Sega CD #1: Panic!

Developer: Office I, Sega AM7 R&D Division

Publisher: Data East

Release Date: 1993

 

The Sega CD was a platform that had all the potential in the world. It was the first relatively affordable CD system to make it to market in the US, and it was released during the height of Sega’s popularity. Sure, it connected awkwardly and needed and extra plug but think of all the possibilities for sound and video. It was also home to some truly great games. So why did it fall short and become mostly the butt of jokes today? Well, it’s probably because of games like Panic!. Sega thought that consumers would be more interested in the novelty than the gameplay, so too many games fall into the “push a button, watch something happen” category. Panic! doesn’t have the grainy visuals or C-list actors like all too many Sega CD games, but it may be the ultimate anti-game on the console. It’s a game that does the opposite of what a game is supposed to do. If you like gameplay or coherence stay far away. It’s hard to even say you play this game. In true anti-game fashion, Panic! plays you.

The humor is juvenile even though the game is not for kids

 

So, here’s how the thing works. You play as a kid who has been sucked into a TV and has to traverse a series of rooms to deliver an antidote to the main computer in order to stop a horrible virus. You do this by standing frozen in random rooms and pushing buttons that hopefully take you to the next room but usually give you some weird skit that is supposed to be funny but fails every time. Basically, it’s push a button, hope for the best, receive the worst. It’s a game of little comedy scenes that never fail to be unfunny. I’m sure the funniest thing was the look on my face as I watched the supposed hilarity unfold. You might push a button in an elevator and some telephones walk by. You might push another button and a sumo wrestler with a high voice might walk by. The developers were under the impression that if anything happens in a certain situation that would not normally happen in that situation it is automatically funny. The timing is all off too. Some things that might be amusing, like the screen shrinking on the poor protagonist, if they didn’t take so darn long. Other weird gags happen so fast you can’t even comprehend them. I suppose that’s the point in some cases, but don’t the developers know that comedy is all about timing? The gags are so unfunny, and the situation is so dire that I was actually relieved to see a mountain turn into a giant farting butt. At least this is something that may be recognized by someone as humor. At least it wasn’t, like, the Mona Lisa except she starts singing or something like that. When you’re praising a giant farting butt you know a game doesn’t have much to offer.

Isn't this hilarious and random!

 Oh, but it gets even more random. Do you want to finish this game? Well good luck, because the whole game is one giant, extremely confusing maze. Every room has two teleport buttons. They will each send you to a different room with no way to tell if you are getting closer or farther from the exit. It’s not the type of game where you improve as you go, because there’s no indication of progress whatsoever. Do you need to go through some of the same rooms more than once sometimes? Who knows. There is no way to tell. I know they want to be random and unexpected, but it’s just one frustrating mess. Who wants to keep popping up in the same room over and over once they have seen all the gags? Movement is slow because of all the classic Sega CD load times. I’m not even sure how to map this thing because there’s no way to tell which room is closer to the exit and which one is farther. You could wander through this purgatory for hours. How anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me.

Mutant toothpaste tubes maybe?

 

I find it hilarious that Panic! Is one of the few games to use the Sega CD mouse. All you do is push buttons in a grid. It’s not like you need to move fast or use any precision whatsoever. It is a completely pointless peripheral in a completely pointless game. So, as you can tell, I didn’t care for Panic! much. Maybe I’m looking for different things than other gamers, but it would take a very impressive presentation for me to rank a gameplay-free video game particularly high. I play video games to get away from passive entertainment. I want to be involved in what happens on the screen. It would take an amazing story or some very unique visuals to impress me when there’s nothing actually for me to do. What’s not going to impress me is dogs with boobs and bicycles with triangle wheels that aren’t doing much beyond existing. So this game is going low. Very, very low. I would be stunned if this didn’t turn out to be the worst game on all of Sega CD, or at least the worst that actually presents itself as a game. It’s all the way down at 116, which is seventh from the bottom and only ahead of a couple of Hyperscan games and the NGPC casino games. I can’t really buy the excuse that it’s just too Japanese for the American audience. There’s plenty of Japanese humor that makes me laugh. Panic! is unfunny in any language. Don’t blame the Japanese when a game falls flat. Maybe it really is just bad. 

