M&M's Blast!

"Crush the cartridge in your hand, not your mouth."

The day after Easter, February fifteenth, November first. You name the date, I know when to snoop for off-price candy. I seriously doubt it goes bad at midnight once the holiday is over, and it is a wonderful compromise between my cheapskate and sweet-tooth tendencies. Alas, a console game about candy slashed to a bargain beneath its neighbors didn't work the same way--you know, the whole art versus the object it's about thing. I don't think the timing had much to do with it either way. This little party game has all the ostensible variety of a bag of M&M's with many different colors--heck, at sixteen sub-games it's almost up there with Jelly Bellies(which reminds me, why don't they update A Boy and His Blob soon? Using jalapeno jelly bellies would rock.) But it has that familiar sameness once you shut down your imagination and are looking for the video game equivalent of a late night snack. You're upset when one color of candy disappears(parallel: one of the mini games isn't worth playing more than once) but what you have left isn't massively thrilling. There's only so much you can do with a board game, but there are enough things you shouldn't do.

Some of the mini-games that distract you from the business of rolling dice and watching your M&M move forward during a 'real' game of M&Ms Blast are good enough on their own to recoup the terrible first impression I got. They featured instructions before each play(the board game Cuts to the Chase, i.e. forces you to read the instruction booklet--not conducive to any party atmosphere a party game wishes to display,) and pushing various buttons or the directional pad had some effect on my overall score, tracked in the form of Mini M&Ms. But many are a tribute to the astounding multitudes of simple single- or double- button-pounding games that will always exist in some archetypal form, ready for second-rate designers to pull from the idea shelf to yet again fool gamers poorly versed in abstractly organizing classic challenges into thinking they might be getting something new. More positively, most are a credit to how much games can be embellished so that people don't mind being fooled for a bit--not unlike the new candy bar that's still chocolate, peanut butter and/or caramel, optional nuts and the obligatory sweet creamy ingredient better off unanalyzed. First, to the board game, where you can choose between four M&M's as featured in commercials that have run their faddish course, each looking sassy in its own way. But there's never a chance to act sassy when walking around the board.

And what a big board it is, whether you choose Sweet Dreams, Rain Forest, Amusement Park, or Haunted House! The GBA, sadly, can't fit it on one screen. The board constantly scrolls. At various squares you may gain or lose mini M&M's, start a random mini-game, be pushed back or forward a few squares, have the option between two paths, be allowed to switch squares, or be shocked by a hellish sequence of jumps to perform to cross a body of water. The computer gives you sixty seconds, and should you mess up near the end you'll have to try again. It's possible you'll take thirty-one seconds to get close before unresponsive controls break your jump/move in midair routine, leaving twenty-nine seconds of predestined failure as Starburst islands pop out of the water temporarily. And of course you can't even skip this for a penalty, admit defeat, try one of these as a mini-game, or even exit the game without shutting the cartridge down.

Why, given this tedium the average player might not take enough tries to realize the cartridge tries to bribe you with the high roll to see who starts first, even before you choose between a board game and bouncing between mini games!

As for mini-games there's not much to any one so hopefully this will turn out a decent concordance of classic simple games of the sort a beginning programmer should use to learn a low-level language. More often than not, the toughest part is remembering the instructions and which key to hold down. In many cases you won't even get to see what your computer opponent is doing. You'll just be given a score and have to take it on faith. The computer's score seems maddeningly high at first, but if you play the mini game without ignoring the instruction screen, it becomes comprehensively beatable, and alternating among the better ones is not too painful. However combined with the board game many of the mini games may shock the player with such inanity that he never retries one that beat him handily and walks away feeling rather stupid. Also, did I mention that the appearance of a mini-game in board mode is random, but they always appear in the order above? It's nice to see some Law and Order after the randomness of dice rolling.

Candy Catch is the first one--you move back and forth on the bottom of the screen and catch M&M mini's that fall faster from the sky. Once you know to press the B button to speed up, you shouldn't miss a one. Otherwise, keeping up with the computer will seem hopelessly unfair.

Mini Golf looks really cool. You can rotate your M&M so that you can hit the golf ball around an obstacle and off low walls, holding down the A button to get juice on your shot. The only problem is that he'll probably block your view later on, and if you try to play again, you'll get the same hole. More maddening when the computer gets a hole in one.

Candy Rally is an example of how cute little racing games tend to work well in small doses. You're on a maze grid which remains the same, but M&M's pop up in different places and numbers. Whoever gets the most, wins. You can let smoke out of your tailpipe(B) to confuse an opponent, and your movement isn't restricted to grid directions(A=accelerate, left/right rotates,) so you definitely need a sense of control. Just be sure to play with yellow for this and other radar games; that way you may only miss a few minis lying out on the course.

Hoop Shoot is a nice try, but an example of telegraphing button-pushing. There's a gauge on the left where a yellow dot bounces up and down. Hit A when the dot is on top of the green dot(which moves around after each shot) and you score a basket. Otherwise you miss. At the start of the thirty seconds you shoot two-pointers but later things get quicker and you have 'threes.' Sadly you seem to get the same number of shots each time so the scores often turn out roughly the same.

