"Short shooter with flaws, but surprisingly fun"

Tale Spin is a popular Disney cartoon show (or was, now all we have is that awful Brittany Spears concert footage) that, like most Disney shows in the early 90's, became a video game. Is Tale Spin a fun adventure, or a waste of licensing? Read on...

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Design Elements
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Visuals/Graphics
Tale Spin noticeably has nice, colorful visuals with little slowdown. There is plenty of color in the environments, and enemies have lots of detail in them. Some bosses look Super NES quality, to say the least. Later levels have noticeable clipping, but most NES games carry that curse.
Rating: 9 (Excellent)

Music/Sound
The music is nicely composed, and some of these childish tunes are quite memorable. There are a limited amount of sound effects, basically a shooting sound and a hit sound, which even isn't much for an NES game. It's made up by the various tunes in the game.
Rating: 7 (Good)

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Gameplay Elements
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Control
Control has many problems which could have been easily fixed. Two of the three firing modes are sometimes unresponsive and turning around can actually being a pain, even if it's only pressing the A button. You can't be moving up or down while turning around, which is what you'll be doing most of the time (trying to turn around while dodging bullets). This was quite an obvious flaw that the developers should have fixed, and the thing that killed me the most. Second is that until you have enough money to buy a speed boost, the plane controls slowly, making dodging a pain. By the time you've bought all the needed equipment, you should be over halfway finished with the game. But once you do have the needed equipment, the game becomes less frustrating and more fun. You still can't turn while flying up/down, but it works.
Rating: 6 (Okay/Decent)

Gameplay
The game has some original qualities. The point of the game is to collect cargo to receive money, while avoiding Shear Khan's cronies. The actual point of the game is not to destroy enemies, but to collect money and cargo. Destroying enemies won't even score you points, but it is helpful to destroy them for protection. There are lots of obstacles in this game besides enemies, like walls and barriers, that can be avoided by turning around. By turning around you can be recentered and then face the direction you're heading in to pass the obstacle smoothly. This also is an easy way to collect cargo that you just missed. After each mission you can buy equipment for your plane and continues. Beginners may not have enough money to buy any good equipment usually, and I thought some things could have been priced a little cheaper, but everything here was good.
Rating: 8 (Great/Very Good)

Fun Factor
By mixing the control and gameplay, the fun factor of this game is good, but may be difficult at first. The gameplay itself is great, but mildly knocked down by the sometimes unresponsive and difficult controls. The game would be great if the controls worked better, but the overall amount of fun you'll get out of this game is still high.
Rating: 7 (Good)

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Final Rating
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The premise of this game is original, and the gameplay works very well, but the controls could be difficult to use at times. But overall the game was good, and this game may be priced very low, so I suggest picking it up.

Final Score: 7 (Good)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/00, Updated 05/02/02