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)

Nintendo 64 #2: Tigger's Honey Hunt

Developer: Doki Denki

Publisher: Buena Vista Games

Release Date: 11-01-2000

 

Twice in a row I have tried to make a comeback on this blog only to be thwarted by my own incompetence. I wrote two very good partial articles for two different games that I was very happy with. However, I always forget to save these things, so they were both tragically erased. Both instances were quite discouraging, so I took a while to get back around to writing again. Thankfully I have recovered enough to feel like dusting off the old laptop and getting back to work. I picked a quickie though so if it does get erased, I won’t have trouble writing about it again. Hey, it’s #2 in Noah’s insignificant N64 game challenge. Thankfully this one is much better than the Jeremy McGrath game I played.

 Actually, Tigger’s Honey Hunt is a bit of a hidden gem. That might be overstating things slightly, but there’s just something satisfying about a well-designed 2D platformer, even one obviously made for kids. It’s even more surprising considering Disney went with an almost unknown developer to make it. Disney has a very long and interesting history in the video game market stretching all the way back to the Atari 2600 days. They have worked with some of the biggest developers around, but they have just as many games made by less famous companies. Doki Denki only made five console games and all but their Smurfs game were based on Disney properties. It was a fairly prolific arrangement for a year or so, but none of their games really became big hits and they went out of business in 2003. The Disney machine kept chugging away of course and their video games will probably never cease. Has anyone done a series where they played all the Disney games? That would be a good project.

 

So as I previously stated, Tigger’s Honey Hunt is a 2D platformer almost completely based on collecting items. There are plenty of enemies to be found, but losing lives only sends you back to the last checkpoint so they don’t pose much of a challenge in themselves. The main challenge in the game comes from finding honey pots. Pooh wants to have enough honey for his party, so Tigger goes out to collect like 700 of them. Each level has a certain limit you have to meet with 100 total scattered throughout. You do get extra percentage points if you collect all 100 and find a missing item in each level, but I can’t tell you what happens at 100%. I finished with about 60% complete and the party at the end seemed fun enough. Since this is a Disney game they probably throw in some fireworks or balloons. The loved doing that.

 

I was very impressed by the level design in this game. There were plenty of hidden rooms and hard-to-reach ledges with even more honey pots. In fact, the only items in the game were honey pots, Roo pictures that I still don’t know the purpose of, and a special item to find for a specific character. It’s strange to play a platform game without the usual extra lives and energy restorers. It’s all very streamlined which works well in context. This is a Disney game made for kids after all. Still, finding all the needed honey pots provides a decent challenge without ever getting too frustrating.

 

Tigger’s Honey Hunt isn’t a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed the hour or so I spent with it. The short length is probably the biggest knock against it. Two hours might be a bit more justifiable on Playstation, but Nintendo 64 games tended to be more expensive. Even today the N64 version is worth almost twice as much as the Playstation version although we’re talking 15 dollars versus 40 or 50. Still, it’s a quality kids game for Nintendo 64 and it’s good enough to make it into my green section at #55. Not bad for a licensed game that nobody’s ever heard of.

 

Nintendo 64 Quality Percentage 1/2 or 50%

 

Nintendo 64 Rankings

 

1. Tigger’s Honey Hunt

2. Jeremy McGrath’s Supercross 2000

(Images are from mobygames.com)

Nintendo Switch #7: Rune Factory 4 Special

Developed by: HAKAMA/Neverland

Published by: Marvelous Inc.

Release Date: July 25, 2019

I have been a little unfair to Switch on my blog so far. Despite it being one of my favorite consoles ever I have mostly limited my reviews to bad digital shovelware titles that no one but me will ever play. So it’s nice to finally have a real game to review again, and not just any game but Rune Factory 4, everyone’s favorite Japanese farming sim/RPG series. It is everyone’s favorite, right? In case you’ve never played any of the Rune Factory games the name is a little misleading. Going in the first time I thought it was going to take place in a literal factory where runes were made. I thought the main focus would be collecting materials and using runes to augment weapons. That actually sounds fun, but the titular factory is metaphorical. Of course since this is already everyone’s favorite farming sim/RPG series you probably already knew this. I’m always a little late to the party.