The List! Ranking List.docx - Microsoft Word Online (live.com)

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Atari 2600 #14/Atari 5200 #1: Keystone Kapers

 Atari 2600 #14/ Atari 5200 #1: Keystone Kapers

 

Developer: Activision

Publisher: Activision

Release Date: April 1983

 I always enjoy video games with very old IPs, and it doesn’t get much older than than the Keystone Cops. Their origins go back to 1912 right at the dawn of movies and modern pop culture. The Keystone Cops was one of the first popular comedy series in all of cinema. Many of the greats, including Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle spent time as Cops before breaking out on their own. They had such an impact on pop culture that although the original series ended in 1917, they are still commonly referenced today. That’s impressive, especially since their movies are very seldom seen and not all that good. It’s as if all the slapstick greats watched the Keystone Cops to learn what not to do in their own movies. Still, Americans love their icons and idioms, so bumblers are often still called Keystone Cops, and it makes perfect sense that a video game seventy years later would draw its inspiration from the bawdy comedy troupe.

 While the game does feature a cop, the character in this game is the opposite of your typical Keystone Cop. The cops in the movies were hopeless goons who usually ended up causing life-threatening disasters through their own incompetence. Keystone Kelly, on the other hand, is practically a superhero. He is super-fast, super nimble, and laser-focused on his task of catching Harry Hooligan. The game is a fast-paced early platformer that is set up like a multi-tiered Pitfall. There is only one task in the game, catching Harry Hooligan as he tries to escape a shopping mall. He starts on the floor above Keystone Kelly, but he is much slower. A timer counts down during the chase so it’s imperative to catch Harry Hooligan as quickly as possible. Almost all the points are gained by how much time is left. There are a few suitcases to pick up that are worth a few hundred points, but it’s really about the chasing and catching. There are also several types of obstacles to avoid. Some take away time while some will cause you to lose a life.

 

Keystone Kapers is a fast and exciting game. It has similarities to a racing game because points are earned by learning how to get around quickly. New and more difficult obstacles will appear in every level, so it’s also important to pay attention to the upper screens and learn the layout. The most important thing is getting to the elevator at just the right time. It is faster than taking the stairs, but it moves up and down automatically, so good timing in key. The 2600 version is the most well-known, and it’s certainly the one I have played the most. It is fast and precise, and I feel that I can always do a little better when I play. The graphics are good for the most part, but those radios look like glowing piles of money, so everyone always runs into them the first time playing. I also enjoy that there is a map at the bottom of the screen keeping track of the characters and elevator. It’s not the most useful map in history, but it’s a nice touch.

Characteristically, the 5200 version looks better but doesn’t play quite as well. The 5200 is remembered for its nice graphics but awful controls. It’s not egregious here, but obstacles can be harder to avoid, and jumping isn’t quite as precise. The worst part, however, is that the elevator moves very, very slow. This is supposed to be a game about speed, and it’s disappointing standing around for an elevator to slowly appear. It’s still faster and safer than taking the stairs most of the time, but it can get annoying. The elevator situation caused me to get lower scores per level, but I still ended up doing better than I did on the 2600. This is probably because the developers caught the elevator problem and threw in some extra lives to balance it out. In a strange way it’s both easier and more difficult at the same time. Confusion is fairly typical with 5200 games.

 

I feel a little bad introducing 5200 with a double review, but it just doesn’t have a lot of original games. About 2/3 of its library came from 2600, and many of them, like Keystone Kapers, are too similar to merit a separate review. Thankfully both versions are fun, so 5200 starts out with a winner. So far, I’ve been avoiding reviewing multiple versions of the same game, but it’s something I couldn’t avoid forever. Get ready to see many of the same games clumped together on the list. In fact, there are other versions of Keysone Kapers I have yet to review. As always, I will make them insightful and entertaining. Hey, it’s what I do. The two versions are numbers 44 and 45 on the overall list, and the 2600 version ranks as number three on the console list. Even though I have been an Atari fan all my life, it’s still surprising how much fun I’m having with the venerable system. Here’s to more good games in the future.

