did. 

The graphics in Gyromite are...there. You know what's going on, but the black backdrop is boring. It really looks like an early NES game, in the vein of the old arcade games.

What stands out, however, is the music. Yeah there's only really one song, but it's a kickin song, written by the same composer who wrote the absolutely stunning Metroid soundtrack. So at least you're playing puzzles to a kick-ass beat. 

Pretty excellent. 

As it stands, Gyromite is actually fairly ok when playing with two people. It isn't much of a challenge, but it's at least enjoyable. Heck, it's so easy you can plug in two controllers and just hold both and play the game by yourself if you really want. While it isn't anything particularly compelling, it's a decent bit of history, and is one of the only two games that work with that stupid robot.

If you have a buddy, Gyromite is still worth picking up for the retro-enthusiast. If not, you probably shouldn't bother. Unless you have a ROBOT OPERATING BUDDY!

Three out of five stars. 

R.O.B. and his evil red Satan eyes. 

Tiny Toons Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!

The Short

Pros
- Another Tiny Toons branded platformer from Konami
- Actually incorporates something original rather than ripping off Mario 3 or Sonic
- Centering around a "sprint" mechanic is challenging yet also quite creative
- Hefty amount of charm that follows the theme of the show
- Multiple difficulty modes

Cons
- Buster's only attack is woefully underwhelming
- Sprinting, despite having a meter, can be difficult to tell when it runs out
- Some of the platforming (especially the sprinting/wall running) can be merciless
- Extremely short
- Minigames between stages are a nice touch, but aren't particularly compelling and tend to be as long as the stages themselves
- Playing on "Children" actually omits levels from the game. I hate it when games do that.

Buster Bunny: One suave mofo.

The Long

I've had relative success with the Tiny Toons games thus far. Tiny Toons Adventures was hard but still a fun platformer, and Buster's Hidden Treasure was an excellent game with plenty of secrets and a solid base.  But now we are hitting the Super Nintendo, the powerhouse of the 16-bit era, and with it comes yet another Tiny Toons game. How does Buster Busts Loose! fare when compared to it's predecessors? 

Well, it's ok. But as someone who has literally no nostalgia for the game, it can be a hard sell.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts. 

The story is actually what makes the game interesting: it takes place on a literal movie set, where Montana Max is causing trouble and Buster has to jump between the various sets to take him out. Because of that, the game can send you all sorts of wacky places, like the wild west, a haunted house, and much more. It's a neat idea and allows for a frequent shift of scenery, which keeps things fresh. 

Aside from that, this is far from a deep narrative, but come on...it's freaking Tiny Toons. If you went in expecting Shakespeare, you really need to get your head examined. 

Oh yeah, and you play football. 

So how does Buster Busts Loose! play? Well, Tiny Toons Adventures aped from Mario 3, and Buster's Hidden Treasure drew inspiration from Sonic, but Buster Busts Loose! actually kind of does it's own thing. Shocking, I know. 

The main mechanic in the game is the sprint meter. When sprinting, Buster has many more options than when he's just hopping around (because, you know, what kind of rabbit hops?!). His jump is extended, but more importantly he can run up the sides of walls. He can also leap back and forth between two walls, sprinting up the sides of cliffs with the greatest of ease. Tricky. 

Sprinting can also double as an attack...sometimes. On Children sprinting always kills the enemy you run into. On the difficulty you should be playing the game at (read: anything but "Children"), he seems to do damage sort of randomly. I first thought it was only when he was at top speed (and when he's accelerating he's still susceptible to hits), but I swear I tested this and still took damage. It's this sort of dissonance that I'll discuss further...after this sweet screenshot!

Nathan: Master of transitions. 

Anyway, you can pick up Gogo Dodo statues to extend your Dash time (as it is powered by a meter at the top of the screen) though I never figured out exactly how much it refills you. Many times I've messed up at the end of long sprinting runs because of a fraction of a second mistake, when I swore the last trophy I picked up made me run longer. Again, I might just suck at the game, but considering I did beat it (begrudgingly so) I'd like to say I grasped the basic mechanics at the very least. Well, as best as I could with it never really explaining itself.

