Doug's Big Game

Are you cool enough to dig Doug? Unless you are an avid fan, it's possible that you have never heard of Doug before. It's one of Disney's Saturday morning cartoon series that tells of the adventures of a boy and his dog as they try to win the heart of a certain little lady by the name of Patti.

The show has got all the elements you'd expect from Disney, including a selection of wacky and yet caring friends, enemies and pets. The plots involve all the usual mix of moral mazes and fantastic adventures, and the humour is very bittersweet. After a successful series and a feature-length movie (that managed to come and go more-or-less unnoticed), a game is now available for the Game Boy Color. It goes something like this...

Patti Cake: Baker's Man

Doug has been stood up by Patti, possibly for the thousandth time and he is, understandably, a bit upset and rather eager to know where the girl he worships has disappeared to. By talking to friends and relatives, while at the same time helping them out with their little problems, you must endeavour to help Doug find Patti as soon as possible!

The game is divided into a series of tasks and mini-games. The tasks themselves involve the usual collection of objects and coming to the aid of those in distress. At the end of each task, Doug escapes into a dream-world where he is Quailman, a superhero to end all superheroes. In these sections you must dodge or attack the enemy to finish the stage and move on to the next challenge in the real world. Once all of these areas have been completed you eventually find Patti. Along the way, in order to make your search quicker and easier, there are coins to collect (these coins allow you to use call boxes that give you important information) and power-ups to find when in Quailman mode.

Doug Deeper

Doug is relatively simple to get into and the challenges are quite good fun. However, some of the tasks can be a little odd, especially when you have to hunt for an object that has been hidden in the weirdest place imaginable! Possibly the strangest thing about Doug's Big Game is how it is actually structured. After playing through it once, you'll notice how short the game is and possibly even think that you have been short-changed. This is not the case. As it turns out, when you have played the game through once, you're told how well you did and it is up to you to better that effort. Ultimately, the aim of the game is to try to find Patti in the quickest time possible.

Although the idea of playing through the game over and over just to ensure that you have found Patti quicker than last time may seem dull, the game's been programmed so that each time you play through tiny changes have been made to it. So although the basic structure is the same, some of the tasks change and the Quailman mini-games vary too. This means that you get a lot more gameplay out of the title than you first realise and also means that there is always something new and interesting to discover.

The sound, as with most Game Boy titles, is rather unremarkable, but at least it's not annoying or repetitive! Visually, the graphics capture the images from the cartoon show perfectly and each screen looks bright, colourful and fun. Even if you are not a fan of the show, Doug's Big Game is an imaginative and certainly enjoyable title, although the strange game structure may well not be to your taste.