 

Atari 2600 Quality percentage: 8/14 or 57.14%

 

The Big List:  Ranking List.docx - Microsoft Word Online (live.com)

(images are from mobygames.com)

Atari 2600 #13: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Developer: Atari

Publisher: Atari

Release Date: December 1982

 

Okay I guess it’s time to talk about E.T. I’m sure you all know the story by now. Howard Scott Warshaw was given five weeks to develop an E.T. game for release during the Christmas season. It ended up being such a disaster that it ruined the whole video game industry, and unsold copies were buried in an Arizona landfill. Legends of the landfill were big talk in Atari circles for years until that part of the legend was confirmed to be true. However, it’s still somewhat untrue. Sure, there were E.T. carts buried in the desert, but that’s likely the fate of most unsold games. Warehouse space is limited, so there are probably copies of Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time buried out there somewhere. However, the most relevant legend about this game is that it is the worst of all time. Now, I’ll say right up front that it is not the worst game of all time nor is it the worst game on Atari 2600. However, it is still a very, very bad game. If you think I am going to take a sympathetic, apologist view than you are greatly mistaken. I strive for honesty around here, so even though Howard Scott Warshaw hangs around on the AtariAge Facebook page and wrote a book that its members won’t stop spamming, I still have to concede that his game is, in fact, quite bad. Just as in the Atari of old I come to bury E.T. not praise it.

 E T. is a game all about holes. When you first turn it on and haven’t read the manual than you will probably move over a screen and instantly fall in a hole. Then you will try to get out and fall again. Then you will eventually get out only to walk a couple steps and fall in another hole. E.T. will fall if any part of his body comes in any contact with a hole. I think everyone who plays this game thinks that there must be some mechanic they are missing. Surely the object is to avoid the holes and get over to where the actual game starts. Sorry Atari players, but you are actually supposed to be falling in the holes. That’s how you win the game. E.T. must find the three parts to his phone so he can call his spaceship and get the heck out of this hole-filled planet. All of the pieces are, of course, hidden in holes. There is a question mark that shows up from time to time that will show you the location of a phone piece if you push the button, so at least there’s that. Although because Warshaw couldn’t quite get anything right in this game sometimes the question marks are on screens where there are no phone pieces. The instructions also state that there can be more than one phone piece per screen, so you still have to check them all. Some say that the game is only considered bad because people don’t understand how to play. However, falling into a bunch of identical holes and slowly floating out of them just isn’t fun. It’s not like there are any monsters to fight or even different colors to look at. It’s just the same thing over and over.

 

Strangely during the second half it becomes a game of avoiding holes. While E.T. is wandering around his health is quickly deteriorating. When he runs out, and after Eliot has used up all his resurrections, it’s game over. Nothing depletes his health more than levitating, so watch out. The next task is finding the spot to use the phone. As E.T. moves around various icons will pop up at the top of the screen which all have different functions. It can be confusing if you don’t know what to look for because some of them seem to contradict each other. I thought the arrows pointed the way to a phone piece, and so I got quite confused when I would take a couple of steps and the arrow would suddenly change directions. It turns out they are actually warps. Different icons appear depending on what part of the map E.T. is standing on. The goal in this part of the game is to find the one tiny spot on the map that has an icon that kind of looks like a phone if you squint. So now the strategy is to traverse every spot on the map looking for the phone icon while trying to avoid energy depleting holes. This is still not very much fun. E.T. can’t do anything besides slowly walk, and there are no bonuses to be found except for tiny dots of candy. The first time I tried this I found the phone easily, but the second time I looked just about everywhere, and it never turned up. Nothing’s more irritating than looking for one tiny spot on the map that doesn’t even have any clues to its whereabouts. So you call your spaceship, and what do you suppose you have to do to actually ride it? Yep, you find another tiny spot on the map. At least this one is always on the same screen.

 

That is basically the game. On harder difficulties a scientist and F.B.I. agent will chase you around which at least adds a little action to the game but also makes it more frustrating. So now I’ve done everything I could possibly do to give E.T. a fair chance. I read multiple strategy guides and played it several times so that I could understand it well. I’ve spoken to Warshaw a bit and he seems like a nice enough guy and not someone I would want to insult just for the sake of insulting. However, what it all boils down to is a game that’s simply not fun. I know Warshaw only had five weeks to make the game, but dude, you didn’t have to make a complicated adventure game. You made Yars’ revenge, so I know you had the skills to make a great action game. Even a halfway decent shooter would’ve pleased the kids at Christmas time. He did have some adventure game success with Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I will review when I find another Atari controller, but that game was aimed at a more mature audience and garnered extremely mixed reviews. It’s ironic that the whole point of E.T. was to make a game for kids and he made a game so complicated that even adults have trouble figuring it out.