There's other minor issues too. Your attack is this weird jump/backflip that seems to kill enemies by going off near them, not actually kicking them. Jumping on enemies normally like every other game in existence hurts you, which makes me wonder why they put a normal jump. Just put the attack jump! Or, better yet, just have jumping kill enemies and then get rid of the "attack" button! It worked fine for all the previous Tiny Toons games (and Mario. And Sonic.). Having your only form of offense being a weird sprint that sometimes works and a funky kick backflip is just confusing.

Fun fact: Buster has pants on the box art, but only a shirt in the game. I have no idea why that fact was "fun," but I did just notice it right now. 

Between levels you get to participate in a handful of minigames, and "get to participate" I mean "are forced to play." Most of these are simple, ranging from bingo to bouncing a ball against a wall in an attempt to keep a volley going. They are there to earn you some more extra lives, as there really isn't a way to earn them in levels, but the disconnect here is...weird. Especially since the minigames can go on longer than the actual levels did (at least the Wild West level...that one's short, even with the train segment). Minigames are...there, but they aren't particularly fun. I guess I should be thankful for more lives, regardless. 

But the biggest issue is the game length. While all the Tiny Toons games I reviewed haven't been particularly long, Buster Busts Loose! is offensively short. On "Children" difficulty (which cuts out stages, which is annoying) you could probably burn through the whole game in 45 minutes, with most time spent in the minigames. On normal, maybe one to two hours, and this is in one sitting. There are only six stages total and each has around three to four areas, most of which are short. In terms of value proposition, Buster Busts Loose! kind of falls flat. 

Nice hair, Babs. What a hilarious Star Wars reference.

Graphically, Buster Busts Loose! is cartoony and vibrant, and reaches the bar of this era of SNES platformers. My only gripe is it doesn't do anything particularly interesting; while it looks good, it lacks the visual punch that Buster's Hidden Treasure had. Still, it's a cute looking game and animates well, and the "film" aesthetic that overlays the whole thing is charming to boot.

The music earns credit for not using the Tiny Toons theme over and over during the first level, though it does variate on the theme. Most of the music is original and catchy and fits with the silliness onscreen. While not particularly memorable, it still works. 

Protip: Avoid the giant laser gun. 

Buster Busts Loose! was a hard game to review, if only because of its fanbase. I was surprised at the unreal amount of praise this game got from fellow reviewers, though I will admit most were mining their childhood nostalgia when doing so. As someone coming in fresh (and off a bunch of better Tiny Toons games), Buster Busts Loose! seemed more busted than busting, if you know what I'm saying. And if you do, please let me know, because I've read that sentence twice now and don't know what I was getting at. 

While the sprint mechanic is a clever new idea and I love the level variety, the lack of length and general cumbersomeness of the game really makes it hard for me to love it. I'd still recommend it to fans of the cartoon (and if you had fond memories of it), but for newcomers there's plenty of options on other systems that blow Buster's jams out of the water. 

You know, the ones he is wearing on the box and never wearing in the game. Two out of five stars.

Is that Tails I see up there? Oh...my mistake. 

Monster Party

The Short

Pros
- Hard as nails platformer with a movie-monster theme going on
- Surprising amount of blood, gore, and weirdness for an NES game
- Fantastic music and graphics
- Actually can be pretty creepy
- Infinite continues

Cons
- Really difficult to the point of unfair
- Playing as not-Bert (the demon you can transform into) sucks
- Annoying empty rooms without bosses slow down the action
- Some bosses are stupidly hard

It's time for a party. And I think you know what kind. 

The Long

Yeah, Monster Party! 

One of the reasons I love the NES is the insane number of straight up weird games that get put on it. It was the wild west back in those days (much like early PC/DOS gaming) with people punching out whatever they thought would sell and often using weirdness to push that point home. Enter Monster Party, a 1989 Bandai game starring, you guessed it, cliche movie monsters. This game flew under everybody's radar until a beta cart sold for an insane sum of money in Japan, revealing the game was originally darker and gorier. Still, no matter how you look at it, Monster Party is a wonderfully weird game, and one you can use the phrase "they sure don't make 'em like this anymore" liberally when describing. 

