Tiny Toon Adventures

The Good
Tiny Toons Adventures brings many of the characters from the TV show to your NES thanks to Konami. In this Super Mario 3-esque platformer you play as Buster Bunny who runs, jumps, slides, and swims through six worlds and about fourteen stages. When Buster picks up a star orb he can change places with his chosen partner Plucky (flies short distances and swims easier), Dizzy (spins through enemies and certain walls), or Furrball (climbs walls). Noticeably absent is Babs Bunny who, predictably, plays the damsel in distress.

There are a lot of good things one can say about this game: there's a nice diversity of levels, the ability to switch between characters that play differently is a cool feature, the graphics are great for an NES game with lots of detailed sprites and bright colors that match the look of the show, and fans of which will appreciate that almost every character/enemy in this game is actually from the show and not just some generic video game baddie. This game even includes a secret boss which most people won't even meet during their first run.

Some people might find the controls too bouncy and strange but after spending a lot of time with the game I found this is completely due to people, myself included, playing the game wrong. See, this game uses the run button differently from the more familiar Mario games. In Mario the run button is generally held down to avoid moving too slow but in this game the run button is used only sparingly to catch extra air, jump extra far, move extra fast, etc. and is not intended to be held down for more than a second or two unless you're an expert trying to speed through levels like some other kind of blue woodland game character.

The Bad
It's debatable, but many may find this game to be too difficult especially since it's geared more towards kids. It really isn't that difficult to be honest though, especially when compared to other Konami games, at its most difficult it is like Ninja Gaiden if Ninja Gaiden was intended to be a children's game. Most players won't beat it on their first try because, just like in Ninja Gaiden, you have to learn how to get past specific obstacles on later stages or you'll never make it and that takes experience, creativity, and patience. The game also leaves little room for error since your characters can't take more than 2 hits fully powered and there's just one power-up per stage

More problematic for me than general difficulty is just the kind of obliqueness of certain aspects of the game. There's a lot of nuance to the game's controls but none of it is explained outside the manual and the same goes for less obvious abilities like Plucky's near-essential swimming ability during the water level. Perhaps most maddening are the Elmyra sections where your first thought is "this is a boss, I must jump on her head" but your actual unspecified goal is to avoid being sent back to the beginning.

The Bottom Line
Although not as creative as some others, Tiny Toons is one of the best licensed games for the NES with its great graphics, controls, faithfulness to the show, and challenge.