 E.T. probably doesn’t deserve its reputation as an industry killer. It was just one piece in a complicated puzzle of what turned out to be merely a temporary setback in the video game market. Atari would go on for many more years and had some arcade success even if they never had another truly successful console again. If I was going to look at one single game that was even more responsible for the crash, I would pick Apollo’s Skeet Shoot. However, what gives E.T. such a bad reputation is its prominence. It was an adaptation of a cultural phenomenon made by the biggest game company of its era. There are worse 2600 games, but most of them were made by small companies that didn’t have much traction in the industry. Sure Fire Fly is a bad game, but it was made by Mythicon, a company that had never been heard of before and disappeared just as quickly. I’m sure it’s more well-known now than it was in the 80s. E.T. is one of those games that caused kids to lose their innocence somewhat. It made them realize that video games were products that weren’t all being made for with love and fun in mind. The main goal for Atari was to get something out by Christmas. Nobody cared if it was good or bad. It just had to exist. Atari would pay a great price for this hubris, probably too big of a price, but at least it made gamers smarter. Movie games would always have a bad reputation, but by the NES era everyone expected them to. People started to pay attention to reviews more and could separate the good games from the bad. Rentals would rise to prominence in the late 80s so people could play before buying. E.T. might not be the worst game, but it will always be the most important bad game of all time. For better or worse it’s a game that changed everything.

 

AS far as rankings to it’s certainly not going all the way to the bottom. It’s better than anything on Hyperspin and I would rather play it than a single game gambling simulator. Actually, it’s not even the worst Atari game on the list. That honor goes to Birthday Mania, a game that carried no cultural relevance on account of it selling approximately two copies. It’s crawled all the way up to #102, which like Mario Mendoza’s lifetime .215 batting average is still very bad but better than expected. Hey at least it’s not Ben 10. 

Atari 2600 

1. Yars’ Revenge 
2. Adventure 
3. Video Pinball 
4. Fast Eddie 
5. Gopher 
6. Entombed 
7. Red Sea Crossing 
8. Gamma-Attack 
9. Cosmic Commuter 
10. Gyruss 
11. Space Jockey 
12. E.T. 
13. Birthday Mania 

The whole list: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvR1pVOGMfAniEZub_KTCsR7twUv?e=OfeAtm

(images are from Mobygames.com)

Atari 2600 #11: Yars' Revenge

 Atari 2600 #12: Yars’ Revenge

 

Developer: Atari

Publisher: Atari

Release Date: May 1982

 

I gotta read that comic book!

Playstation #2: Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

Developer: Nippon Ichi

Publisher: Atlus

Released Date: December 17, 1998

(This sure looks like a game I would've liked in 1999)

 

 

I have a feeling that Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure would go over much better if it was released today. It came out during a time when gaming was a macho boy’s club, so most of the historical reviews treated it as a game for little girls and people new to rpgs. It is quite easy, but nowadays reviewers consider things like charm and atmosphere. It also has a unique angle that I am not sure I have ever seen in another rpg. It is a true musical. That’s right, the characters actually break into song. I think everybody who loves jrpgs loves the songs during the credits and opening movies, so it’s not a bad idea. It also has two of my favorite companies attached to it, Nippon Ichi and Atlus. With a fun gimmick and great rpg companies attached to it there’s little chance of it not being fun. It is fun, but it’s also a somewhat flawed experience.

 

Rhapsody is a game filled with great ideas. As only Nippon Ichi’s third RPG, and first to make it overseas, it sets the foundation for many of their trademarks. It’s full of quirky humor and grid-based combat. Despite the serious overtones it never takes itself too seriously. It has a fun and diverse cast of characters that lean away from the usual jrpg tropes. This description is probably familiar to you if you have played games like Disgaea and Phantom Brave. The game stars Cornet, a maturing girl who can talk to dolls and bring them to life when she plays her horn. The story starts as a typical one. While out in the forest she meets a handsome prince and falls in love. The rest of the game is her trying to win him over and later save him when a witch turns him to stone. The game excels in its combat, which as I explained earlier has a strategy feel to it. There are dolls hidden in the game that will join the party and also monsters that will join after battles. Every new character has different abilities, so the mixing and matching in the party is a lot of fun. The only way to bring defeated dolls back to life is to get them repaired in town, so it’s important to keep more than one party’s worth of characters leveled up. Getting lost in a dungeon is much more fun with so much character building to do.

