"THere's nothing worth defending in Dynatron City"

There's a reason not many people have heard about the Defenders of Dynatron City. Long, long ago I remember seeing the pilot for a cartoon series about these guys that never took off, but when you look at what inspired it you really can't do anything but nod in pitiful understanding.

I don't have the manual and my memories of the show are pretty fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure the story involves a bunch of people who developed super powers and decided to fight a mad scientist. The people being the Defenders of Dynatron City, a superhero team so lame they'll probably invite Captain Novolin to join one of these says. This is the story, and this game came from LucasArts? The creators of the delightfully twisted plots Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion? Maybe they wanted to start out slow with the superhero genre. Or maybe it got pitched to the boss the night of the LucasArts Christmas party.

Gameplay-3/10

The first thing you need to do is pick one of three superheroes to become the newest member of the team. Whatever. Each one has different powers, different strengths and weaknesses. The heroes I managed to play as before regaining my sanity and hurling the cartridge into the path of an uncoming eighteen-wheeler were:

* Jet Headstrong, a guy whose head shoots off like a missile.
* A green dog with a cape.
* Some kind of bionic unicycle woman who throws frisbees of death.
* A lady with lightning bolts for hair who runs really fast and shoots more lightning at bad guys.
* The monkey from Super Friends who throws bananas that explode

As the local superhero team, you have to go around killing rampaging robots. This doesn't sound like it should be any trouble for a bunch of guys with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, does it? Well, it probably wouldn't be, if the freaking hit detection worked. The game is not quite 2-D, like 2.3-D or something, meaning you can move up and down the street to avoid attacks, but so can your enemies. Thing is unless you're dead on level with them, your attack will probably miss. This is especially true since the attacks of a good few Defenders like Jet and the Monkey have a lag time, and the robots don't stop moving around for you or anybody. If you use these guys you'll pretty much have to just hammer the button to increase your odds of hitting anything. This isn't so bad for the other characters, who either throw their projectiles a lot faster or have to be right on top of their enemies to be in range anyway, but it's still annoying. Very, very annoying, and leads to a lot of hits you really shouldn't have suffered.

There are items laying around to be plundered after seeing off the local robotic hoard. Some give you money, some take it away, some give you awkward powers that are hard to use like making Jet fly or the unicycle woman do a useless backflip. And some can be used by some characters, and not others. What with how frustrating fighting was, making a list of how all the items worked was not a high priority for me.

Graphics-2/10
Okay, the NES was not the most powerful video game console ever developed graphics wise, but far better looking games were coming out around the same time as this game. And come on, this is LucasArts. Sure, they had to design a whole city, but the worlds of games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle and eventually even Zombies Ate My Neighbors were also large and rendered in lush detail. What gives here?

Audio-3/10
What can I say? I wasn't as bothered by the muzak as I was by the muzak in Quest of the Avatar, but that's not saying a whole lot. The boopy background music and guitar riffs that play when you switch to the menu screen are annoying, and I feel like they weren't really trying here.

Replay value-2/10
Only if you're dying to see how lame the starter heroes you didn't pick are.

Final verdict: Now you know why LucasArts doesn't make superhero games.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/05, Updated 09/09/05