Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! (PS1)
Toy Story 2 is certainly Woody’s movie, the film focusing in on the cowboy doll learning his history and discovering there could be a future for him outside of being a child’s play thing. To balance out the personal moments featuring Woody, Pixar elected to have his best friend, a space ranger toy called Buzz Lightyear, be leading a rescue mission with the other living toys, the film cutting between them so there can be action as well as emotion. For a video game adaptation then, it’s no surprise Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! focused on the moments of the film that allowed for more action, Buzz Lightyear the sole playable hero in this PlayStation 1 collect-a-thon.
Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! begins with Woody stolen by a toy collector named Al, Buzz and the other toys needing to cross the city to find Al’s Toy Barn to try and get their friend back. While the game will feature some levels and situations that weren’t found in the film, it does elect to cover much of the movie’s story by way of actual clips from the film. You won’t get every detail that feels necessary for understanding it, the game brushing over an important villainous reveal later in the plot, but it does include enough footage from the movie that you can understand Woody’s side of the tale while also watching the continued progress of Buzz’s adventure. Interestingly, there are even scenes included that are mostly there for comedic purposes, such as a point where the toys cause trouble on a busy road by hiding under traffic cones that has no relation to any playable levels and could have been easily skipped over. It feels almost like the right amount were included to amuse and entertain, fans of the film able to appreciate recognizable moments while those who hadn’t seen Toy Story 2 yet when this game released almost a week before the actual movie can still follow along.
When in one of the platforming levels though, you don’t need much story context for what you’ll be doing. Buzz Lightyear’s goal in each stage if to acquire Pizza Planet Tokens, the restaurant not really relevant to the game’s proceedings but you’ll need these tokens to unlock the boss stages. Most levels have 5 tokens to acquire and there are different goals tied to them in those stages. There will always be one special token related to the level’s design itself. In an elevator shaft you’ll be sliding down chasing after a moving token while in Al’s apartment you’re shifting tracks on his model train set so it won’t impede your efforts to leap up onto his bed top for the token. Sometimes it will take the form of a puzzle instead, one that has you mixing paints being far too easy but later you find some button pressing tasks that require some logic to ensure you’re turning off and on the right things.
Usually the level specific token will be the one that best brings forth that 3D space’s theming or concept, but the game can find a few ways to create a platforming centerpiece that instead ties into other goals. Every level features a boss character to take out for a token, and in levels like the neighborhood you have to scale a huge tree first to fight the evil kite or over in the construction site the angry jackhammer waits atop the tall building frame. Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! does have a good sense to include some shortcuts for these greater climbs while at other points it’s content to let you waste time climbing back up its often fairly vertical levels, but Buzz at least doesn’t take fall damage so when you’re done up high you can just plummet down to get to work on other goals. Unfortunately, the bosses you find in normal levels are pretty underwhelming and rarely require much thought. Many can be focused down with simple attacks and running about to “dodge”, but in the specific boss levels things can be a bit more challenging. Mostly it’s because they are almost battles of attrition, the more sturdy bosses found in their dedicated levels able to weather your attacks better and sometimes necessitating specialized approaches, but fighting is often a simple affair that involves either firing your laser or spinning your wings to knock back the enemies that can’t be harmed by laser fire.
Buzz’s means of maneuvering the 3D platforming stages mostly get the job done even if the camera can be a bit testy at times. You can set the camera to be fully in your control or automatically correct itself but it can still get hitched on the environment or struggle to find helpful positions for moments where you need to be more careful where you walk no matter which mode you’re using. Precision does come up as an important factor such as a race in a toy store where you need to constantly leap from ziplines and lining up improperly will lead to Buzz just ignoring the line as he brushes against it, but he does thankfully have a double jump so some midair adjustments are possible. Beyond other simple actions like swinging from horizontal bars, Buzz will mostly need to rely on his jumping to navigate, and in places like the fire escapes of an alley, there’s little standing room and a good deal of room for error to send you plummeting down for some repetitive climbs back up. If enemies are pestering you though you do have a first person aiming option, the game including the neat touch of seeing Buzz’s face reflected in his bubble helmet and thankfully not hindering your visibility as you either eliminate some flying foes or do things like bust locks to open up new platforming options.
