Rugrats: Search for Reptar (1998) - Review Thursday #2

I am going back in time to when most of us were kids watching cartoons. I am still shocked that my copy of Rugrats: Search for Reptar still works after having it for most of life.

Basically, this game is a mix of races, puzzles, and mini-games that incorporate episodes from the series into a visually stimulating video game. The point of this game is to complete the episodes and earning the puzzle pieces to Tommy's Reptar puzzle. You can also earn puzzle pieces by finding Reptar bars (15 Candy bars = 1 puzzle piece).

Some of my favorite levels/episodes are Chuckie's Glasses, Ice Cream Mountain, 7 Voyages of Cynthia, and Mirrorland. These were my favorite episodes on the show, and I really enjoyed them playing the characters. My overall favorite is Ice Cream Mountain. This level is a 9-Hole Mini-Golf Course. You get to play as Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, and Angelica in order to get the golf balls in the holes.

This game also features a Mini-Game/Extra menu where you can even play Ice Cream Mountain with friends. In this Mode, you can also play as Suzy. The other extra games are Cookie Race, Egg Hunt, and Gold Rush.

The manual also features several Rugrats-themed jokes. Some are funny still, even though I have read the manual cover to cover hundreds of times.

The game is not hard at all. It is rated "E", but really it could be rated "KA" for how easy it is. Although, after having played it for almost 14 years, I would be surprised if there is any actual difficulty to it anymore.

It is really just more of a novelty game. I recommend it for anyone who wants to go back in time to when video games were based on TV cartoons, and had simple objectives. Find Easter Eggs, drink all of the chocolate milk before Angelica gets it. Play hide and seek with the babies.

Ah, the simplicity of childhood.

My apologies to those of you that have no idea what the Rugrats are. If you are one of those people, you were probably one of Spongebob-era people. I am sure that there are websites that allow you to watch the show and enjoy being a kid again.

Overall, I give this game

Make sure you stop back on Saturday for the next edition of SaturPLAY.  Until then, I hope you don't come across any Game Over screens.

Michael, aka me3lingual

Spyro the Dragon (1998) - Review Thursday #1

Welcome to the first edition of my Review Thursday, where I review and talk about one of the video games I recently finished.  This week I am spotlighting one of the mascot's for SONY and the PlayStation era, Spyro the Dragon.  The original game came out in America in September of 1998, and since that time it has also received a re-release for the PlayStation Network in 2007.  The entire series of Spyro games has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, and it all started because a purple dragon was tasked with freeing the other dragons from their crystal forms.

In Spyro the Dragon, you play as this small purple hero.  Gnasty Gnorc, the main enemy of the game, transformed all of the other dragons into crystal; and all because he heard in an interview that they called him names, ugly being the tipping point to his outrage.  So, with his friend Sparx, a Dragonfly, he sets off to free the Dragons in each of the Dragon realms.

Another task Spyro must complete is to retrieve all of the treasure that Gnasty tranformed into monsters.  Most of the enemies bear some likeness to Gnasty, but there are some that look like regular animals in our world.  Spyro main means of defeating enemies is to use his Fire breath.  He also can ram enemies with his horns and dive into enemies from the air.  If Spyro becomes injured, Sparx will change color to symbolize Spyro's health.  First he is Gold, then blue, then green, then he disappears.  If Spyro is hurt when Sparx isn't around, then you lose a life.

And as if freeing Dragons from crystal stasis and collecting the lost treasure wasn't enough, there are several Dragon eggs throughout the game that you must retrieve from thieves.  These thieves are fast too, so you have to outsmart them or you will be chasing them for quite a while.

There are six worlds you traverse in your quest.  The starting world is the Artisan World, filled with culture and beauty.  Then there's Peace Keepers, charged with enforcing peace and order; Magic Crafters, with magical prowess; Beast Makers, which creates the creatures throughout the Realms; Dream Weavers, in charge of dreams and the night; and Gnasty's World, which is the home of Gnasty Gnorc himself.

For the most part, the game is pretty easy to complete.  However, even after tens of playthrough, I still have trouble in a couple spots.  The Beast Makers world is my least favorite world.  One level in particular, Tree Tops, is so dependent on your skills on gliding through the air.  It is so easy to miss treasure in this level because you didn't land on the right platform.  I can usually finish the entire game in a day.  I have a set way to go through each individual level that makes it easy to get all of the treasure.  And if you finish the game at 100%, you unlock a special area that has thousands of treasure, turning your completion percentage to 120% when everything is collected.

For a game of its time, it is very nice graphically.  The story is nice, and the voices are entertaining.  The only bad thing about it is that sometimes the camera doesn't follow right behind you in certain spots.  Even when you try and center the camera using the button for camera movement it won't work.  But that is the only thing.  The worlds are bright and colorful and the music is extremely fitting for each Realm.  I highly recommend either picking up a physical copy of the game somewhere if you can find it, or downloading it off of PSN for $5.99 USD.

My Rating: 5 out of 5

Make sure to come back on Saturday for the next SaturPLAY entry.  And thank you for checking out this first installment of Review Thursday!

Michael, aka me3lingual

Psy, I, I! - SaturPLAY #1

I am going to first try and explain the sort of schedule I hopefully will have in 3³ Gaming.  Every Tuesday, I hope to have some gaming news stories.  Now, whether this will just be reprints of the articles I write for EnixOrigin, I don't know.  As much as I wouldn't mind that, because I love Square Enix games; it doesn't really serve the other genres of games well.  If I were to get news on the basic genres (RPG, shooter, sports, etc.), then I would be pleased.  I will be calling it 3³ Gaming NEWSday.  Lame, I know; but NEWSday rhymes with Tuesday, so it works.