 

I also enjoy that the game has a philosophical slant to it. Cornet has to go to extremes to save the prince, and she does some bad things to do so. She defeats guardians who protect entire communities just to get the necessary items. Some people end up hating her while some people consider her a hero. It brings up questions about what is acceptable for love. Is she justified because she is young and doesn’t know better? Would it have been better just lo let the prince stay a statue when saving him causes so much trouble? It’s a game that is legitimately funny in parts and surprisingly sad in others. It’s a winning rpg formula.

 

Unfortunately, the game suffers somewhat in the execution. The combat is fun, but it is much too easy. The only time I had any characters die was in the very last battle of the game. New areas will present some challenge, but levels are gained so fast that the battles become brainless button pushing. There is an auto battle button that I ended up using more as the game went on, which is a shame because I really did enjoy the combat. I also didn’t like how the dungeons only had two different designs. There were either square rooms or the same cave backgrounds over and over. It’s a good-looking game overall, but it’s disappointing that so many of the environments are the same. Also, the songs can be a little awkward because they were written in Japanese and translated to English. They changed the words but had to keep the music, so it leads to a few strange moments. It’s all over in about 10 hours which is a little short for a PlayStation RPG, so it’s not as fleshed out as it could be. The ideas are great, and they are enjoyable, but I wish it was longer and more difficult.

 

Still, I am not going to deny that I had fun playing Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. I’m a sucker for a quick rpg with grid-based combat. The dialogue was clever enough and combat was fun enough to put it into the good section of my list. It’s definitely one worth checking out, but like most PlayStation rpgs it has gotten much more expensive over the last couple years. There is a version on Nintendo DS, but I don’t think it is much cheaper. I put this game at 24^th which is surprisingly high. I’m sure it won’t stay in the top 25 particularly long, but it’s high ranking just goes to show how good a game can be with a whole lotta charm and atmosphere. 

PlayStation Quality Percentage: 1/2 

Link to the whole list: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvR1pVOGMfAniEZub_KTCsR7twUv?e=YCJc77

(images are from mobygames.com)

Game Boy Color #4-8: The Barbie Pentalogy

In recent months I have become something of a completionist. My collecting has slowed down a bit, and I am using more time to actually finish games. It was completely quantity over quality for a while there, and I even organized it to give myself maximum completions. I listed every Game Boy Color game ranked by difficulty according to GameFAQs. It helped both my backlog and self-esteem, but it sure left me with a bunch of boring kid games to write about. Hey, I have to rank them all which of course means I have to play them all too. The Game Boy Color feels like the system most targeted to kids of any Nintendo system, so of course there are a bunch of Barbie games. There are five total, and instead of writing about each one separately, I thought I would do another multi-game post and take them all out at once. That’s how to get views, right? Once again, they are ranked from my favorite to least favorite. There actually is a gap between the top and the bottom.

 

Barbie: Magic Genie Adventure

Developer: Vicarious Visions

Publisher: Mattel

Release Date: November 2000

 

Almost every game aimed at children from the era is a collection of mini games, so I hope you enjoy reading about different versions of memory matching. Luckily, Barbie: Magic Genie Adventure adds much more depth to the typical formula. It has a story for one thing. An evil sultan stole all the powers from the genies while Genie Barbie was conveniently off screen. It’s a good thing he got so impatient or there might not have been a game at all. As Genie Barbie you fly around on your carpet, solve some simple puzzles, find items for people, collect treasures, and explore dungeons. You also collect the powers of the other genies which give Barbie more tricks and open up new areas to explore. Sure, you have to play the typical mini games sometimes, but I applaud the developers for actually making it feel like a real action-adventure game. There are even hidden treasures to find which means you may actually want to keep playing the game after going through the story. It even has a memory matching game! I actually had fun with this one, and it is easily the best of the lot.

 

 

Kelly Club: Clubhouse Fun

Developer: Vicarious Visions

Publisher: Vivendi

Release Date: 2001

 

I played Kelly Club first not even realizing that it was a Barbie game. As it turns out Kelly is one of Barbie’s little sisters, and she never really caught on having since been retired. Since it was the first of the mini game compilations I played through I might’ve enjoyed it a little more than I actually should’ve. Still, I like the way it is set up, and some of the mini games are actually fairly challenging and take a few practice rounds to get used to. As Kelly, you have to search around your clubhouse looking for various people and items needed for a magic show. I do appreciate that it at least attempts to feel like a real game and not just boring mini games. Also, the graphics are good for what it is. I think people forget sometimes that the GBC was more powerful than the original Game Boy. The game ends with a magic show that is even more magical than they intended. The magic tricks happen, but there is no magician to be found. Kelly and the gang somehow conjure up real magic and don’t even bat an eye. Some guy in a goofy magician costume juggling three balls isn’t all that impressive, but three balls magically juggling themselves in mid-air is against the laws of the universe itself, and I’m here for it. So I guess I enjoyed this game a little bit even with no memory matching game. Don’t worry, there are plenty more of them in the GBC library.

