Mischief Makers

"Shake shake shake. Shake shake shake. Shake your boo-tay."

Mischief making is a bunch of work. It often takes massive amounts of time, and in the hands of an amateur, the payoff could be very low. But, of course, I’m not an amateur. I am reminded of when I put my biggest mischief-making scheme to work. The target was this rich snotty family and their son, who constantly paraded his wealth in front of me and taunted me with it. His birthday was coming up, and it would be a birthday he wouldn’t forget.

First, I went to the local brothel and picked up all of the used condoms from the whores, using sanitary gloves, of course. I then meticulously painted happy children mascots and happy characters on each of the condoms, paying the closet attention to the simple details like the hairs in Mario’s moustache. I even painted a few of them with a “special message” for the family. When his birthday came along, it was a huge event. Tons of people were invited to the party, and there were many attractions. I managed to intercept the truck carrying the balloons to be used and blown up at the party, and carefully replaced every balloon with the condoms. I took the ones with the message for the family, and put them in a special box and wrote on the outside of the box that it was a gift from the Balloon Company, and that the balloons should be blown up by the family only.

I managed to sneak into the party (Jerks didn’t invite me), and I watched with glee as the party guests blew up the dirty condom balloons. I laughed insanely as the family blew up the condom balloons that read “**** OFF, *******!” The family was mortified and appalled and other adjectives for shocked that rich people use. I quickly sneaked off, and nobody put the blame on me. Apparently the family and most of their guests died from gonorrhea and syphilis a few months later, and the ones who survived contracted the AIDS virus. I guess the entire family, along with most of their guests, was swingers and had unprotected sex non-stop. I mean, I couldn’t have killed them with the condom thing, right?

Strangely enough, this game has absolutely nothing to do with making mischief at all. Instead, it tells the story of Professor Theo, who has created a sex-bot disguised as a “personal assistant” named Marina Liteyears. I’m not sure if Marina is a sex-bot, but in the opening movie, Theo walks towards her with a terribly creepy grin across his face with his hands looking like he wants to grab Marina’s bazoombas, which make me assume he uses her for less-than-healthy reasons. When the Evil Empire captures Theo, Marina goes to save him. You’d think that Marina, looking as strangely sexy and seductive as she does, would let him be taken away. I’m sure she’d find another sex-bot and fall happily in love with him. But, obviously programmed not to let her Professor (who probably moonlights as the “Dungeon Keeper of Fun”) get stolen, she rushes off to rescue him.

Sure, the plot is crap, but Mischief-Makers has a strange sense of humor to make up for it. The creepy Theo is just the start of it! Early on in the game, a Clancer, the incredibly spooky looking alien race Marina encounters, asks her to find her three kids. Marina does so, and also finds the lady Clancer’s husband. The lady Clancer yells “Where have you been?” and the husband jumps around the house yelling “It’s my life, I can do what I want!” Later on, Marina encounters the same family and she says that she has “added a few” kids, and then promptly turns and glares at her husband who asks, “What are you looking at me for?” Also, the smallest of bosses such as the worm you fight near the start of the game explode into a ridiculous, massive explosion when defeated. The often laugh out loud humor is nice addition and adds the game a healthy does of flavor.

You play as the incredibly attractive and sexy Marina Liteyears, and work on rescuing her sex-starved Professor Theo, who gets captured quite often during the course of the game. It is a 2D platformer, but it breaks away from butt bouncing and enemy bopping formula most 2D platformers have. Instead of those moves, Marina’s weapons in this game are her hands and her ability to shake shake anything! Yes, just plain shaking is not good enough for our attractive robot, oh no! Instead, she yells out shake shake whenever she shakes something, which I assume to stun the thing she shake shakes into a humor induced coma.

When Marina picks something up using her delicate and sexy hands, she can either throw it, or shake shake it. Almost everything can be picked up and shake shaked, including Clancers, flowers, and enemies. Often when you shake shake Clancers or enemies, gems that they carry fall from their pockets and you can pick them up. Gems are a source of health to our beautiful Marina, and offer other uses, too.

Marina has can have up to three life bars. The blue, green, and yellow gems restore parts to those bars, while the red ones can be used for continues. When she dies and goes to the sex-bot factory in the sky, you can spend the red gems you’ve collected to return to the game with one, two, or three life bars. This is a feature that makes collecting the red gems important. There is one yellow gem on each stage, and collecting these gems opens up more and more of the game’s ending scene. The yellow gems are terribly hard to find, and going for them all without a FAQ to guide you will make you insane enough to dip your privates in honey and run around naked in front of a grizzly bear.

