Crystal’s Pony Tale (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Looking at the cover of Crystal’s Pony Tale you find a game that can’t be said to be hinting at its intended audience because it is instead loudly shouting it with a megaphone. With its large rainbow, pink pony, and pastel castle, it has all the hallmarks of a game meant for young girls, and considering it was literally constructed from market research so that the Sega Genesis would appeal to such an audience, it at least nails that intention despite how stereotypical it all feels. While gamers familiar with games designed for kids would probably write it off the moment they look at it, Crystal’s Pony Tale is actually built a bit differently than the incredibly easy and threadbare experiences usually handed off to kids with the idea they don’t need quality entertainment to keep them busy.

 

While the in-game scene setting up the central conflict relies on wordless images and does so to decent effect, if you sit down and read the two full pages in the manual the backstory is spread across you’ll find the important details. Crystal is the name of the main character, and despite being described as an exceptionally beautiful pony, she is also terribly shy. While she wanted to frolic with the others ponies she simply didn’t have the courage, this timidity being her saving grace when the Storm Witch tries to take over Ponyland. Freezing all the other ponies in place, the Storm Witch believes she has taken over Ponyland only for Crystal to step forward to try and restore the other ponies to normal.

 

Before you begin your adventure as Crystal, you first can customize her coloration. The pony’s mane, body, and tail can all have different colors set from a fairly wide selection of hues, all the colors of the rainbow and other options like brown, white, and black making for a set that let you make a version of Crystal that feels like your own creation. Freeing the other ponies requires Crystal to collect magic crystals across three main areas which you can tackle in whichever order you please, familiar classical music like “In the Hall of the Mountain King” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” even playing over some of the level sections. However, the crystals aren’t placed in the same areas as the ponies they free, meaning you will have to repeat at least one area in your quest, but the game overall doesn’t even take an hour to complete and covering familiar ground isn’t painful since most of Crystal’s Pony Tale really isn’t about doing anything difficult so much as it is taking a tour of a tiny game world.

While collecting crystals to save your friends is the main goal, every area of Crystal’s Pony Tale is split into smaller segments where you need enough horsehoes to open the gate onward. Horseshoes can be gained by interacting with the environment and can be lost if some wildlife ends up hurting Crystal. While on the lower kid-friendly difficulties it’s fairly easy to just grab floating horseshoes and keep moving, playing on Hard actually requires a player to keep a keen eye on the environment. As you pass through a farm, forest, and cave, you’ll see both objects designed only to be pleasant scenery and others that are meant to be rewarding.  Even figuring out that you can do something with an object can be a nifty surprise, and while the lower difficulties give you wordless hints on some things you can do, on Hard you are free to experiment and see if you can solve the simple puzzles or realize what to do with something in the background. It’s never really going to reach a point where such an action requires more than realizing you can do something and executing it, but there are moments that can slow down a player before they start to see what around them can help with the current situation.

 

For example, in the farm level you see a little cart parked and might not think of it as something more than a piece of appropriate set dressing at first. Elsewhere, luring the bunny out of its burrow actually requires you to take a specific action with something that isn’t right next to the rabbit’s hole, but just because you find something doesn’t necessarily mean it is important either. There are lot of little things placed around just for the fun of finding something new and fiddling with it like a puppet show where the only appeal is seeing the small set of animations they made for it. Crystal’s Pony Tale does try to challenge you a little with areas like the covered bridge where you need to be careful of hidden bats, and in Hard there are more basic enemies and obstacles about like more tumbleweeds bouncing around or even water you only had to jump over before now sending small bursts of water up to require better timing in your movements. However, it still feels like more of the fun comes from seeing what’s up ahead rather than however the game chooses to challenge you, but since it’s also not just giving up progress completely for free it is more interesting to run into something like a jack-o-lantern and wonder if its friend or foe.