 

Barbie: Pet Rescue

Developer: Vicarious Visions

Publisher: Mattel

Release Date: September 2001

 

I must admit I had a bit of hope for this game. It sounded like an intriguing premise, and the presentation is good, but it all ends up being smoke and mirrors. At the turn of the century Barbie started to turn away more from the “fashion and princess” world into a more action-oriented role, and you get to see that a bit here. When Barbie goes out to rescue an animal the game turns into a side-scrolling driving game full of obstacles complete with a life bar. It’s actually a decent little action section. Sadly, the game falters in the larger section of the game where you have to take care of the animals. The vet section is just simple button pushing. The game tells you what is wrong with each animal, so you just either have to feed, bathe, or bandage the animal until its health is full. Then you have to restore their happiness by, what else, playing mini games. The problem is that there just aren’t enough games to play. They seem to be selected at random, so I kept getting the same three over and over again. I know there are a few more, but mostly it was a much to easy maze game, an annoying ball bouncing game, and of course, memory matching. It’s disappointing when a game looks like it might have some depth only to become just another lazy memory match. I tried, but sadly this game doesn’t get out of the red section

 

Barbie: Fashion Pack Games

Developer: Hyperspace Cowgirls

Publisher: Mattel

Release Date: some time in 2000

 

Now we’re getting into straight up mini game territory with an obscure developer to boot. I love the name Hyperspace Cowgirls, and they had a noble goal of creating games with strong role models for girls. Unfortunately, they only released about a half dozen licensed games before disappearing. Of course, it sends a bit of a mixed message trying to empower girls but falling back on lazy fashion tropes. Hey at least this game is colorful. Basically, you go through Barbie’s wardrobe and collect different items by playing mini games. Each type of clothing or accessory has its own game, so to collect all of each item you have to play the same game over and over again. The game doesn’t even tell you when you’ve collected them all. You just have to keep checking until they start to repeat. The games do get harder as they go along, but the less fun ones get tedious fast. I enjoyed the pipe dream inspired game, and I was relieved when the game that looked like a sliding puzzle turned out to be a much more tolerable tile moving game. It’s just a shame they couldn’t sneak a memory matching game in there somewhere. So this game’s tolerable, but nothing special

 

Barbie: Ocean Discovery

Developer: Gorilla Systems

Publisher: Vivendi

Release Date: 1997?

 

Oh no, it’s the company that made Flip Out! Run for your lives! Okay so I guess I haven’t written about Jaguar on this blog yet, but Jaguar developers give me the willies. Gorilla Systems stuck around for over a decade making mostly licensed games aimed at girls, and the two I have played from them are not encouraging. Ocean Discovery is definitely the most basic mini game collection of the bunch. It falls behind the other ones because it is easier and much slower. The menu screens imply that there is some depth to be found, but mostly all you do is plod along underwater and uncover slow, low risk mini games. There’s not much else to see in the ocean, so it’s really just swimming and basic games, and each one has to be played three times. This one does have a memory match at least. Those must be easy to program. This is the only Barbie game I am putting in the red. Nobody likes water levels or memory games and that’s about all this one has to offer. The only thing you’re likely to discover in this game is the fact that toy companies are just out to make a quick buck. Disillusionment comes at a price.

 

 

My Barbie odyssey passed along quickly enough, and I enjoyed it about half the time. The other half of the time I felt like a complete idiot, but that’s normal for me. I didn’t play them back-to-back, but they sure feel like they exist in one big clump even with the different developers and publishers. It looks like there are about 200 lazily made kid games on the GBC, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it has one of the lower quality percentages. Not surprisingly, most of the Barbie games are clumped together in the upper part of the red section. I tried to push them through to purple, but they just didn’t make the cut. I liked Mario’s Time Machine better than 3/5 of them. Magic Genie Adventure is the closest one to reaching green with a respectable ranking of 65. Maybe there’s a high-quality Barbie game out there that a middle-aged white man can truly enjoy, but until I find it, I don’t mind going through the mediocre ones. Sometimes it’s all about the journey.