Mischief-Makers also has original, fun level objectives. Logical mazes and wacky objectives add to the fun. A King, for example, will only help Marina if she gets him his prized Tricycle. She finds it, but the area where she finds it is rapidly sinking into the water. She has to ride it quickly enough to get back safely to the King. Or, you’ll be very surprised when your thrown into an Olympic type festival where Clancers compete for a prize. Mischief-Makers manages to break free from the stale 2D platformers and offers something a little more strange, but fun nevertheless.

The many boss fights are worth mentioning, only because they are so damn cool. The mid-stage bosses such as the giant worm I mentioned are easier to kill, but it’s not always as easy as “just jump up and grab and toss the bastard to the ground”. During a boss fight, a cursor appears showing you what you can grab and shake shake or toss. Once you grab the boss, throwing him/her/it may not be the best answer. Take the giant toad you fight, for example. The toad attempts to hit you with its massive tongue, but if you grab it you can either shake shake the tongue up and down, effectively slamming the toad repeatedly into the ground, or you can whip the tongue right back at the toad. These boss fights are very logical, and are some of the coolest ever to come to the N64.

Mischief-Makers looked nicely done with the time it came out. The backgrounds and levels Marina laid her sexy eyes on were detailed and lavish. The backgrounds in the levels are very, very nice looking, and look surprisingly reminiscent of classic watercolor paintings. Not to give all the credit to the backgrounds, the levels and foregrounds look equally as good. The levels are nicely detailed, and the textures look especially nice for being an early 2D N64 platformer. The interactive objects such as flowers aren’t screaming “HEY, I’M HERE! INTERACT WITH ME!” and when you interact with something that you though you couldn’t, it’s pretty satisfying. There are some cool effects like when Clancers equipped with jet packs fly from the back of the screen and attempt to hit you, and the boss fights are some of the coolest and best looking ever. Frame rate drops only when there is tons of action on the screen. When it does drop, you’ll feel like Marina is waddling through molasses. Marina looks sexy, albeit a tad pixely. The Clancers look pixely, too. That’s understandable, with Mischief-Makers being an early N64 game and all. But the other parts of the graphics break free from the “early N64 game” branding and look quite nice.

Each world features a set of levels, each world with two different tunes. The first half of the level gets the first tune, the second gets the second tune. This little music is pleasant to listen too, and it is often serene and it won’t distract you from you duty. The sound effects are a nice touch, with Marina’s slide dash sounding particularly good. The “pop” you hear when you toss items into a pot is good, as are the Clancers’ strange cries and noises. The voice samples are few, but they sound average in every aspect. Marina and Theo are the only standouts in the voice acting; they fit the characters perfectly. The other voice actors such as the bosses’ sound less-than-average and often their voice don’t match their character at all. The “blah” voice acting isn’t the only woe, though. Mischief-Makers also has the most hideous, generic, and all out terrible sounding explosions I’ve ever heard. Hearing Clinton say “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” sounded more realistic and believable then those explosions!

In a good move, the Control Stick was ditched and movement was assigned to the slowly dying D-Pad. Other than the D-Pad, only A, B, and the C-Buttons were used in a nice and simple control scheme. Pressing twice on any direction on the D-Pad makes Marina do a quick dash, as does pressing any C-Button direction. I found it clever how the C-Button dash was a little slower than the D-Pad dash, and that makes you learn to use which dash in which situations.

Mischief-Makers grades you on every level according to your time. Finish the fastest and get an A-Rank. Finish the slowest and get ridiculed, along with a D-Rank. That adds some replay value, along with collecting all of the yellow gems to unlock more and more of the ending. Only when you have all A-Rankings and have all of the yellow gems will the entire ending be visible to you. That will take a hefty amount of time, but if you really, really have the strength, you could do it. Saying you have everything in Mischief-Makers is quite an accomplishment, so be proud once you get that final yellow gem and A-Rank.

All in all, Mischief-Makers is a nice attempt at making a refreshing 2D platformer that isn’t confined to butt stomping and enemy bopping. The shake shake combat system works remarkably well, as does the subtle and not-so-subtle humor and jokes. With it being dirt-cheap now, you have no reason not to own this! You better go out and buy it right now. If you don’t, I wouldn’t blow up the balloons at your next birthday party…

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/02, Updated 07/28/02