"Ya know, nothin, just playing some Monster Party. You?"

You play as Mark, a baseball kid who, on his way home, encounters a purple demon bird guy named Bert. Bert says that his planet of monsters is under attack and he needs help to clean stuff up. Why he needs a punk kid with a baseball bat is beyond me, but before Mark can protest Bert fuses (yes fuses?!) with him and they are whisked away on a magical adventure in the land of the monsters.

This game also has the most f***ed up ending of any NES game I've played (well, except maybe Hitler's head exploding in Bionic Commando): Mark has a dream where his friends and then himself rot and decay, complete with every gory little detail being depicted on screen. Yeah, great game for kids, Monster Party. 

This don't look so bad. Minus the weird legs popping up out of the ground. 

Monster Party is basically another NES platformer with a few little differences. You normally play as Mark, his main weapon being a bat. This doesn't just do damage: it can also bounce back projectiles, which is necessary to kill some bosses. Enemies you kill are of a bizarre variety: guys who are on fire, fish heads on legs, walking pants, tongues licking out of the wall, dogs with human faces, witches, and all sorts of other weird crap. Enemies often drop powerups like hearts and pills, and a neat trick for the cheap is that 1. Enemies respawn and 2. If it dropped an item before, it'll always drop it. So if you are tricky you can farm enemies for hearts when necessary by just letting them respawn and kill them again. Protip.

OH SWEET BABY MOSES I TAKE IT ALL BACK. 

Grabbing a pill will temporarily turn you into Bert, who can fly as well as shoot...slivers of magic? I don't know. You lose the ability to bounce stuff back, but Bert does so much damage (and, again, can fly) he's necessary for many of the bosses. After a while you'll swap back to crappy ol' Mark, who can take something like eighty trillion hits to kill enemies in the later levels.

The platforming itself is pretty standard with an "action" emphasis, and by "action" I mean "there's a lot of enemies and not a lot of tricky jumps." However, where this game really gets interesting is its bosses. 

Bosses. You know. Shrimp. 

Each level has a handfull of bosses hidden behind doors. It's your goal to kill them all in one go, thus earning a key to proceed to the next level. Most are standard movie monster fare: a man eating plant, a giant spider, Medusa, zombies, etc. A few are...weird, like the shrimp you see above you. Actually most are weird. They all say something before they fight you that's usually hilarious and stupid, and then the battle is on.

It's highly recommended you take on this multitude of bosses as Bert, if only because it takes about a trillion years to kill things with Mark. While it's true he can bounce a boss' projectiles back (which, honestly, is the only way to kill a lot of bosses), it is extremely tedious and very obnoxious. I honestly don't think you can beat Medusa without Bert, and there are bosses I know you can't beat as Mark.

And some rooms have...nothing in them. Awesome use of my time. 

That, in a nutshell, is Monster Party. Traveling through a level until you find a door, seeing if there's a boss in there, killing it, and moving on to the next. There's nine stages total, but seeing as the game is quite difficult it will take a good deal of time to beat it. While having a wide array of bosses is nice, they don't really mix up the formula too often. Either they run back and forth and you have to hit them and not get hit, they shoot projectiles you bounce back, or a combination of both. It's not particularly enthralling, and if you play as Bert with a turbo controller you can take most of them out pretty quickly.

Where Monster Party really sells me, though, is it's impeccable style. It isn't a particularly fantastic game gameplay-wise, but the game is just so freakishly bizarre I can't help but love it. Blood is everywhere (I'd go so far as to argue this is the bloodiest NES game ever, at least the bloodiest I've ever played), from enemies to backgrounds to...everywhere, and mixed with the sillyness of the monster bosses you get this uncomfortable dissonance. You feel a bit uneasy playing Monster Party, because you don't know which one it is: is this a scary Monster game, or a silly Party game? I DON'T KNOW.