 

Game Boy Color Quality Percentage: 3/8 or 37.5%

The List: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvR1pVOGMfAniEZub_KTCsR7twUv?e=p0AAm6

images are from mobygames.com as usual

PlayStation #1: Easter Bunny's Big Day

 Developer: eye on, Seven Computerized Creations

Publisher: Mastiff

Release Date: August 7^th, 2003

According to my list I have 1282 PlayStation games to eventually play through and rank. That’s quite the undertaking, and it does cause me to ask some interesting questions. I was thinking about how in the end there will be 282 games that are ranked below number 1000. That’s a very strange thought. I might be playing through some awful PS game at some point with the knowledge that I have over 1000 better options. That’s the feeling I got when I played Easter Bunny’s Big Day. It’s a weird, inexplicable game that came out in the PlayStation’s twilight era. The fact that its release missed Easter by almost four months is one of the least odd things about it. It’s the type of game I would expect to exist if I was trapped in a coma and living in a dream world. There’s just nothing that seems real about it. And yet it’s real, and it’s even still affordable. Sorry, you can no longer afford Symphony of the Night, but hey at least you can play Easter Bunny’s Big Day.

 

Honestly, it’s hard to even make it through the intro without feeling like this game is a cheap Asian knockoff. The story explains that the Easter Bunny is on his way to deliver eggs to all the good boys and girls at their school, but they all get lost along the way. How many things are wrong about this? In most American traditions the bunny delivers big candy filled baskets and not the eggs themselves. Who doesn’t remember dyeing eggs with their family on the days before Easter? Maybe that’s more of a foreign tradition. Next, since when does the delivery of eggs depend on the behavior of the kids? These aren’t chocolate eggs, they’re just plain old, hard-boiled ones. I don’t think any child would change their behavior over the prospect of a hard-boiled egg. With my son I’d be more likely to feed him one as a punishment than as a reward. Finally, the plan is to deliver the eggs to a school, on Easter, which I’m pretty sure always happens on a Sunday when there is no school. As if this isn’t enough than the game pulls a Cheetahmen and sidelines the Easter Bunny in favor of Robo-Bunny. I can’t believe the Easter Bunny gets the Action Game Master treatment in his own game. That’s just cruel.

 

As for the gameplay this is a game made for children which almost always for this era means mini games. You go to different locations, play mini-games, and collect eggs. What’s strange is that about 90% of the games are jigsaw puzzles. About the last thing I expected this game to be was a jigsaw puzzle collection. I will admit that I enjoy doing video game jigsaw puzzles to a certain extent, and none of the puzzles in this game are particularly bad. They’re just very easy and quickly completed. I like how many of them are Easter themed, and some of them move around and have non-standard pieces. The other mini games are standard kids game fare such as memory matches. I have been playing so many memory match games lately. I should play something with blood and gore sometime. I am an adult after all. I played the game on the middle level, and it was all over in about thirty minutes. That’s just too short for a PlayStation game, even one aimed at little kids. This was 2003 and kids were playing Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, not thirty-minute jigsaw puzzle games.

 

Not surprisingly this game has a very low effort ending. One of my least favorite types of game endings from the old days is the “character slowly walking” ending. I just got done walking around as these characters for the entire game, I don’t need to see it again but more slowly. Endings are for showing the player something they haven’t seen before. Easter Bunny’s Big Day kicks it up to eleven. You get to watch Robo-Bunny slowly carry the eggs up a long, winding road to the schoolhouse. Does it show him actually go into the schoolhouse? Of course not. Not that it would matter much since as I already established the school is closed and all the kids are at home eating candy. I would’ve preferred a static image of a happy child getting an egg to a robot bunny walking slowly down a road. This game has a weird beginning, a bad ending, and way too easy middle. That doesn’t look good for the overall score.

 

Now I will be honest and say that I did enjoy playing this game a little bit mostly because I enjoy jigsaw puzzle games. It’s pretty obvious, however, that this is a bad game and I’m just a weirdo. It’s ultra-short and the story is just plain bizarre. It’s going into the red, but not as far into the red as you might expect. I'm putting it at #91 right below Cabbage Patch Kids and above Gordo 106. Hey at least the controls made sense and I didn’t fall into any hellish pits of death. So not only is Easter Bunny’s Big Day currently in my top 100, but it’s going to be there for at least the next nine entries. Good for you Easter Bunny. Now hurry up and deliver those eggs before they spoil. It gets pretty hot in August.  