The perils of its sometimes less clean platforming sections aren’t too hard to push through and neither are Buzz’s repeated proclamations of the same few voice lines, but one thing that ensures the game can’t live up to its creative potential are the fact that many goals are repeated across every level. Some like racing an RC car at least are guaranteed a new race track, but the ones that are found in most every stage can feel a bit empty. Each regular stage has you collecting 50 coins to pay the piggy bank Hamm for a token, but there are usually more coins than you need and the first time you destroy an enemy toy it will even drop one. There’s not often a reason to go out of your way to grab them so they’re more a collectible to idly scoop up as you look for more interesting activities. Each level also has a character who wants you to find five associated objects or characters, like Bo Peep wanting you to find 5 sheep or a Little Tike toy asking you to find five of his fellows. These will usually be placed in a spot where you might have to work a bit more for it, the toy store especially making you have to work for a few of the chicks you’re grabbing, but other times it can be a bit too easy to just briefly do a few jumps off path to grab them and move along. Much like the usually underwhelming bosses though, sometimes you can have a platforming section that justifies itself with one of these characters to collect, there’s just a few too many gimmes or small diversions to make this a compelling enough goal to make such consistent appearances.
Beyond useful items like extra lives and battery packs to heal up Buzz’s fairly generous health bar, one more important collectable exists in certain levels: pieces of Mr. Potato Head. Placed a bit similarly to things like Bo Peep’s sheep or the Little Tikes, these body parts for the talking spud don’t go towards tokens but instead unlockable tools. Once unlocked they’ll be available in every level and they are materially useful, things like a grappling hook or hover boots able to get you to heights Buzz normally can’t reach even if the hover boots are a bit awkward to use. Having new means to get around is a fine idea, but sometimes you can’t even earn all five tokens in a level on first visit since you’ll be unlocking the necessary equipment for it later down the line. This is fine for a stage like the alley where the grappling hook basically makes another half of the level accessible, but other times like at the toy store you need the hover boots just to grab a single chick and the platforming that pops up after the necessary boot use is not even challenging. They are a mostly harmless addition even if some only have one or two uses, but their implementation can feel a bit aimless at times much like the mandated per-level boss fights.
THE VERDICT: Despite some of its vertical climbs being slogs if you slip up, Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! is definitely at its best when you’re embracing a level’s theme thoroughly, its creativity and level design best shown off when a level specific goal is at play or the boss is waiting at the end of a platforming challenge. A great deal of time in a level will be spent doing less exciting tasks though, things like collecting coins and characters not often asking much of the player and stage specific bosses are often quite basic despite a few boss levels whipping out challenging battles to compensate. You’ll definitely find some entertaining tasks tied up in your quest to collect Pizza Planet Tokens, but more often you’ll be doing tamer and less challenging work towards goals that don’t shake things up enough to stand out.
And so, I give Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! for PlayStation…
An OKAY rating. While happily recycling objective concepts between levels is what holds Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! back, it also ensures some of the actual issues don’t drag things down much. Long vertical climbs that don’t have shortcuts usually only need to be done once successfully to get the token and deviations to grab collectibles along the way aren’t difficult. More involved level challenges are more self-contained and easy to focus on and then you can go back to scooping up coins and the like as you look for something else of interest in the stage. The level bosses often being fairly easy to bully into a quick defeat is a shame but you at least have the boss levels that actually aim to test your abilities some, but many of the objectives, even when repeated, wouldn’t be awful in the right context. Super Mario 64 has many simple boss fights and every level has a 100 coin and red coin challenge, but it does a better job of either mixing up how such collection tasks are achieved or still makes sure the level is populated with more ideas that make use of the stage design. 7 or 8 tokens per stage could have allowed for a few more specific ideas to come forth that give you some new way to play to focus on, not every puzzle in the game as it exists exciting but still it is appreciated to find a multifaceted level that fleshes out that setting more. The crane game at the toy store is a good example, its operation not too difficult but it’s a nifty alternate way to earn a token and more moments that think outside the box would better bolster a level’s appeal than providing another quota for items to collect that doesn’t often shake up the way you move around the stage.
Disney/Pixar Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! probably lands in the same spot as SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, a platforming game beloved by those who played at it at the right place in time because it does its collect-a-thon platforming well enough while being a licensed title. Some thought and work were definitely put into parts of its design, but it might also have been sped along at parts to make sure it could ride the interest in the upcoming feature film. It doesn’t feel sloppy outside of a few detection issues that could have used more testing, but a second pass to see what worked and what was merely mediocre feels like it could have been the key to making this game into more of a classic than a turn of the century collect-a-thon time capsule.