Oh, it's a punk rock concert. Clearly a party. 

I love the graphics in this game, not only because of their style but also they just look really good. The enemy designs are silly and clever, the animations for Mark are fantastic (try ducking and then moving with him...he crawls across the ground like a worm) and all the bosses are memorable.

The music is also top notch, but particular standouts are the title and continue screen music. I have never heard a continue screen that is this upbeat, and freaking look at it. It's coated in blood!

They put this...

With this song. Seriously...WHAT?!

Regardless, it's awesome. That's all I have to say.

And...super creepy. And yet also not. Geez, Monster Party is really getting in my head. 

Despite knowing this game is flawed (again, it's too hard and the bosses aren't really that fun to fight), I freaking love Monster Party. It's far from being good, but it's so good at just doing it's own little weird thing I absolutely must recommend it. Yeah, it can be a trudge trying to get through it, but it's worth it for the absurd, bizarre journey it takes you on.

A must for a collector, and if you don't own an NES at least check it out in an emulator. Four out of five stars. 

But you don't have to take my word for it. JonTron (who is way more charismatic that me) documents his experiences pretty nicely. 

Tiny Toons Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure

The Short

Pros

- Fun platformer on the Genesis with all the Tiny Toons dudes

- And by "all" I mean "you only play as Buster"

- A weird mix between Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World

- Game is challenging but fair, making for an entertaining experience

- Graphics look great, and the music is top notch

- Bosses are fun and the game is just the right length

- Tons of secrets to find

- Passwords! At least they are short!

Cons

- Sometimes wants to be Sonic a bit too much, without conveying the whole "speed" thing

- Buster's default walking speed is "not very quick"

- A few cheap jumps 

- Game can get pretty difficult near the end

- The "slide" move is pretty much useless

- Still has the stupid Tiny Toons theme on a loop on the first level

Yep, it's another Tiny Toons game

The Long

I don't know what is is, but for some reason I'm gravitationally pulled towards any Tiny Toons games I find when out game shopping. I have no idea why this is; maybe it's because I really enjoyed the first Tiny Toons Adventures game despite its flaws? The point being: whenever I find a Tiny Toons game, even if I've never played or even heard of it before, I usually end up buying it. Good thing there aren't very many of these (two on the NES, two on the Genesis, and one on the SNES).

Anyway, Tiny Toons Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure was the Genesis offering from Konami, continuing the franchise's core design idea of "rip off a more popular game and just don't quite do it as well." For Tiny Toons Adventures on the NES it was Mario 3. For Buster's Hidden Treasure, it was Sonic the Hedgehog...sort of.

Hey, a world map! This looks familiar!

The "plot" is...nonexistant. It doesn't tell you what is going on. After digging around I found out Buster's buddies have all been kidnapped on this island, and you've got to bust (ha ha! PUNS) them all loose. Well, except Gogo Dodo, that weird plant guy with an umbrella for a hat. He's just the guy who is at the end of the level, so I guess he didn't get caught. Alrighty then.

You pretty much just fight your way through nine worlds, each with one to six levels on them. Simple enough. We don't need no plot in our Tiny Toons games! 

This game looks pretty stinkin' good. 

As mentioned, Buster's Hidden Treasure takes a few nods from Sonic the Hedgehog, though while I was playing it I also got some weird Jazz Jackrabbit vibes. Basically Buster accelerates the more he moves, before sprinting forward at super speeds (completely with the "spinning feet" look that Sonic's feet turn into when he's running fast). Some parts of the game require you to push back on springs to go up ramps, others have springboards that send you sailing. There's secret underground areas where you can backtrack for more carrots of hearts, and while there is a focus on going fast there's also a lot of platforming and several ways through the level. See, totally a Sonic game.