Collecting the keys for special chests and grabbing crystals can often involve a slightly more involved interaction than most, but the only point where it really feels like things move beyond a fairly relaxed pace is when the Storm Witch swoops in for a fight. She’s fought a few times over the course of the game and it plays out the same each battle, but luckily she’s not too hard since Crystal is intentionally limited in the actions she can take. While there is some mild platforming in Crystal’s Pony Tale, the game actually commits to its adventure game design by focusing more on interacting with the environment around you rather than skillfully utilizing a set of abilities. This means Crystal is fully able to act within her equine design without it being frustrating. Crystal is a fairly large pony and she moves the way such a creature should. When she jumps, she always moves a set distance forward since that’s how a pony would do the jump in real life, and similarly she won’t just walk off an edge because she’s knows its dangerous to do so, even flinching back from the ledge if you try. To interact with things she mostly rears up and kicks her hooves, jumps to reach it, or bends down to nibble on it. Her sprite has a good canter while her hair flows appropriately, and if left to idle there are small actions like her tail flicking to give her more life.

 

While this is still a magical adventure where Crystal has human-level intelligence, there is a lot of care put into making her seem like an animal too. Crystal’s Pony Tale really doesn’t seem like it’s trying to put together a difficult experience so much as creating a solid game feel, that being almost a playground to take this somewhat realistically realized pony out in to interact with some mildly interesting things. I can certainly see this extended into something meatier with more activities you’re directly involved in instead of mostly doing a single action to see what a new object does, but really Crystal’s Pony Tale reminds me a lot of a PC game called Windosill. Described as an almost toy-like experience, Windosill is about entering a new room, seeing what little interactions can be done, and moving on to the next. This toy box approach feels pretty close to the design of Crystal’s Pony Tale, and unlike some kids’ games where you just click to see something happen, there are just enough tiny goals in the form of horseshoes, keys, and crystals to guide the experience along. You’re not really going to be wowed by anything you find, but it’s not really disappointing either, the game a sequence of curiosities that aren’t too bad to experience in the short time it takes to complete the adventure.

THE VERDICT: Crystal’s Pony Tale doesn’t really have any dangers that truly challenge the player or puzzles that require much thought, but with its focus on having the heroine control with a surprising level of realism and putting a constant stream of interactive objects in your path it continues to pique your interest for its short runtime. It manages to hold a player’s attention, a little tour of small ideas and visual treats that is held together by having small objectives attached to it so things don’t feel frivolous. While it may lack the kind of substance and gameplay required to justify buying it for anyone but the youngest of players, if it is in your Sega Genesis, it is a simple and breezy curiosity that doesn’t hurt to complete.

 

And so, I give Crystal’s Pony Tale for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…

An OKAY rating. Unless you’re an incredibly young player you should set Crystal’s Pony Tale to Hard to get the most out of it, the setting’s name hiding the fact it’s probably closer to easy with the two below it being even easier. Still, the little challenges along the way are never really about putting up a fight or making you think for too long. The game truly does feel like a small simple adventure, something like walking down a nature trail. You might spot something odd and prod it a little but you know what you’re getting into and the little curiosities along the way make it more than just going from one place to another. The objectives prevent you from sleepwalking through Crystal’s Pony Tale and encourage you to go poking around for the small but amusing interactions, although I’m sure someone going into the game looking to hate it could very much brush past it all as they focus only on the gameplay side that doesn’t offer too much. It is valid to think the game lacks in that department even if its nifty manner of handling its equine protagonist makes such small interactions more textured when they do arise, but if you pick up this pony game you won’t find something completely condescending.

 

I don’t grade kids games on a curve since that seems to undermine the whole idea of evaluating the quality of a game, but to be overly harsh when critiquing Crystal’s Pony Tale would be like condemning a breath mint for not providing a hearty meal. Games like Crystal’s Pony Tale show you can try to make a game for incredibly young audiences without stripping it down to a mindless experience. I’d still say don’t get the game unless you have a young child who is excited about the idea of playing a pony game since its minor amusements aren’t strong enough to justify playing it for your own benefit, but it is mostly inoffensive and full of enough nice little touches that it can serve as quick and simple adventure. Harmless, quick, and breezy, it manages to slip into its middle of the road rating because it can stave off the dullness with its little bells and whistles even if it would certainly need some real involved play to truly get a recommendation.