Tiny Toon Adventures (NES)
The animated series Tiny Toon Adventures stars a range of cartoon animal characters who are learning to live up to the comedic legacy of the original Looney Tunes. When it comes to video games though, this younger generation might outshine their predecessors, Tiny Toons receiving more well-regarded games primarily because Konami managed to get the rights to produce tie-in games and really ran with them for a while. From 1991 to 1994 Konami would make 10 games starring these up-and-comer toons, it all starting with a side-scrolling platformer on the NES simply called Tiny Toon Adventures.
When the spoiled rich kid Montana Mix kidnaps Babs Bunny as revenge against her pal Buster for him winning a local student film contest, a few other students of Acme Looniversity leap into action to help Buster rescue his buddy. While you’ll always finding yourself playing as Buster a bit across the game’s six worlds, if you manage to find a ball with a star on it in a stage, you can swap in for one of three of the other Tiny Toons to take over for a while. Before starting a world you’ll be asked to between Plucky Duck, Dizzy Devil, or Furrball as your back-up character, and with the fortune-telling Shirley the Loon there to help you pick who will be conducive for the world, you’re more likely to get some good use out of their special abilities. Plucky is the best swimmer and can even flutter to help his jumps go farther, Furrball can cling to walls to climb them, and Dizzy packs a special tornado attack that makes it easier for him to hurt enemies that you otherwise would have to hop on top of to hurt. Buster does technically have the best jump of the group, but the partner characters are often much better at platforming or might help you in enemy heavy stages, but you won’t feel like you’re much weaker when playing as Buster nor do any levels feel rough if you brought the wrong back-up. Even underwater, everyone gets access to the very useful whirlpool firing strike, its use limited a bit based on a power meter but it’s never too much of a bother if you do miss out on a star ball or grab another one and end up back as Buster.
For the first four worlds of Tiny Toon Adventures, you’ll find yourself playing through a few levels before facing the area boss. Some areas stand out a bit more for what they’re attempting, Motion Ocean’s underwater areas and the maze-like Sure Weird Forest asking for more involved exploration than section of the Field of Screamz or the urban Boomtown, but the final two worlds stand out by breaking from convention more strongly. Most levels are about moving forward, bouncing off the heads of enemies in your way to reach the end. Wackyland, on top of having the weirdest enemies like eyeballs with hats and living ink pens, actually asks you to collect Dodos to clear it, while the final attack on Montana Max’s mansion really ups the difficulty of the platforming to a considerable degree. In earlier stages, Buster and his pals all can take on hit before perishing, two if you manage to find a heart.
Usually that amount of health is fairly fair, most enemies simple in behavior or just requiring smart timing to get around their single attack or persistent chase. A few enemies like the dumbbell throwing Arnold the Pit Bull or his later charging variant are there to catch you off-guard, but you can either keep moving or at least learn to expect what lies ahead after the surprise hit. The mansion world plays far less fair, having you do running slides under spike ceilings repeatedly while also having guards who crowd the area and respawn too easily. It’s a bit of a damper on an otherwise solid platforming adventure to suddenly lose lives to a short stretch that doesn’t give you much room or leeway to attempt it properly, but it’s not the only little flub in this otherwise kid-friendly platformer.
In the first four worlds, the second stage will end with an encounter with Elmira. Elmira is a girl who loves cuddly critters way too much, and if she gets her hands on you, she’ll force you to retry the entire world. Her encounters are often about baiting her to move away from the exit door or avoiding her for a bit so that door will appear, but it’s not often that interesting of a challenge so even overcoming it is more a relief rather than in engaging high-stakes test of movement or understanding.
Bosses are actually handled much better though, even the encounter with Montana Max being fairly well-conceived. Some like the first boss fight against Dr. Gene Splicer are straightforward but reasonably so, while others require you to identify safe moments to take your hits like dodging the barrels of a pirate or finding the moments to bop the monkey minions of a gorilla you can’t directly harm. There’s even a secret boss to encounter for some extra life rewards should you finish a stage with a multiple of 11 as your carrot count, the floating collectible carrots otherwise turned in at Hamton’s store where extra lives can be redeemed for 30 per life. Carrots are abundant enough to make building up reserves fairly feasible and it adds a little extra substance to your level navigation to go for them. Most stages can still feel fairly simple, and some skills like Plucky’s flight can breeze through some of their designs, but with some decent music and even a solid rendition of the show’s theme tune to accompany you, Tiny Toon Adventures is mostly a nice little adventure before you reach the jump in difficulty that comes with arriving at Montana Max’s mansion.
THE VERDICT: Most of the levels in Tiny Toon Adventures provide a good deal of simple platforming fun. Whether its bopping on basic baddies, switching to someone like Plucky or Furrball to overcome some level specific obstacle, or facing solid yet short boss battles, you’ll get some variety and well-placed dangers to hold your interest. The game does get a little mean with the dangers faced in Montana Max’s mansion and Elmira sending you back to world start if you so much as touch her also feels unfortunate, but these aren’t so severe they bring down the rest of the experience’s breezy but straightforward fun.
And so, I give Tiny Toon Adventures for the Nintendo Entertainment System…
An OKAY rating. Tiny Toon Adventures does have a few little shake-ups in its design so it’s not too plain, the back-up characters having unique skills and some levels shifting their design away from runs to the right meaning it’s not a run-of-the-mill platformer. Konami’s good sense for stage layouts helps here as well, enemies usually placed properly to be obstacles rather than annoyances or just a way to add a little action to the short stages as you move through them. Since you can come into a level with any partner and will spend some time playing as Buster regardless though, it is possible the level design didn’t get to really put abilities to the test to balance the different ways you might approach them. The bits of praise can’t quite cover the whole game though thanks to Elmira and Montana Max having their segments be more of a mixed bag. Elmira’s impact isn’t too huge since her segments are short and you can often figure them out easily enough, but slipping up still stings considering the punishment is repetition. The mansion though pushes things a bit too far for a game where one or two hits is all it takes to die, it again slipping a bit too much into the issue with Elmira’s section where you need to get a movement right or face severe consequences, just with more fiddly situations and only a life lost if you slip up. More of the Tiny Toon Adventures experience will be colored by the decent regular stages at least and there is some fun in using Furrball or Plucky to bypass sections even if it means you’re engaging less with the level’s hazards, but Tiny Toon Adventures still feels like it can’t quite find a mechanic that defines it or a level design ethos that would help it stand out from many other platforming adventures.
Still, Tiny Toon Adventures is a solid start for the surge of Tiny Toons games that Konami would put out as well as a good reference point to build off of as they’d make future platforming adventures. These comedic cartoon critters would prove pretty solid fits for action games thanks to Konami’s guiding hand, but the first game starring them, despite finding a good use for many of the characters, had not quite yet hit the marks that made Konami’s Tiny Toons output surprisingly entertaining. A decent platformer with a few tough parts still awaits those looking for this first go with the brand though, and neither Elmira or Montana Max are bad enough to bring down the simple fun it provides.