The difference is that Buster's Hidden Treasure isn't...fast. It isn't a speedy game like Sonic is. While you do get some speed at some points that isn't the goal of the game, and there aren't any sections where you just zoom ahead and watch what is going on like it's a cutscene (which Sonic has plenty of). The game is a bit slower and much more platform focused, with tricky jumps and tons of enemies you have to jump on to kill. It's actually more like a fusion between Sonic and Super Mario World, only without the powerups. Or Yoshi. Or coins. Or Tails. 

I see where you get your inspiration, Konami. 

Despite Konami apparently making it a trend to ape aspects from the hit games of the consoles it's on, Buster's Hidden Treasure is actually...pretty dang good. The mix of speed and platforming (as well as optional paths) is just the right balance, there are tons of secrets, and the game is never too difficult or too easy. Unlike Tiny Toons Adventures on NES, you have three lives this time, and hearts are reasonably plentiful if you screw up. Though, like Sonic, if you fall on spikes its an instant kill.

Platforming feels great, and there are even a few options. You can go into a slide (which is useless; I never used it), and you can also find hidden objects that you can use to bomb everything on the screen. I honestly never really used these "nukes," but it's neat they are there.

What's weird is this game doesn't give you lives for picking up carrots. Instead, every fifty you get gives you one of those nukes. At the end of a level, you get to keep the nukes but the number you have stockpiled gives you more points (die and you lose all your bombs). Get enough points, and then you'll get an extra life. It's weird and not normal for these kinds of games, but it still works. 

This game is very colorful and - dare I say it - toony. 

The solid gameplay is complimented by it's fantastic graphics. Bright cartoony sprites mixed with some downright beautiful backdrops make for a very appealing game to look at. Animations are fluid and enemies all look fantastic as well. They did good with the colors in this game, making it visually impressive throughout. 

The music is also great, though for some reason it did the thing where the first handful of levels is just the Tiny Toons theme song over and over. Which is fine (and fun to compare the Genesis rendition to that on the NES), but man it gets annoying. 

You have found the ultimate secret. 

Buster's Hidden Treasure isn't perfect. It borrows heavily from better games, making a product that really isn't better than the sum of its parts. Despite this, the parts are fantastic, and the fair difficulty, good graphics, and mesh of multiple genre ideas result in a game that is quite a bit of fun. I'm willing to bet plenty of people overlook this game on the Genesis simply because it's just another licensed game, but if you can find it for cheap (I got my copy for $3) it's absolutely worth picking up. 

If only they'd taken it a bit further, it could easily be ranked amongst Mario and Sonic. Four out of five stars. 

And they all lived something after something. Until they played the SNES Tiny Toons game. 

Tiny Toons Adventures

The Short

Pros
- Fun, basic platformer
- Very solid controls keep gameplay tight
- Able to switch between a variety of 'toons from the show
- Graphics are great, as is (most) of the music

Cons
- Quite difficult
- Getting 1ups out of collecting carrots (coins) requires watching a lengthy trade in process
- Only have one hit (unless you find a rare heart) and you are dead
- The first few levels have the Tiny Toons theme repeating over, and over, and over...
- A bit too Mario 3 for its own good
- Short

They're tiny, they're toony...wait, toony? Is that even a word? 

The Long

Ah, Tiny Toons. I watched a chunky amount of this show during my childhood. It always amazed me that a show that was pretty much the Muppet Babies or A Pup Named Scooby Doo equivalent of the famous Loony Toons characters ended up being both unique and successful. I have rather fond memories of the show (as well as the theme song gets stuck in your head forever), of Buster Bunny and the...rest of them (does anybody really remember the rest of the characters?).

But somehow, nestled in this brain of mine, was a weird memory: a Tiny Toons NES game? Thinking back none of my friends or family owned it, and this was before hey-day of emulators. So where do these weird memories come from? 

Well, it doesn't matter now, because I've grabbed a cart and blasted through Tiny Toons Adventures on the NES. And guess what? It's a pretty good game, if really unforgiving.

This game just screams Mario 3. 

The "plot" to Tiny Toons Adventures is that Montana Max kidnapped Babes. I only know this because I looked up a different review on Gamefaqs that told me that. It's a generic "save the girl/princess" story that video games still can't seem to get away from, but hey...if it ain't broke don't think of something original or interesting to take its place.