 

PlayStation Quality Percentage: 0/1

NES #26: Bible Buffet

Developer: Wisdom Tree

Publisher: Wisdom Tree

Release Date: 1993

Have you ever used the phrase "cooler than a hot dog wearing sunglasses?" Because I am going to try to make that a thing

 

Wacky isn’t a word that comes up much when talking about religious games, but dang this game is wacky. I’m not religious, so I have no idea what a typical Christian would think about a game like this. It’s a game that’s 1% bible and 99% buffet that celebrates good ol’ gluttony. Christians like gluttony, right? Do they like blowing up walking french fries? I know that’s a silly question. Everybody enjoys blowing up walking french fries. Okay so the circumstances behind this game shed a bit of light on why such a weird game ended up with a religious theme. Wisdom Tree started out as the infamous Color Dreams, a company that got around Nintendo’s lockout chip and produced about a dozen mostly awful unlicensed games. Nintendo forced Color Dreams out of regular stores by threatening to remove their own games if retailers carried Color Dreams games. In order to stay in business, the secular Color Dreams became the religious-based Wisdom tree so they could sell their games at Christian retailers where Nintendo didn’t have a presence. Because of this many of their games only have an insular connection to religion. You can tell that some of them were designed before the switch and were only converted to a religious theme at the last minute. Nowhere is that more apparent than Bible Buffet, a game that’s both fever dream and Bible lesson.

 Bible Buffet plays just like a warped version of Candy Land. Thank of it like that game except every space you land on involves a battle with dangerous walking candy and you’ll get the idea. You spin the wheel and move that number of spaces just like in a traditional board game. Each section of the board is named after a specific type of food. They get the healthy foods out of the way early leaving room for all the junk food in the world. Right after Salad Land comes Fast Food Land and it all culminates with Dessert Land. Also, your points are pounds in this game, so the more empty calories you eat the better. On most spaces you are sent to an action stage, and this is where things get weird. The gameplay isn’t that odd. It’s sort of a Bomberman-meets-Crystal Mines setup which is fun enough. It’s the imagery that makes everything strange. Almost everything is food. The walls are mashed potatoes! The enemies are walking tomatoes! You eat corn dogs and kill evil cups of coffee! Got a food you really don’t like? Well, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to blast it to smithereens in this game. If, like most people, you have fantasized about destroying walking broccoli while also eating 100 pickles in a row than this is the game for you.  

 So where does the Bible play into all of this? Every once in a while, you will land on a red space that will send you to a Bible pop quiz. Strangely, where other Wisdom Tree games had the questions displayed on the screen, Bible Buffet only displays the true/false and a/b choices without written answers. The questions were all in the book that came with a game. This means that if you are playing this game today, you’re probably just guessing, and since it’s a 50/50 choice you’re probably getting many of them right. There’s not really any penalty for getting them wrong either, just less points. So, this is a rare religious game that can be enjoyed by non-Christians without anyone being offended. It’s both a kooky food-based board game and, if you have the questions, a Bible quiz game. So, I guess everybody wins?

 So, I’m just going to say it. Bible Buffet is fun. It’s a wacky game that I have played through more than once and enjoyed every time. Some people will automatically say that because it is unlicensed and religious that it is automatically bad. Most of the reviews are decidedly negative. However, I can’t deny the fun I had playing it, and that’s still the most important metric. Of course, the game is not flawless. It’s fairly shallow and easy. If you’re playing by yourself, it will only take about twenty minutes to play through. Also, even though up to four players can play at once, the gameplay seems much more suited for a one-player experience. It just doesn’t work that great as a board game, and it’s obviously a clone of Candy Land. Still, it’s going to end up in the good column. In fact, it’s going right at the bottom of the good column at #60. Still, that’s pretty good for such an overlooked game. I am sure I am the only person on the universe who would rank Bible Buffet ahead of Demon’s Crest, but I stand by that decision. At least Bible Buffet doesn’t send you around in circles playing the same three levels over and over again. It’s definitely a game with a very clear start and end point. They’re even labeled for your convenience.

 

NES Quality Percentage: 14/26 or 53.85%

(images are from mobygames.com)