Toe Jam & Earl

The story: Two aliens from the planet Funkotron were cruising in their spaceship one day when the unthinkable happens - Earl takes a turn behind the wheel. Naturally, they end up crash-landing on a frighteningly unfunky planet - Earth! Now they have to go through 25 levels, avoiding the evil Earthlings and finding the pieces of their smashed rocketship.

The style: You can play as Toe Jam (walks faster) or Earl (has more life) or a two-player mode which is extremely fun. You have to find the exit to each world, and if there is a rocket piece on that world, to find it. It's kind of a birds-eye view, you have to walk around, not get killed, and collect gifts which contain mystery contents that could help or harm you. There are lots of different gifts, which are different each game (as you go along you gradually work out what's in each gift so you don't open the bad ones and accumulate good ones to use when appropriate).

The graphics are pretty basic, but then each world is created randomly so they all look fairly similar. The Earthlings look suitably funny. The music for this game is very good, it's simple but the sort of funky thing you can bop your head along to. Decent sound fx, nothing brilliant. Some of them are quite cute.

The best part of the game is its gameplay, it's original and so addictive. Unlike most games you can't just go around killing things, your only way of defending yourself is to get away from baddies, or to acquire certain gifts. The game is different every time you play - like, I once sat down and finished all 25 levels, but the next time I played, I only made it to about level 10. (It's quite easy to die in this game!)

I have written a considerable amount more on this game on this page.

The verdict: Very good game! Lots of fun, good in single or two player modes, addictive, replayable, cute game. I think it's probably the best Mega Drive game I've played, but I admit I haven't played them all. ^_^.

Virtual Bart

The story: Springfield Elementary is having a science fair. In one room, someone is asking for volunteers for a virtual reality machine. Bart gets hooked into it. Now he has to beat the six worlds of the virtual reality machine; you choose a world in pokies style (hit a button, whatever it lands on you play). One is set in post-apocalyptic Springfield, one in prehistoric Springfield (Bart is a dinosaur), one in an abbattoir (Bart is a pig), one in a Springfield neighbourhood (Bart is a baby), one in a waterslide, and one at Springfield Elementary.

The style: The graphics in this game are mostly not great. I mean, there are some still shots that look good and some characters look decent, but the game as a whole doesn't look very good, especially on the pig level. Some of the music is quite awful, especially on the pig level. The gameplay is mostly not very fun and the controls are awkward (hard to move your character to do what you want without hurting yourself), especially on the pig level. (Are we seeing a pattern here? But don't get me wrong - many of the levels are pretty bad. ^_^.) There is, at least, some variety in the games. The post-apocalyptic Springfield is essentially a motorbike race. The waterslide game has you taking various tunnels through a waterslide, trying not to hit obstacles or choose the wrong path. The game at Springfield Elementary has Bart throwing tomatoes at students and teachers. The prehistoric and abbattoir games are platformers; baby Bart is sort of a platformer where he swings instead of walks. I personally have never managed to finish any of the games, but I never really had the desire to. They're not all that easy.

Despite its badness, I actually borrowed this game twice and bought it (cheaply) a while ago. This was largely because I enjoyed the tomato throwing game, it's actually kinda fun. But it does wear thin after a little while. The waterslide game is also not that bad, but I never finished it. If you take a wrong turn, you end up in some actually kind of funny situations (like flying out of the slide - into a brick wall - or flying out of the slide - and falling way way down into a bottomless canyon!). I tried to enjoy the other games but was entirely unable to. The pig one in particular is lamentable. I mean, the prehistoric one is also laughably bad, but the pig one is even worse.

The verdict: Need you ask? If you want to laugh at how shoddy a game can be, have a geek at this one. This one would have got a 0 if not for the saving grace of them tomatoes. ^_^.

Columns

The story: Heh. A very sophisticated storyline, here. So sophisticated I can't even begin to do it justice. (Translation: none whatsoever.)

The style: This is a cool and familiar game. Basically, coloured jewels fall from the top of the screen and you have to arrange them so that you can get several colours in a row, which eliminates those jewels. The idea is to play for as long as possible and rack up points, as the jewels fall progressively faster...

There are various modes. You can play one or two player, including a kind of round-robin where two people 'help' each other by playing on the same screen. My favourite is flash columns, where you have a flashing jewel buried under a bunch of others, and you have to get it out. You can choose any of a number of vastly different difficulty modes, different modes of play... it's all good fun.

Music and graphics are okay... I mean, you don't buy such a game as this for such a reason, do you?

The verdict: One thing I would have liked to see with this game is the meeting of some goal. If you're having a good day you can play for ages and get to level 30, 40, 50... and it just keeps going. I know they can't keep making it faster and harder, but it would be nice to have a mode where the game *ends* after you reach a certain level - just so you feel like you're going somewhere. ^_^. The accumulation of points just didn't seem like a very interesting goal, particularly when the game loses all the high scores anyway as soon as you turn it off!

But this is a good, addictive game. Very simple, but it's one of those ones that lasts a long time. It's not a game you can really say "oh, I've finished it a couple of times so I don't need to play it any more".

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