Tiny Toons Adventures: The Great Beanstalk

Overview

If you've always dreamed of being a small, green duck named Plucky, you might like doing a little scavenger hunting with a game aimed for kids. Unfortunately, this probably shouldn't be your first choice for kid's games. As ready as this intellectual property is for children, the stuff behind the label isn't much to work with.

Gameplay

Based on the animated series Tiny Toons Adventures, the object of this game is to travel between eight different sites looking for the item you've been told to find (Babs Bunny is happy to tell you what to do next). It's a scavenger hunt based around nursery rhyme sites, including: Little Red Riding Hood Land, Mother Hubbard's Kitchen, The Three Bears Bedroom, Beat-nick Lounge, The Great Wall, The Street Corner, The Boat Dock, and In the Peas Porridge Diner. Each site is a single screen.

When you're on a site you can move a little hand all over the screen. When the hand is over an interactive button it starts moving up and down. By clicking on the button you start a little animation with some emerging character and a witty joke about the thing that's moving. There are usually around ten different buttons on each site. Each button may have a second animation that alternates with the first each time you push it. If you play long enough, you'll learn what is on every site and all the animations. Then it becomes rather easy to go to the desired spot.

Along the way from site to site you have to avoid deadly obstacles. The paths you use are also single screenshots that can be quickly traversed if you know where the obstacles are. You can get hit three times before you have to start over at the bottom of the beanstalk. If you have one or two pieces of the key when you have to start over, you will lose one of them. There is a more challenging version of the game that adds additional obstacles to the paths between sites.

When you find what you are looking for, you get part of a key. When you get all three parts of the key you steal a prize from the giant after being beaten up by the doorknob. There are three different prizes you can obtain. Buster Bunny is your constant companion and is always talking you into going after another treasure. First you get the goose that lays gold eggs, then you get some money, and finally you get a priceless harp and go to the end. Then you even get to see the giant, a mysterious celebrity who is usually busy working on movies.

You can move different directions in the usual fashion. Jumping is accomplished by using the X button. One thing I found particularly annoying was the delay in jumping. It must require at least half a second of button connection before the character reacts by actually jumping. This is especially annoying when you need to move out of the way of an incoming swinging bell or an anvil dropping out of the sky. You can roll left or right, but this move is only required in the HARD version of the game. You can also run left or right.

The sound is appropriately cartoonish, but can be repetitive. There are lots of sproings, and doinks, and plenty of bleeps and beep beeps.

The game also doesn't ever plan on your having just arrived into an area. Traps go off at regular intervals whether you've had warning or not and you'll sometimes jump up to a new level only to be shot or smacked. At least you get to start fresh if you find part of a key.

Graphics

The screens are gorgeous eye candy with all the details of current cartoons, but there is no side-scrolling. The moving pieces look painted over the top. It looks like a real cartoon, but video games are usually more seamless than this.

Bottom Line

This is a game that is targeting kids. However, it's not a game designed with kids in mind. The controls are stiff and unnatural, the jokes are over kids' heads like "just another hole in the wall, Floyd," and the game elements are so shallow as to lose a child's interest quickly. Point and click games are great for really young children, but moving between sites in this game is too hard for really young children. Play this game at your own (or your child's) risk. I really can't even recommend renting it.