Hurdles is a rare tandem button basher. You have to jump over four hurdles(up) after running(keep tapping the A key) to beat the computer. Timing's quite easy here and the computer seems deliberately bad at it. Too bad, this is one of the more sophisticated games.

Balloon Blowup can't get a similar endorsement. Once I figured out you had to tap A as fast as possible, not in a rhythm, and holding it down didn't work, I always won four balloons to three. There's so much wiggle room for that result that this is probably the worst of the games.

Skydiving is entertaining, with arrows directing you to the Mini that's flying up to you. The computer's so spectacularly bad at this that even if it weren't easy to follow directions(just don't lean on the button) this is one of the more winnable games.

Candy Count is just plain stupid, as you have to guess how many Minis will be on the scene at the end. They start by bouncing on the screen but then go across and likely off, replaced by new ones. I remember my first time playing the board game, I was doing rather badly, but I started hitting up and wound up outscoring my opponent 90-11 before I considered something might be up. Largely relies on chance at the very end.

Target Shoot would be great if there were a vertical aim as well. At least it has some moving bullseye papers to shoot at. For some odd reason you have a race in the background based on how close to the center your shot is. But the computer seems to play to your ability.

Candy Watch is a time-intensive Concentration mimic with bad resolution. 'Wait! Is that blue/white or just blue?' To be fair most of the smears that turn up do get magnified so that instead of being clueless you have to remember which smear goes with which picture--and which card. But you don't even turn over two cards; you just have one on the right given to you and turn over cards on the left searching for its match. Still it's impressive they managed to bungle Concentration somewhat.

Candy Bounce doesn't efface the memory of Warlords too badly. You move along the inside of a square in your corner, protecting your pile of candy from a ball bouncing back and forth. Whoever manages to miss the ball and have it bounce on his backside, taking his candy supply out several times, loses. No castles that slowly erode, just five hits and you're toast.

Wall Racers shows Candy Bounce how to complete the job. The light cycle game in Tron has popped up in many forms including even a screen saver. Here you have a very slow version, with screen scrolling, and the computer is still quite stupid. Everyone's path makes a permanent line on the play field, and the last person to run into a line wins. And here I thought chocolate tended to get folks OVERexcited!

Dodgeball is the simplest of them all. You wait for something to come from one side of the screen or the other. Then you jump(up) or duck(A.) I guess it made the developers feel sophisticated to use two different controller parts for this and it's clever how moving to one side of the screen becomes a better option as balls fly quicker from the sides of the screen(the biggest strategy piece in any mini game) but the whole episode is an insult to a great game even with the neat gymnastics background.

Skeet Shoot is another game where the computer is inexplicably bad. The basic problem is to put your crosshairs in the right spot, sit there, and fire away as clay pigeons are fired into the air. Timing isn't even a big deal; early, late, who cares? The only worry is if two cross at once, but you'll feel insulted at how easy your win is.

Drag Race is the coolest event. Just one button, but all the options! Basically you have to hold and release the A button so that your heat gauge never tops out critical, but your car still goes fast enough to win. You can't just bash the button; there's enough subjective here to make tension, and it's so quick that you suspect the thrill of drag racing has been captured to some degree. You can even rev up your engine beforehand.

Space Chase is the final one--like Candy Rally only with shot forward replacing a smoke screen backwards. Again, unwieldy vehicles, but what I remember most is getting glued to another vehicle, after which we drifted for a couple minutes, each having gotten 4 minis, but I was the closer of the two stuck together. My gloating techniques had run dry by the time I got there. Given the computer's stupidity in the Candy Rally maze this is the most challenging--shame they stuck the best two games at the end!

Occasionally the winner of a mini game gets an extra bonus but this also seems arbitrary. In any case you'll still have to put up with the ding-ding as scores are incremented point by point, which is thankfully excluded when the game tacks on 100 points for whoever generally had the higher dice rolls throughout the game and got to the finish line first.

So the mechanics stink; sound gets annoying, too, with one background tune for all mini-games and one for each board flavor. Fortunately the graphics redeem the effort. The Sweet Dream board has all sorts of confections passing themselves off as more nutritious plants, and the product placement(candy on the Candy Watch cards) is never too obtrusive.

For overall originality still combined with a strong theme, I'm not sure if you can top my arcade classics Journey and Circus Charlie, and on home systems Apple Decathlon provides a variety of different tricks to master, albeit with a whole keyboard for your commands. But some of the games feel obviously shallow and although the graphics are nice it's pretty clear that the fun won't hold up for long. As for the board game, it seems to be a grab bag of 'spite candy'(the phrase is Charles Schulz's) which you only eat to feel good you're eating candy and THEY aren't. This game, you will likely only play because it would be less fun to do work or because looking at other people on the bus being bored on the ride home from work is even more depressing.

Blast! Blase!
--some smashingly moronic mini games
--board game is worthless
--nasty roadblock is one you can least prepare for

Mm-mm!
--some nice backgrounds and board designs
--you can choose your favorite minigames; with 16, not all should stink

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/02, Updated 11/15/02