Beavis and Butt-head

"I'm like, angry at crappiness, huh huh. Yeah, there's, like, too much of it in this game and stuff, heh heh."

I played the Genesis adaptation of Beavis and Butthead as a young lad, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It had adventure, exploration, and to an extent, puzzles. This, however, is an inexcusable abuse of the franchise. It lacks everything that made the Genesis game fun, and threw in some extra anchors to make it that much more vanilla and generic.

Graphics: 4/10

For a system that is supposed to be graphically superior, Activision didn't exactly push any boundaries here. In fact, (and I hate to keep drawing this comparison, but I must) the Genesis game looks BETTER. This game has semi-relevant drawings, but are off-set by the tiny sprites, weak animation and general blandness to it that doesn't complement the show at all.

Sound/Music: 5/10

Well, you get a digitized version of the opening theme and some (and an emphatic some, at that) voice-overs, but generally, all you hear is a corny dialogue narrated by a series of ''huh-huhs'' and ''heh-hehs'' that grate the nerves. The gameplay music makes the weakest Zelda MIDI sound like Handel's Messiah, to boot.

Control: 6/10

Everything feels okayish, but more often than not, there are issues with latency, collision and missed jumps that should not have been missed. Combat becomes a serious chore at times, as well.

Gameplay: 1/10

This is where the train wreck comes to a head and the tank of napalm bursts and spills into the nearby forest. Each level consists of you running from left to right, vanquishing evil skateboarders and over-potent pigeons while dodging an impossible number of obstacles from the egg yolk bombaiders, grandmas with attitude and shopping carts galore. Furthermore, your combat is limited to a pea shooter and a frog baseball bat. You can tag between the two protagonists (though that would imply an antagonist somewhere), but they offer no distictions and they share the same life bar. They're only use is in a ''throw the other character over the unstoppable obstacle'' maneuver that isn't needed enough to be practical. Yeah, there's generally no point to the game outside of the frail storyline.

Replay Value: 2/10

If you're a Beavis and Butthead fanatic, you'll get enough of a kick out of it for a few spins, but most gamers will be turned off VERY quickly. You want a Beavis and Butthead fix that's good? Get a Genesis.

Buy it?

It sells in used game shops at a reasonable price, so it's your call. However, you might see yourself abusing Funcoland's 7 day return policy with such an impulse buy.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/03, Updated 05/31/03