Tiny Toon Adventures: Wacky Sports Challenge

"Original but surprisingly one dimensional"

I first played TTA:WSC at a beachhouse that my family and I were staying at. It was one of many old Super Nintendo games that the house was equipped with. I'm 23, and I was at just the right age to appreciate Tiny Toons when it was popular, as was my cousin, who happened to also try this game out with me. We both groaned when we looked at the title but figured we would give it a try.

Initially, it was much more fun than expected, but we soon discovered what we were in for:

GAMEPLAY: 3/10

The gameplay sucks, to put it lightly. You choose from 1 of 4 Tiny Toons to use, none having any apparent advantages over the other. The unused toons are played by the computer. In each event, you need a certain number of points to move on.

The game quickly deteriorates into a button-pressing marathon. Nearly every event involves pressing a button insanely fast while attempting to adjust an angle or press the release button at the right time. Note if you slow down your button presses while attempting to do this, you will lose all momentum and have to build it up again. The most frustrating aspect of this, however, is the game gives you no help whatsoever as to what you are supposed to do. I imagine this information was included in the instruction book or one of the books of the Koran, and as its not apparently clear what you're supposed to be pressing or doing in any of the events, you'll more than likely have to do an event 3 or 4 times just to figure out what the objective is, and another dozen times flinging your control against the floor when you fail to qualify again while the computer gets impossibly high scores. A tutorial containing information other than 'Press the A button very fast' for each event would've been great. I couldn't even figure out so much as how to score ANY points on many of the events. Other events involve running and stumbling into other players while trying to avoid running in pits and collecting items to increase your score. This involves more luck than skill; I never did figure out how to run at full speed, and the computer is VERY cheap.

Despite all this frustrating craziness, the game does somehow manage to be fun, though I'm still not sure how. Bright colors maybe.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

The graphics are definitely the high point of this game. Great animation in the character movements, as is the case for all Tiny Toon games, adds to the graphical beauty, while one event even involves a Pilotwings-esque FX scene. As I mentioned before, lots of bright colors.

FUN: 7/10

When played with another person, this is actually quite a fun game. I wouldn't recommend playing it in single-player mode, as this is about as much fun as eating stale cardboard. If you have another person along with you, give it a shot; its downright hilarious seeing who can make the most veins pop out of their head while furiously pressing the buttons during their turn.

REPLAYABILITY: 2/10

NOT a very replayable game at all. Each event starts to feel like the one before it after a while, and after playing through the game once or twice it becomes incredibly redundant. Maybe after getting accostomed to games with 'extras' and all kinds of secrets I put an unfair demand on this game for something, anything to get me to want to play a little more, and I found nothing. This isn't completely due to my current gaming habits however; I still play my SNES copies of NHL 95 and Tecmo Super Bowl once in a while.

I wouldn't recommend this game unless you have nothing else to do and you're stuck in a virtual monsoon at the beach as I was. It might be worth one playthrough on an emulator, but nothing more.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/03