"A fun and quirky game the first time around."

Pink Goes to Hollywood is an entertaining game and is a good, solid platformer for the Sega Genesis. Despite some problems, it’s still a fun little game that should be enjoyed by almost anybody.

You will hear the familiar Pink Panther theme a few times, and the rest of the music is good, but not spectacular. Fortunately, the music isn’t overplayed/ repeated too much and provides decent mood and atmosphere for the creepier stages.

The graphics aren’t too blocky and the animations are almost like the cartoon, but it’s what you would first picture if you had to imagine what a Pink Panther game would look like; everything’s big and colorful, funny little details (check out the refrigerator stage) and interesting enemies. The backgrounds are pretty cheesy, but fun anyways.

Controls are classic; there’s really nothing special here. This happens to be a good thing because adding more would be ruining a good thing. Actions include walk, run, jump, climb, and punch. The response is mediocre; at times you will find yourself wanting to use that punching glove yourself because it’s very difficult to judge when exactly Pink will jump after you push the button and how far he’ll actually jump. The response issue leads us to a more painful area: (for me, anyway) the difficulty.

Sure, you get a good deal of challenge for this game, especially for a Pink Panther game. If you’re familiar with the cartoon, Pink gets himself in a good deal of trouble and does a lot of running around. The game is very similar, only it gets needlessly difficult at certain points in the game. On a few stages, you will find Pink in a stalemate position in which he is safe where he is but planning a good jump is close to impossible. This, plus the linearity of any 2-D platform game, adds up to an insane amount of frustration which all comes down to a programming error. On quite a few occasions Pink will also be unfairly surrounded and the response time doesn’t let you pull that punch that you desperately need. Now, if you’re the type of patient gamer that’s rarely seen, you will probably love the challenge, but other wise, beware.

The replay value poses another problem. With the effects above, playing this game again will have you ripping your hair out and burning all Pink Panther toys. Okay, so it’s an exaggeration, but I came pretty close to ripping the stuffing out of Pink after play the hard mode… This all depends on the person playing, but chances are if you had the unpleasant experience of finding yourself in a bad situation and finally got through it after 3 hours of trying over and over again, it’ll be hard enjoy that same area again, only more difficult this time around. On the other hand, others may enjoy the challenge and the sense of accomplishment of watching Pink Panther jump around.

Pink Goes to Hollywood is a quirky and enjoyable game that will give you more than a few hours of fun. If you can find it, try and see how far you can get before dealing some damage.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/14/02, Updated 03/14/02