On Thursdays, I want to post reviews of games I play.  Now, most of the games I play are at least five years old.  I figure that if I review older games, it may inspire other gamers to dust off their copies of these games, and also introduce older titles to newer gamers.

And on Saturdays, I will update readers on what I am playing.  Saturday entries will be called SaturPLAY.  Basically, what I am playing at the moment, what I have played in the last week, and what I am planning on playing.  Pretty simple concept, I think.  Anyway, it's Saturday here; so let's have the first SaturPLAY!

The first game I played this year was Spyro the Dragon.  It is a classic game that I have practically mastered in my years of owning the game.  Although, the first time I finished it, I didn't own it.  My brother's friend brought his copy of it one night that he stayed over.  He said I could play it, and I had it complete by the time my brother and his friend woke up the next morning.  I like platform games.  Most of them are easy for me to finish.  Anyway, since that first time finishing the game, I have played it maybe 20-30 times.  When I played it on January 1, 2013, I had the whole game finished within a few hours.

After that was finished, I brought out Atari Anthology.  It is a collection of 85 classic games from the Atari age of gaming.  I chose to play Double Dunk, a basketball-esque game.  In it, you play as a team of 2.  The characters are Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside.  I don't really understand the mechanics of the game, because basketball itself doesn't interest me.  I enjoy the statistical information of sports more than the actual sports themselves.  Anyway, it was all luck that I won.  I played three games total, and stopped playing when I finally won once.  The first game I lost with a score 2 to the other team's 10.  Then in the second game, I lost 3-11.  Finally, I won the third game 10-9.  Again, it was all luck, because I had never played that particular Atari game before in my life.  It was okay as a game.  However, it is painful to play games like that, because everything is all so...old.  But, games had to start somewhere.  I am sure if I had grown up playing Atari games, I would probably still love them to this day.  But I was raised on the Nintendo Entertainment System, so I will probably never know the appeal of Atari games.

It only took me fifteen minutes to play and win a game in Double Dunk, so I decided to play another classic game that I could finish quickly.  That game was Rugrats: Search for Reptar.  It was one of the first PlayStation game I had ever owned.  That, Crash Bandicoot, Disc 2 of Metal Gear Solid, and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces were the first games I ever owned on PlayStation.  Anyway, I managed to find all of the puzzle pieces for Tommy's puzzle within one hour.  I played the training level to get a boost in Reptar Bars, then completed the mini-games within the main game for some added Reptar Bars.  Sadly, the disc has had some major wear-and-tear over the years, and some of the levels are unplayable.  One of my favorites is Chuckie's Glasses, and I can't play it now because the disc is so scratched up.  So now I have to play only the levels that I know will work for me.

Normally, I leave Ice Cream Mountain for when I have someone playing with me, but I did the single player version when I played the main game this time around.  Other levels I played were Grandpa's Teeth, the Mr. Friend level, Mirror Land, the level in the Toy Store, the level in the Supermarket, and the one where Tommy has to get the light out of the refrigerator.  Each level I played reminded me of the episodes of the show that I would watch when I was younger.

And just today, I finished playing Katamari Damacy.  I wanted to play something fun and would keep me from being bored as I spent the day wrapped in a blanket because it was so cold outside.  I had to go to the store this morning, and I was really cold when I got back home (I ride a bike everywhere though, so I'm used to it).  This game was perfect for that, because I could just roll up my cares and worries and not think about the cold weather.

I was really skeptical when I first bought this game.  I saw it on the shelf at the store a few years ago, and I didn't know what to think.  The clerk working in the video games section was fangirling about it, saying that it was such a good game and highly addictive to play.  I can see why, because it is such a great game.  You can't help but be smiling as you roll up animals, people and buildings onto your katamari.  And the constellation levels are especially fun because they have a theme associated with them, rather than the regular levels in which you can just roll up any object.

And now I have two games I am currently playing.  I try to have a handheld game and a console game in my lineup.  The console game this week is Grand Theft Auto III.

I have only ever finished this game one time before today.  It is probably one of the hardest Grand Theft Auto games I have ever played, and it isn't really that hard to complete.  Right now, I have completed "Pump-Action Pimp".  I am only 4 missions into the game.  I am hoping to get all of the Hidden Packages this time around.  Right now I haven't found any of them.  But just so you know, I am not above using the Internet to help me in situations when I need help with a video game.  That is how I found forums and whatnot.

The handheld game I am playing is Pokémon Black 2.  I have owned the game for several months, but I never played it because I had been working on Pokémon White (and still haven't finished).  Right now in Black 2, I am at Floccesy Ranch.  I have caught six Pokémon so far in the game, but I have only spent time making Oshawott stronger.  I want to try and play through the game using only Oshawott, but I still want to try and do the whole PokéDex thing and catch them all.  I normally train a specific type of Pokémon when I play any of the games in the franchise.  This time I want to train water types, especially after seeing that Psyduck is in this game.  I haven't caught one yet, but I hope to catch one.  But the only training I will do with Pokémon other than Oshawott will occur once I have an Exp. Share, if there is one in this game.  But you know, I just caught an Azurill, and I have never had an Azurill in any of the games I have played before.  I think I want to play with it and make it stronger.  I still want that Psyduck as well.  I'd bring all of the water types from the different generations together and be a better Water trainer than even Misty.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this first edition of SaturPLAY.  I know I am going to enjoy writing it each week.  Make sure you come back on Tuesday for the first edition of 3³ Gaming NEWSday, where I will come up with some gaming news for you to sink your teeth into.  And expect a review on Spyro the Dragon this upcoming Thursday.  I hope that by then I have a catchy (and cheesy) title for Thursday entries.  So, I guess that's all from me for now.  Again, thanks for stopping over here and reading this.

I hope that you see no Game Over screens while we are apart!

Michael, me3lingual