 The Rune Factory series is an interesting beast. It was originally designed as a more action-based spinoff of Harvest Moon. You farm and make friends in town of course, but there is also an RPG plot featuring monsters and dungeons. I’ve played the first one, and should probably review it first, but its a little too rough around the edges for me to make much progress. I’ll review it if I can ever actually finish it. Luckily most of my annoyances in the series have been fixed by the fourth installment. The goals are much clearer, it’s much easier to get started, and all the items needed for crafting are easy to obtain.

 

What’s fun about this game is that practically everything you do gains you levels and raises your stats. It’s hard to think of an action in this game that does not improve your character somehow. Walking, sleeping, and bathing increase stats along with every different type of attack and magic type. There is no wasted time in this game. Even if you are just wandering around town talking to people you are leveling up skills. If a certain dungeon area is too difficult than it’s time to get back to work raising those skills, and with so many different skills to chose from it never feels tedious or grindy. You can spend the day gardening, or crafting, or running your store, or fighting monsters with lower level weapons. There is a rhythm and routine to it all, but there is a lot of variety too. Every day I would wake up to check on my crops and ship anything that had grown. The game even starts with a long rainy season which keeps watering plants at a minimum until you can get a better watering can and monster friends to help you out. It’s a game full of pleasant routines and endless possibilities.

 My only gripe is that I wish the story portion of the game lasted a bit longer. The overworld is surprisingly small and there are only a handful of dungeons. I was able to get the credits to roll in the middle of my first fall. Of course the story can be traversed at your own pace, but I thought I was taking my time. There is still plenty to do of course, and you can keep right on playing, but it does lose something with the plot finished. At least it does for me. I am no longer leveling up to fight my way through the next dungeon or saving up money to get better equipment. I may be greedy, but in a game with everything I was expecting even more.

 

I’m not going to quibble too much though. Rune Factory 4 Special is a great game, and since I have a 12,000 game backlog I should probably be glad that it didn’t take me 100 hours to complete. Hopefully I can review a few more prominent Switch games and swing the percentage back in the right direction. Rune Factory 4 Special is going all the way up to #15 right under the similar but even more interesting Viva Pinata. I gotta say, I might have to redo my list somewhat. I think 1-10 is fine, but 11-20 is a bit messed up. Is Wrecking Crew really better than Pac-Man? It’s something I have to ponder in the future. Anyway I reiterate, it’s a great game that deserves to be high up on the list.

 

Switch Quality Percentage: 3/7 or 42.85%

(images are from mobygames.com)

Colecovision #2: Pepper II

Developer: Exidy

Publisher: Exidy

Release Date: 1982

 I love the story behind this game’s strange name. It was originally supposed to be called Zipper. This name makes sense as the game is full of zippers. However, they discovered the name was already taken so they had to hastily change it. They changed it to Pepper and for unknown reasons added a II at the end despite it not being a sequel to anything. I guess they were worried that Pepper was too generic and that the Roman numerals would help it stand out. I suppose it worked because for years before I played it I knew there was a game out there called Pepper II and always wanted to check it out. I don’t know if I would’ve felt the same way if it was just called Pepper or even Zipper. I’m glad I finally played it too because it is yet another lost Colecovision classic.

 

Pepper II is maybe the best game on Colecovision that was never on another console. It’s a fast-paced and clever game that even works great with the Colecovision controller. It is a bit derivative though. It’s a maze game so of course there are touches of Pac-Man in it. It’s also a game about filling in squares so it’s a bit like Amidar. Unlike Amidar, however, Pepper II is fast and not nearly as geometric. The object of the game, just like its original name, is to zip up open zippers in a maze by moving over them. If you move backwards on one, it will unzip so you have to be careful. It was never much of an issue for me, but I was playing it on easy mode. You complete a section by filling up all four sides which makes the empty sections fill in. You are pursued by disembodied eyes and can defeat them by closing a section around a pitchfork. Hey what do you expect from a game called Pepper II? With a name that strange anything goes.

