Captain Novolin

"An Honest Effort, But Not a Great Game"

I just had the pleasure of playing the infamous Captain Novolin for Super Nintendo for the first time, and, I have to say, my expectations were met, but not exceeded. Yes, this is a bad game. It's a very simplistic game with a generally poor game design. Yes, it has a disturbing theme; the entire game is geared toward teaching children about diabetes. That being said, is it the worst game ever? No. Is it in the top ten worst games ever? No. Twenty? No. Thirty? Maybe . . .

You see, the biggest problem with Captain Novolin is that it is produced by a pharmaceutical company, not a video game company. Thus, its programming is crude, at best. And yes, if you don't have diabetes, it seems awfully silly to hear the same things over and over again about the difference between clear and cloudy insulin or the importance of blood glucose levels.

However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, if I were a little kid with diabetes, and my doctor had me play this video game a few times, it just might make me feel a little better. Even if a video game isn't the best medium for communicating important information to a child, video games do give us a sense of control, and that sense of control might be very therapeutic for a small child suffering from this terrible disease.

Also, the game feature that allows your doctor to give you a password that causes the game to actually reproduce an appropriate insulin regimen for a diabetic child's specific needs is pretty cool. Of course, nobody outside of the medical field seems to be able to find the passwords to get it to work, but still, I can imagine that making a diabetic kid feel a lot less alone, to have a video game character share his burden for a little while- even an exceptionally lame video game character like Captain Novolin.

Oh, and you ride a speedboat. For some reason, you ride a speedboat. Fair enough.

On to the ratings - 5 is average.

Graphics - 2 - Although the general look of the game is very amateurish, the characters are very big and the animations are pretty smooth, which are two things not necessarily found in every Super Nintendo Game. And there is a good moment on the pier when you first see the speedboat and think - cool! But it gets old very quickly, and the general graphic design is shoddy. It's not the worst ever, but it's pretty bad.

Music/Sound - 1 - The music for this game is very strange. It's very dissonant and irritating, with a sort of driving madness to it. Given the idea behind the game, which is to make kids with diabetes not feel so bad about diabetes, I don't think that ''edgy and avant garde'' was the way to go with the music. The sound effects are also stupid/nonexistent. This game is a pretty good example of what not to do with a sound design for a game.

Play Control - 1 - This is the worst part of the game, right here. It is extremely difficult to control Captain Novolin, and the hit detection on all the sugar baby aliens, or whatever they're called, is way off, most of the time. More often than not, Captain Novolin falls down because the game screwed up, not because you screwed up. This is extremely frustrating, and I think that it is a particularly unfortunate thing with which to hassle diabetic children.

Design - 1 - The levels for this game are completely uninteresting, and, although the speedboat was a nice enough idea, there's no real difference between the speedboat levels and the other levels. Basically, the game design was done as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible, to give more time and money to diabetes education.

Challenge - 1 - The only challenge in this game is poor play control, which is good, because if it were tremendously difficult for Captain Novolin to figure out how to manage his diabetes, the whole didactic end of the game would be completely wasted. The game would literally be withholding information that could save a child's eyesight or life because the child could not make a jump in a side-scrolling mountain level, and that would just be cruel. No, this game is extremely easy; I played through it all the way up to the last level the second time I picked up the controller, and although that's probably appropriate, it doesn't win the game any points.
Replay - 2 - If you don't have diabetes, the replay value is basically nonexistent. If you have diabetes, however, you might want to replay this game a few times to make sure you get all the helpful hints and can take advantage of the code given you by your doctor. Even so, it gets old real fast.

Theme - 5 - Okay, I'm standing up for Captain Novolin here. A game about diabetes has as good a reason to exist as any other game; the Novolin company did a genuinely good thing by putting this game together, and they shouldn't be badmouthed for it simply because most people don't have diabetes or because the game is terrible. Sure, it didn't sell a million copies, but it wasn't supposed to. It's supposed to help entertain, educate, and comfort children with diabetes, and that's a pretty solid theme for a video game. Of course, in many places, it isn't very well implemented, but you'd be surprised how much useful information they work into this game. I especially liked the part about wearing special shoes while doing strenuous activity, because diabetics have poor circulation. They didn't have to stick that in, but they did, and it was a good thing.

Fun - 1 - As a game, this is very boring and stupid. It's a very shoddy side-scroller, and the only reason to play it is to appreciate the novelty or to ease the crippling fear you might feel in dealing with the reality of diabetes.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 10/01/02, Updated 10/01/02