Regardless, Tiny Toons Adventures is really your standard platformer, insomuch as to say it's Mario 3. So I'll make this review easy on myself. You know how in Mario 3 you jump on the heads of enemies to kill them? You do that in Tiny Toons Adventures. You know how in Mario 3 on an incline you can press "down" to slide, taking out baddies and getting more speed? You do that in Tiny Toons Adventures. You know how in Mario 3 you have only one hit and getting an extra hit is extremely difficult? Well...wait, no? Oh, yeah. Well, Tiny Toons Adventures is like that.

Floatin' around. 

But before I get to the difficulty, let's point out a few other differences between this game and Mario 3. First, you play primarily as Buster, but you can also pick between Plucky, Dizzy, or Furball as a backup. Randomly in the levels you'll find balls with stars that'll switch between Buster and your chosen backup character. The backup characters have unique moves: Plucky can hover mid-air if you mash the jump button, Dizzy can spin forward in an attack, and Furball can cling to the sides of walls. Buster's only real ability is he's fast and can jump the highest, so swapping him out is usually the best plan. The controls for each character are intuitive and the game feels good, which says a lot about an NES era platformer. 

There are a few other minor differences. Aside from the multiple characters, the game also...um...well, now that I think about it, this game is pretty standard in terms of platforming. It never really mixes things up too heavily, but to be honest it doesn't have to. The level design is reasonably solid throughout, the controls feel great and the multiple characters are just icing on the cake. So in that regard, it's a good game.

Then you realize how hard this bastard is.

That's for me to know and you to find out. 

Maybe "hard" is the wrong word. "Punishing" might be more accurate. See, in Tiny Toons Adventures you get one hit. One single hit, and you are out and start the level over, sans a life. You can find random heart items in the level, but they are usually well hidden and very sparse. That means that a single mistake and you are back to square one. 

While this isn't that bad for the first half of the game, during the latter portions things start getting cheap. Enemies pop out of nowhere and without warning, meriting level memorization if you ever plan on beating the game. Projectiles fly everywhere, and jumps get trickier. While this would have been manageable with maybe two or three hits, with just one (two if you are lucky) you are going to die. A lot. 

I have never seen anyone so excited about carrots. 

There are also a few obnoxious little things that will frustrate players of that other 2D platformer where you can slide down hills and pick up coins/carrots. Collecting carrots doesn't earn you 1ups right off the bat; you have to find a secret room with Hamton on every level and cash them in. Every 30 gives you a life, but the fact you have to watch Hamton's stupid speech explaining the cash-in process every time is a chore. 

Another minor niggle is that the first boss is a beginner's trap. Elmyra (who I don't remember at all from the show) runs back and forth trying to grab you. At first you think you are supposed to jump on her (like every enemy) but this kills you, and not only that doesn't send you back to the checkpoint...you start the whole world over. Awesome. Turns out you are supposed to just dodge her until the exit magically shows up. Thanks for explaining that one, Konami.

Buster's got 99 problems, but an Elmyra ain't one. 

The game graphically looks quite good. While it isn't exactly a pillar of pixel art, I really dig the cartoony and clean look of everything. Colors mesh nicely, each character has a unique color scheme, and the levels are appealing to look at. I'd honestly say it's one of the better looking NES games, if only for it's clean design.

I also like the music, with one caveat (or "carrot-e-ot"...ok, that worked out funnier in my head). As much as I love the Tiny Toons theme song (and I love it, trust me), hearing it over and over in the first level was awesome the first couple of times (kind of like hearing the Duck Tales theme on the NES), but after a while I was about to go insane. Especially because it never resolves into the "And now our song is done" line from the intro of the show. Maddening. 

Hangin' on walls.

As it stands, Tiny Toons Adventures is a decent NES platformer that probably could have been a great one had Konami put just a little more thought into it. The character-swapping idea is really cool (something used in Mario 2 and later in Super Meat Boy) and the game controls wonderfully, it's just both too hard and too short to really be a classic.

