Spanky’s Quest (SNES)
Spanky’s Quest is a bit of an odd eye-catching title, the name perhaps meant to make young players look twice when browsing the Super Nintendo selection at a store with the easy juvenile jokes it could inspire despite the game generally being cute and wholesome otherwise. However, what makes the title even weirder is the true origin of this adventure, it not some game mascot being made in hopes of catching on, but a retooling of a game based on a monkey celebrity called Jiro-kun. It’s fairly fortunate they didn’t let this highly specific tie-in about a famous monkey of the 80s stay locked to the region who might recognize its hero, as Spanky’s Quest is a nifty and colorful platforming adventure and not quite a typical one either.
Spanky was preparing for a picnic in a Mopoland forest one day when he had the bad fortune of being placed directly below a rapidly constructed magical tower. Morticia, a witch from a world of darkness, is beginning her conquest of Mopoland, and to pick on the poor monkey caught up in her attack, she transforms his picnic food into sentient attack fruits. Luckily for Spanky, Morticia left behind a ball he can swallow to gain his own magical ability, the monkey able to make it appear from thin air and bounce it on his head to power it up. When he chooses to pop the ball with a press of the B button, it will transform into a more familiar piece of sports equipment, different balls having different power levels and features. A baseball only deals a quick hit to the first thing it hits as it falls, but a soccer ball leaves a trail behind it to make it easier to hit enemies. The volleyball will explode outward for a time to damage additional enemies nearby, and the basketball will split into multiple balls that rain down from above. It’s not a perfect means of attack, Spanky will always need a bit of room to throw the ball out and then stand beneath it and manage its bounce well to make it more powerful, but it does make space management an important feature of this room-clearing platformer.
Across six towers with some wonderful jazzy music backing the action, Spanky must collect keys to open doors and press onward so he can face Morticia and undo her damage to Mopoland. Many levels are actually quite small though, and if a level lacks a true roof, you can even see some that loop around vertically for some strange platforming. The level design can sometimes lean on little boxy areas where you hop around trying to set up your balls to take out the enemy fruits, things like charging kiwis, twirling apples, and leaping melons lethal to the touch and their focus on movement fits trying to pin them down with your somewhat odd attack method of bouncing balls around. There will definitely be moments where you get the satisfaction of clearing out a huge group of fruits with a well timed basketball spread but other times you’ll be cramped in a corner trying to find the way to avoid your death, the difficulty shifting fairly often over the course of the adventure so you don’t get too complacent. However, some levels are so small you’re left wondering if the game designers really figured that room to be a challenge, but others like the levels with vertical wrapping or a big focus on launching yourself around with cannons feel like they’ll lead to many a cheap death since it’s hard to track foes who might not even be on screen suddenly appearing in your path at high speeds.
Traps serve as an interesting complication though, mostly because enemies need to be present to operate them. Whether it’s the very pesky birds that chase you down fired from the egg cannon or something simpler like rising and falling crushers, enemies need to be manning the lever to use them, and taking them out will not only free you of that concern for the stage, but you can operate the controls yourself for a bit. The chance for payback is minimal since you likely had to clear out a lot of trouble to even reach them, but some enemies start out inside tin cans and only appear after a set time, meaning some stages will change a bit if you can’t clear them quickly. In fact, Morticia’s pet crow will come in as an unkillable threat if you dilly dally too long in a level, there no visible timer but certainly a threat if you are too cautious trying to set up your ball bounces.
Much like the traps, you and enemies both can also make use of a set of hats found within levels. These power-ups are limited only to the current stage but include useful ones like the top hat that will instantly power up your ball to max level after a single bounce and a viking hat that lets Spanky survive three additional hits compared to his usually low health of a one-hit death. They’re a nice treat to find, just like it can be nice to throw your ball and wrap it around a key to get the instant full power upgrade, but since stages are often swiftly completed already, some fail to make much of an impression or see their potential realized. The straw hat that lets you drift through the air for example could be useful in the large vertical levels, but it often just makes a jump or two in a boxier stage a bit easier. Similarly, the exciting promise of bonus stages mentioned in the manual actually just takes the form of a ball bouncing challenge, the player earning points and potentially an extra life if they can keep a giant ball airborne without it drifting off screen. Extra lives aren’t too rare and clearing a tower earns you a password, but a bonus stage at least lets you skip the current stage if you find the hidden door that leads to the bonus. In an interesting touch, many levels have more keys than needed to exit so you can carry keys forward to use later down the line, there some room there for strategic players to potentially skip the tougher stages.
Boss battles exist where giant fruits face you down, many of them having a simple movement pattern and a special attack or two. Fatso the giant watermelon spits seeds at you but also dominates a fair bit of aerial space with his large form while Vito Mascutone the grape cluster will move in more difficult whirls through the air and drop small grape minions so you might jump past one only to hit the other. They’re all fairly simple once you understand how their movement works or how they aim to trick you into a bad jump, the fights often becoming a bit slow as you don’t always get the best room to build up your balls to their strongest forms. The final tower just being repeat boss fights before facing Morticia also makes for a somewhat underwhelming last set of stages, Morticia herself a tough fight but the push to get there offering not much new beyond a pretty background.
THE VERDICT: The ball bouncing attacks you rely on in Spanky’s Quest can lead to challenging moments where you need to manage space well to build up your power but avoid the approaching enemy fruit, but the level designs don’t always bring the heat when it comes to composing situations that best test this main element of the game. Little fun touches like the hats and the bosses do break you away from just constantly bouncing your ball on your head trying to nail small foes, but it is inherently a style of battle that involves a bit of waiting and the excitement can wane in the tamer level designs or get stressed when the game might expect too much of you. The bouncy soundtrack is a nice companion for your short tower clearing quest, but more imagination was needed to mold this platformer into a truly memorable adventure.
And so, I give Spanky’s Quest for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…
An OKAY rating. Spanky’s Quest usually has a strong enough sense for how much room you need to use your ball, its weaker levels often failing not because they feel at odds with it but because they venture into new territories like having too much relevant action occurring off screen or just too little going on in them. The bouncing ball attack is rather slow to get going save for those moments you have a helpful hat or can set it up with something like a key, meaning there are definitely going to be moments of standing around building it up, potentially missing, and doing it again. It is fortunate the game doesn’t too often apply hard pressure to the task, the player usually having escape routes to get Spanky away if the ball bouncing goes awry, but it also means, while some might label Spanky’s Quest a puzzle platformer, it’s often just about figuring out good arcs for throwing the balls or making time to set up the same attack as usual. Keys can be hidden or carried around by foes and a few concept levels do exist that required a bit more thought to clear, but even areas like the boss fights can’t get too adventurous because you need to be able to focus on setting up your attacks so often and if there isn’t room, the baseballs and soccer balls make for very gradual ways of making progress. This unique attack method at least carries the adventure well enough through its better stages and prevents it from feeling generic or uninspired, but one can’t help but wonder if powering up the ball by hitting it with your head over and over is just too limiting of an idea to really see major success in a game with active dangers and a bit of a time limit compared to something more like a true puzzler.
Spanky’s Quest is not a cultural relic quite like it would be in Japan where some players might recognize its hero from the comedy acts and television ads from a specific point in time, but it still finds a curious corner of the Super Nintendo library abroad by trying something a bit different with its platforming action. Spanky’s ball bouncing may be the limit that keeps the game from becoming more involved or energetic, but it also keeps it from being just another mascot game about jumping through simple left-to-right levels. Its mechanical experimentation makes it worth a bit of a look even if it can’t quite impress with where it takes it.