Beavis and Butt-head: Bunghole in One

"Durn it, Peggy! Them software dee-veloper hoodlums done bilked me outta ten hard-earned smackeroonis."

I suppose if they had to make a sports game for Beavis and Butt-Head, miniature golf would be the logical choice, given the amount of standing around, bantering and weird sights that B&B-type productions engender. However, Bunghole in One requires a distressing amount of thought, with the result that, although you may cancel more than ten games in frustration, you probably won't play enough times to fill up the ten-player high score list it saves in memory. With a single game taking fifteen minutes, that's not much of a shelf life. I suppose a certain amount of planning is necessary in golf, but miniature golf should be more light-hearted, shouldn't have all those areas where you get penalties, and doesn't need quite so many traps per hole that will bounce your ball willy-nilly. Even the six people you can play as(Anderson, Beavis or Butt-Head, Van Driesen, McVicker or Todd the bully) aren't particularly enjoyable. Why not Stewart and Daria? I picture Todd looking down on miniature golf and even vandalizing golf courses, with McVicker and Anderson preferring the real thing.

The game itself has eighteen holes, par 54, each patterned after a certain part of the boys' world, which you must play through in order(no practice allowed, even on the toughies that may take a relative veteran fifteen strokes.) You aim by clicking on the ball and moving an X behind it; there's a dotted line between the X and the ball to show you the direction you'll hit the ball, reversed. This is reasonable and gives putting a fair learning curve, but it's hardly original, and nothing else really goes right.

Although up to four people can play in any one game(you can knock other people's balls out of position) solitaire is permitted, although three kibitzers will pop up on the side in any case. You can turn off the sound, text messages, and music, and you'll still need to click them out of the way after every hole. They're a cute part of the game but if you're trying to get good at it, it's annoying. You can't even choose the kibitzers, and I had to plow through a few four-player holes with hand-picked players by myself just to hear all the quips. Even a ''quit at X strokes'' option would be nice for impatient players whether or not it banned you from the high score list.

The holes have interesting variety(different terrains would have done even more) but some are laid out nastily; of course, it starts well with the first hole on the boys' couch, a window moving up and down to block your ball, and a slope from the fairway to the ''green'' of the couch which has treacherous springs to knock your ball back down. Even with the sound off you can still time the window(which you can't see) by its shadow, but later on your driving skills lean more toward angle memorization. Three holes in particular are very nasty; they count as more than one-sixth of the game as you may spend as much as two-fifths of your strokes on them. The fourth hole has a narrow area up a hill you must push the ball through(missing the first time may make it harder the next few or not-so-few strokes,) and there is a ramp over mud that you must push the ball over--you can't try to do it with one stroke or you'll get a penalty. Along the way there are a few potholes that blow the ball up even if you do make it across, and then there are tires, which contrary to the usual rational physics of the game bounce the ball all over the place. Yes, you can make it in par four, but it's grueling and very unlikely. There's also a classroom level where you need to drop the ball down a hole, nudge it over to a ramp, and shoot it; too far and the ball falls off the green and off to the side, where the circular ramps are tough to navigate or you'll have to set up again. This is some of the toughest miniature golf I've ever seen and if there was an easy course to complement it that would be OK. But there isn't; there's a harder hole, #18(Corn-HOLE-io. Oh look, they diluted his legacy further.) where, after nudging your ball very carefully onto a sinkhole in a coffee-cup lake, you'll find your ball can get knocked around by spinning teacup handles if you don't hit it exactly right. Other holes seem to have nuances that become nuisances; in Todd's Garage you have to hit the ball softly where it will, counterintuitively, stop just before it goes down the drain. But while most of the holes, like Stewart's Room with the ''I love unicorns'' poster or the Skull concert with holes that become fountains, are reasonable to get the hang of, three stand out as being very ugly and dominate your impressions of the game.

Graphics look nice, as you'd expect with the funny picture on the box(maybe the best part of the game, featuring Butt-Head in tam o'shanter, Anderson up to his neck in sand and panicking, Beavis in visor, just ahead of page three with the boys ogling a female golfer) with funny fonts for the letters on your scorecard, but once the novelty wears off, it's no big deal. Most of the golfers look pretty normal golfing, and seeing boxes of other characters commenting seems a bit too detached; only Beavis handling the putter like a baseball bat before you aim really stands out. Still I have to admit the greens are always clever and rarely green, and I enjoyed details such as the ball's reflection in Burger World's greasy floors, and making the ball translucent when it goes behind something is a good touch. There are some funny cardboard cutouts of other characters in the show, and the 3-d views you get of the hole before you start it are helpful and also avoidable with the escape key for veterans, but they're really too sophisticated for a B&B title. The only time the graphics outright get in the way is when you have the ball inside the shed in Anderson's Yard, where your aiming line is the same color as the shed, but you may also have problems judging 3-d inclines, which would not be a problem in the real world, and you also sometimes cannot see the entire hole on a screen, i.e. outside Highland High, where the school's front doors open noiselessly.

The sounds seem taken right from the TV show, and when the quotes, none of them classics, are out of context, they aren't so funny. There are no new quotes, and that's too bad, because there are obvious good ones even I thought up. Many even seem inappropriate with van Driesen's and McVicker's comments being over-general(why were they included again?) and Anderson, who as an adult doesn't quite fit the bill, is never used as he could be. Sometimes characters will have exchanges(i.e. two voice changes) but given that they're picked from the pool of one-liners they don't go too far. The most memorable quotes are about the boys yelling how it's too hard, and unfortunately you can't change the sound in the middle of a game if it gets annoying. You'll even get taunted for allegedly taking too long, which is cute until you realize any one character has a maximum of two ways to break you the news. In fact, even the celebrations for par or birdies are disappointing(Beavis: ''Heh heh!'') An obvious cut-scene missed is air-guitaring Iron Man with the putter if one of the boys gets a birdie. Anyone who thinks this sort of thing is clever enough can go jump in Lake Titicaca. TITICACA!!!! TITICACA!!!! Mm yeah, sorry about that.

This game, truly, sucks in ways no other game I have played before have sucked. You never even get a chance to pull out your wood or even use the ball washer. You'll find that you'll, uhh, wipe it off your hard drive not long after you install it even if you like B&B. It has some clever ideas, but they are of course derivative from the show itself; you're better off spending the money on a videotape of past episodes or even ''This Book Sucks'' than this game. I snickered a bit at it but the frustration overwhelmed that in short order.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 11/20/01, Updated 11/20/01