That being said, considering NES games aren't exactly pricy, Tiny Toons Adventures is still worth picking up if you are an old school NES collector. It's a fun diversion and a good challenge to test your mettle against, and despite it's setbacks I really think it's a solid NES platformer. 

I can't believe I'm giving it the same score as stupid Karnov, but that's what happens when you use a 0-5 scale. Three out of five stars. 

Though both Karnov and Buster are blue, so I guess that works?

Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues

The Short

Pros
- Unofficial sequel to the movie (of all things) where you shoot dinos
- Lots of weapon choices, from lethal to non-lethal
- Game plays a bit like Contra with dinosaurs, so I can dig it
- Lots of stages and missions to choose from
- Can be played two player

Cons
- Two players actually makes the game harder
- Actually, in general this game is pretty tough, even on Easy
- Shooting dinosaurs is not really as fun as you think
- Lots of stages have bad directions and are difficulty to navigate
- Why are a good portion of the stages about shooting people? I just wanna shoot dinos!
- Music, while atmospheric, is repetitive

Life finds a way. To make game sequels to movies. 

The Long

I loved this game as a kid. We didn't have an SNES growing up, but our dentist did. All he had in his office was Super R-Type, Super Mario World, and Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues. Considering my brother and I was totally dino-myte about dinosaurs, we loved going to the dentist if only because we got to play Jurassic Park 2. We never got anywhere in the game (we were completely awful at it), but hey, good memories.

So when I picked up a cart a few weeks ago and decided to see how the game had aged well, I had pretty high expectations. And while I'll say a few of them were met, even more were...not. Unfortunately.

You have six missions to start with, and more unlock if you beat them. 

There is no backstory to this game unless you leave it on the title screen long enough, then an awful looking cinematic plays explaining what is going on. Apparently a corporation is trying to stage a hostile take-over of InGen (the company that made dinos in Jurassic Park) and is sending dudes to the original island to...do something. I have no idea.

I still love how nobody seems to tell these people that they are going to an island full of freaking dinosaurs. It like blew everybody's minds in the Lost World movie (that or they were stupid and didn't bring guns), and the same is here: you get a shocked army guy who flips when he sees his first dino. Does anybody debrief these guys? It would have been nice to let them know. 

You've got your spitting Dilopho...Dilafo...Spittersaurus. 

Anyway, you play as white guy in body armor (or black guy in body armor, if you are playing two player) and your goal is to kick dino butt. Well, some of the time. Of the six starter missions, four involve killing dinosaurs, and two involve killing guys. Yeah, like regular other people with guns, Contra style. Ok?

It doesn't matter; what matters is there are dinosaurs, and you are here to shoot them. The game has pretty simple controls: hold a button to shoot, press another to jump, and lastly you have this useless "dodge" move that I never got to work (your dude just sort of strikes a pose and...that's it). So your best bet is jumpin' and shootin' (hey, like Mega Man!) while progressing forward. 

I bet there aren't any dinosaurs in that bunker. Nope. Not-a-one.

While shooting dinosaurs is great and all, the poor level design and enemy AI quickly brings the experience down. Let's do level design first.

One of the main issues with Jurassic Park 2 is that, despite having six unique missions, most look really similar. Four of the six above start with you in the same stupid jungle, with the same music and same looking trees with foreground mist. Bland. 

Luckily they tend to shake things up, or at least High Petra does. That one is a vertical based level, jumping up the side of a mountain while blasting pterodactylus and avoiding rocks. The rest (Raptor Attack, T-Rex Carnage, and Seek and Destroy) all follow a same pattern: wander around, find an area you can press "up" to go to a new area, and get lost. The only difference between the first two and Seek and Destroy is in Seek and Destroy you do it in a volcano. Which actually looks pretty cool, if it isn't extremely easy to get lost. 

Expect to see a lot of this. 

