Developer: Bethesda
Publisher: THQ
Release Date: September 1991
Hey look, it’s early Bethesda again! And it’s the worst publisher of NES games, THQ! Also, for the trifecta of bad gaming omens, it’s a licensed title. If you were a kid in 1991 than you probably remember Where’s Waldo? being a pretty big deal. I was a big fan as I had most of the books, watched the cartoon, and even ate the pasta. It seems like I would’ve been on board with a video game adaptation, but I almost feel like these THQ games materialized out of thin air years after the fact. Nobody liked them, nobody played them, and it’s amazing to me that both Bethesda and THQ managed to become such big players in the video game industry after getting off to such a bad start. But hey, there’s always a chance that they could make a good game. Where’s Waldo? seems like it could be a good game. You’re not stuck on a page in a video game. It could lead to bigger maps. Also, Waldo could appear in all different places. There are endless possibilities. Maybe this game cracked the code. Okay I’m just giving you false hope now. Yeah, this game is bad. It’s even lazier than Home Alone. Bethesda was one of the worst developers of the 8-bit era, and Where’s Waldo? stands as one of their many nadirs. In the early 90s they were Ed Wood. Somehow just a few years later they started making Elder Scrolls games and became Stephen Spielberg. It was a good choice. So what is this game like? Well the fact that it took me longer to write this paragraph than it does to play through it should tell you something.
Okay so it’s only that quick on easy mode. Easy mode is nice because it actually feels fair. It has a nice big cursor and a Waldo that actually kind of looks like Waldo if you squint. Oh yeah, get ready to squint. Instead of Martin Hanford’s big colorful drawings we mostly have tiny, indistinguishable humanoids. At least I think they’re mostly humanoids. They could really be anything. It’s very bad when you can’t tell what anything is in a hidden picture game. 80% of what’s on screen looks like it could be Waldo. It’s not like he’s any more well-defined than anything else on the screen. You might see a striped shirt here, a red hat there. They’re all stick figures anyway. You really have to rely on all of Waldo’s trademarks together. It’s the combination of red hat, striped shirt, blue pants, and cane that tells you which one of these thinned-out scarecrows is the real Waldo. That might be okay if Bethesda played by the rules. What do you want to bet they decided not to?
I keep trying to find a funny, clever way to talk about what really sinks this game, but even the words have failed me at this point. Maybe I’ve just played the game too much, but I’m feeling fatigued and just want to get this review over with. The only thing that makes finding Waldo feel even remotely doable in this game is locking on to his color scheme. You’re basically looking for Waldo’s clothes draped over a faceless mannequin. Bethesda ruins any chance of playability whatsoever by making Waldo change color in the different levels. Yes, not only are you looking for a stick figure, but you’re looking for a green stick figure without any warning. He seems to take on the colors of what’s nearby in the levels, so I don’t know if this is an intentional design choice or just bad programming. Did they want chameleon-like blending, or is it just some sort of programming flaw where whatever object put in that particular place takes on that color? Maybe there’s a red-and-blue Waldo in there somewhere trying to get out, because sometimes he would look fairly normal. Other times he’s a stripey green blur. I thought we were playing Where’s Waldo? when in fact we were playing Where’s Green Smudge. I only found Waldo in hard mode by pure intuition. Sometimes I would see something that would set off the Waldo receptors in my brain. It didn’t always work, but since actually looking for Waldo was even less reliable, I had to do something.
Also, if the green Waldo doesn’t get you than the mini games will. The way to beat Where’s Waldo? is to finish all the levels before the ever-running timer gets down to zero. There are about half a dozen map levels with a few mini games peppered in. Watching Waldo walk between levels on the map screen feels longer than actually playing the game, but I digress. If you were playing Where’s Waldo? in 1992 than you probably wanted it for the puzzles and didn’t need extra levels cluttering it up. Still, if they made sense than it would be a tolerable mistake. Unfortunately, they can be instant game enders. One has you finding Waldo in the dark which isn’t too bad but isn’t fun either. Another has a slot machine with the goal to match three Waldos. It really comes out of nowhere and is made worse because it is the final level. How many games end with a rocket-themed slot machine that ends the game if you fail too much? Well, Clash at Demonhead is close I guess, but how many of them also weren’t fun before the end? The worst, however, is the infamous Subway level which has you traveling along mazelike tunnels trying to collect Waldo and Waldo accessories while avoiding a villain that I don't recognize. If you land on his square your time will drain fast, and if this happens on medium or hard it’s basically over. It completely interrupts the flow of the game and is confusing for anyone encountering it the first time. You should’ve just designed some good map screen, Bethesda. Everyone would’ve been better off.
Oh, and one last thing about writing a Where’s Waldo? review. Having to put so many question marks in the middle of sentences gets old fast. My word processor wants to capitalize every letter after a punctuation mark, so I did a lot of correcting that I wouldn’t normally have to do. Not to mention it just looks bad. You know what else looks bad? The rankings for THQ games on NES. They occupy four slots of my NES bottom five. That’s not good considering they only published 12 NES games in the US. So at least a third of their games are the worst of the worst, or at least the worst so far. Where’s Waldo? isn’t quite at the bottom of the list because it’s at least short. It’s good backlog fodder if you’re a person like me who is obsessed with finishing as many games as you can. Of course, hard mode is a different story, but I think beating it on easy or medium still counts. Hey I’m getting old. I have to start lowering my standards. I just don’t have time for 100% no-death runs anymore. So, Where’s Waldo? ranks at #138 out of 159 overall. The fact that I have played 21 games worse than Where’s Waldo? makes me think I need to start playing some better games. On the NES specific list, it is 35 out of 38. So far, the best THQ game I have ranked is Home Alone. If that doesn’t make you curse mankind’s hubris, I don’t know what will.
NES Quality Percentage: 21/38 or 55.26%
(images are from mobygames.com)
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