 

My favorite part of the game is that every level is split up into four maps. Getting tired of filling in the same old map? Just follow the path off the screen and you’ll find a different one. It sure blows Pac-Man out of the water with it’s one map ever. Maybe there is some sort of psychological element to it, but it really does make the game feel bigger and faster. I can’t believe how fast I can go while still being able to turn when I want to. Unlike Pac-Man I didn’t often get trapped in a corner. There always seems to be a way out of trouble, and there are plenty of pitchforks. It’s the perfect speedy maze game.

 

I always have a blast playing Pepper II, and it really is a great showcase for the Colecovision’s arcade capabilities. I really do get that exhilarating feeling that I get at a great arcade cabinet, and sure the visuals are simple, but they still look nice for what they are. It’s also managed to stay relatively cheap so if you have a Colecovision getting this game is a no-brainer. Pepper II finds itself all the way up at #20 on the list. It’s not quite as unique as Clu Clu Land, so it sneaks in just under that one. It’s been nice playing so many good games lately. I can only assume that every Colecovision game is good. I mean, I’ve like both of the ones I have played. I guess it’s time to go prove myself wrong.

 

Colecovision Quality Percentage: 2/2

 

1. Pepper II

2. Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park

(Images are from mobygames.ccom)

Colecovision #1: Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

Release Date: 1984

Sadly, it was also the last Cabbage Patch Kids Adventure game. Also, it's one of the first games with a female protagonist if dolls count.

 It feels like an act of desperation for Coleco to release a game based on their most popular property in 1984. In the darkest year for gaming in the US they tried to lob a Hail Mary and save the industry with a game based on the latest craze. Sadly, it didn’t do much for Coleco’s fortunes, and their console didn’t have much time left. This could be the story of a quick cash-in similar to E.T. for Atari. However, Adventures in the Park is a much better game than it has any right to be. I’m sure it helps that it was made by Konami who at the time was one of the best arcade developers around with classics like Frogger and Pooyan to their name. Stumbling onto a lost classic is always exciting, so when I played this game, I couldn’t wait to write about it.

I love those backgrounds

 I first played this game on my MSX emulator, but I think I might like the even smoother Colecovision version better. Adventures in the Park plays like a more complex Pitfall, and not only because you swing on vines. It’s an early side-scrolling platformer with a massive 100 different numbered screens. Some of them repeat, and a few early ones are just walking from one side to another, but it’s still an impressive amount of game for 1984. It uses just about every gaming mechanic available at the time outside of shooting aliens. You jump over obstacles, hop from platform to platform, ride on lily pads, and avoid giant bees among other things. It’s impressive how much skill it takes to master what should be a simple Cabbage Patch Kids game.

 

It's why they're called platform games

I also love that each screen is individually numbered. The counter and game start over after number 99 so it doesn’t truly have an ending, but the numbering gives each screen a unique feel. Sometimes I would get stuck on a particular screen, like that tricky jumping ball obstacle on screen 24, so the numbering gives a real feel of accomplishment. It’s a game based much more on progression than score which anticipates what games would become in the mid-80s. Of course, it’s also fun trying to get a high score as well. You get a massive bonus for completing each 10-level stage, so speed it key. I played this game over and over again just to try to raise my score by a couple hundred points, and every time I played I seemed to get a little better. It’s a game with a very high ceiling.

How could I ever forget scene 12?

 I know I sound like I’m gushing about, but I live for pleasant gaming surprises like this one. I don’t have much experience with Colecovision outside of the Flashback plug-and-play, but this is easily one of my favorite games on the console. It’s a shame that licensing issues keep this one off of compilations. Hopefully the console is full of pleasant surprises like this one. It’s a game that looks and plays great and makes me a little sad that the Colecovision had such a short life. Can you believe I am putting a Cabbage Patch Kids game in the top 25? Because that’s totally what I am doing. It’s my new #23 right below Alex Kid in Shinobi World. Not bad for a cash-in game designed for kids. If only every licensed game was made with this much care.

 

Colecovision Quality Percentage: 1/1

images are from mobygames.com