It's hard to figure out where you are going based on the little passageways, and some are downright hidden. When I first played Raptor Attack I thought the level had ended when I hit the far right side, when in fact I was supposed to press Up next to a little passage (the foreground bushes had, brilliantly, been placed to cover the arrow telling me that). As stated before, in many other missions (but especially Seek and Destroy), it's easy to lose your bearings and get lost. 

But hey, it's better than stupid Protect the Gallimimus, which is the worst level ever. Just run right and shoot guys with the mediocre shooting. That's the whole level. It's like Contra but not as good. 

Hold on to your butts. 

The other main issue is the enemies. There's only a handful of dinos throughout. You have little crawly guys you have to duck to shoot, flying obnoxious guys that go down easy but are the typical "flying bird" enemy from games we all hate, and the spitters as seen above (they just stand still). But the absolute worst are the raptors. They run at you, pounce, then turn around and do it again. Added bonus that if they hit you, you fall flat on your back, and it takes a second for your guy to get back up annoying.

What makes it funny, however, is your character can actually jump higher than the raptor. So it turns into a strategy of you leaping over the dinosaur before it pounces, blasting it mid-air (serious Devil May Cry vibes), before turning to repeat. You can get it in an easy enough pattern to take most of them down, assuming you aren't playing two-player and messing up the repetitive cycle.

That's some quality cutscenes. 

And you'll need to master this, because Jurassic Park 2 is hard. You only have one life (but thankfully a health bar), and once it's gone you start the mission completely over. Missions aren't particularly long (15-20 minutes at most), but with limited health and ammo drops you might find yourself getting stomped quickly.

This is absolutely exacerbated in any level fighting other guys. While dinos at least have to melee you to hit you, people have guns and are extremely obnoxious. Bullets are just not slow enough to dodge (unlike Sunset Riders, where all their bullets were trapped in the Matrix), meaning lots of cheap hits. These are by far the most frustrating levels. 

Jumpin' over dinos. 

I've really ripped into this game from a gameplay standpoint, so I'd like to backpedal a bit: I still think Jurassic Park 2 is pretty fun. Is it fair? No. Is it actually easier single player? Well...mostly, yes. At least against raptors. Does it recycle a lot of assets between missions? Absolutely. But despite all this, Jurassic Park 2 is still a fun game. For all my Contra comparisons, this game is actually way different. While Contra is a balls hard arcade shooter where you blitz through a level as fast as possible, Jurassic Park 2 is about taking things slow, conserving ammo, and outwitting your enemies. It's almost the game's polar opposite, to be honest, and you'll have to act like you would if you were actually stuck on a park with a bunch of pissed off extinct creatures (and dudes with guns). Because of that slower, more cautious pace, it's almost like a horror game. Almost.

There is no way this is going to end well for anybody involved. 

Graphically, Jurassic Park 2 looks a bit muddy. While it does quite well layering it's backgrounds of forests and trees, as well as adding foreground bushes and fog, the whole thing sort of looks like I'm squinting at it the whole time. Still, it's passable, and the dinosaurs look good. Environments aside from the forest are decent, though they seem to be just missing that final "punch" to make them look awesome. I love the way the volcano looks, though.

Musically there's really only one or two songs, though they do well with the environment to set the mood. Hey, it's no Super Metroid, but it tried at least. My favorite song is the ominous "DOOM DOOM DOOM" note that plays whenever you fail a mission and is unskippable. I swear that five note cycle will be stuck in my brain forever.

You're gonna hear this song a lot.

I may be rose-tint nostalgiaing the hell out of this game, but despite all my complaints I still recommend checking it out. It's hard, cheap, and doesn't really do any of it's parts exceptionally, but aside from that Jurassic Park 2 is still a solid game, if an under-ambitious one. It certainly is better than 90% of the other Jurassic Park games that were released, and as an action game where you shoot dinosaurs it is absolutely serviceable. 

Plus if you get a friend and the two of you are determined to beat it, there might be some challenging fun to be have. Just...play the game on Easy. Trust me. It'll save a lot of frustration.

Three out of five stars.