Toy Story (Sega Mega Drive / Genesis review)

Developer: Traveller's Tales
Publisher: Disney Interactive, Sega
Released: 1996

Toy Story is an action-platformer that's based on the 1995 movie of the same name.

Playing as Woody, your mission is to rescue Buzz Lightyear and restore peace to your owner's world of toys. To do this, you'll need to navigate through 18 levels while using Woody's pull-string to stun enemies. The gameplay prefers to use a mission structure rather than a typical 'navigate from A to B' approach; while this could frustrate those who like to skip cut-scenes and just focus on moving from left-to-right, it's vital that you take time to read the mission briefs. If you do, each level is fun and includes a ton of variety to keep things interesting, such as needing to get all the toys into their homes before your owner walks in. The platforming is enjoyable with responsive controls and solid level design, although a minor quibble is that the screen doesn't always scroll far enough. The gameplay never rests on its laurels and instead includes 3D / top-down RC car driving stages, auto-scrolling chase sequences, and even areas where you control a soft drink trying to enter a pizza parlour! Other titles such as The Adventures of Bayou Billy (1989, NES) tried this mishmash approach with poor results, but on the whole, everything here works pretty well. The first-person sections where you need to collect aliens really shows off the power of the Mega Drive thanks to its smooth frame-rate, and I'd love to see an FPS using this engine! The RC car stages are a little too sensitive to control, but at least there's a generous time limit to help you take things slower. Graphically, the game is outstanding thanks to its large sprites and fluid animation, and there's even some excellent sounding voice samples.

Toy Story is a wildly ambitious title and while it does falter in a few areas it really does deserve huge credit for pushing the humble Mega Drive to its absolute brink. The sheer variety is astonishing and ensures that you'll never get bored, even with repeated play-throughs.

Random trivia: The game was also released on the Nintendo Game Boy, Super Nintendo and Windows PC.

Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers (N64 review)

Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Disney Interactive
Released: 2000

Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers is a platform game that was released as Donald Duck: Quack Attack in Europe.

There's four worlds (that take place in Duckie Mountain, Duckburg, Magica De Spell's Manor and Merlock's Temple) and each consists of four levels, a boss battle and an unlockable bonus level. The game clearly takes inspiration from the Crash Bandicoot series (PS1) as two levels in each world play from behind the character while the other two are side-scrolling. The action is standard fare including double jumping, bouncing on enemies' heads, using moving platforms to cross large gaps and collecting stars to gain extra lives. It isn't overly challenging and has an abundance of extra lives to keep you playing. The gameplay is enjoyable with smooth controls, precise platforming and interesting level design. Duckburg is a particular highlight as it takes place in a construction site with workers trying to attack you with ladders and drills! Finding all the pieces of the Warp Pad in each world allows you to access a boss battle; these bosses are great fun and have three different waves where they vary their attacks. There's also three toys hidden in each level and collecting them unlocks a bonus level where you need to outrun a huge enemy while running towards the camera; it's intense as you can't really see what's in front of you and it adds some nice variety. The most disappointing part of the game is that it's criminally short and can be beaten in just over an hour; as a minimum it should have had an extra two worlds to lengthen the experience. Graphically it's beautiful with cool water effects and detailed backgrounds but the music is average with generic tunes and repetitive loops.

Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers is undoubtedly a Crash Bandicoot clone but that doesn't stop it from being a great game. If it had more content it could easily have been among the best titles on the N64 but as it stands it's a solid, yet short-lived, platformer that can be enjoyed by all ages.

Random trivia: In 2001 the game was re-released on the Game Boy Advance as Donald Duck Advance.