Tiny Toon Adventures PlayStation Trilogy

The ***Tiny Toon Adventures PlayStation Trilogy*** is the sixteenth episode of Just Bad Games, released on March 30, 2020. Shane and Adam review three PlayStation 1 titles based on the *Tiny Toon Adventures* franchise: *Tiny Toon Adventures: The Great Beanstalk*, *Tiny Toon Adventures: Toonenstein: Dare to Scare!*, and *Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky's Big Adventure*.

## Transcript

**Shane**: *Tiny Toon Adventures: The Great Beanstalk* is a 1998 PlayStation game that was developed by TerraGlyph Interactive Studios.

**Adam**: *Tiny Toon Adventures* was a short-lived, but very popular cartoon that aired from 1990 to 1992, with a handful of specials lasting until '95. The show revolved a young cast of characters that was attending ACME Looniversity.

**Shane**: *The Great Beanstalk* is definitely not the first use of the Tiny Toons in a video game, but it is their first appearance on PlayStation.

**Adam**: And I'm sure the developers utilized the console's modern 3-D capabilities to bring an exciting new experience to the maturing audience that grew up with the show.

*(Caption: They didn't.)*

Oh, cool. A storybook-based point-and-click children's game, made for an audience who would be- learning to drive? Where do we even start with this?

**Shane**: How about from the beginning?

**Adam**: Sounds good.

**Shane**: *Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster and the Beanstalk* is a 1996 PC game that was developed by TerraGlyph Interactive Studios.

**Adam**: Wait, what just happened? Am I having deja vu?

**Shane**: No! *Tiny Toon Adventures: The Great Beanstalk* is a modified version of a PC game called *Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster and the Beanstalk*. Oh, they changed the name a little, but they couldn't hide it from us.

**Adam**: That sounds ominous.

**Shane**: The game starts up with a still-frame image of the Tiny Toon Adventures logo, and from here, it-

**Adam**: Instantly starts off mid-conversation between Plucky and Buster. There's no title sequence.

**Plucky**: Riches beyond my wildest dreams? Ha! My tailfeathers!

**Shane**: So okay, this is confusing, but at least the voice cast seems to be on point. Many of the performers from the original series reprise their iconic roles, and hey, this animation isn't so bad. When you compare it next to a scene from the show, it actually holds up pretty well. Maybe we'll get more of it.

**Adam**: Uh, I wouldn't count on it. In the next part, the promising animation is gone. Instead, we get a boring and not even full-screen slideshow retelling the classic Jack and the Beanstalk story, starring Buster as Jack.

**Shane**: Buster's lost a bunch of high-value items that are now up the beanstalk for reasons that are barely explained, and he convinces his friend Plucky to go along to get the stuff back.

**Adam**: And straight away, they race up the beanstalk, if you can call it that. What is with all this metal, wood, and- is that a cow hide?

**Shane**: That's disturbing! Anyway, once we finally get to the gameplay, we're introduced to-

**Adam**: Platforming!

**Shane**: This is possibly the worst 2-D platforming we've ever witnessed on the PlayStation.

**Adam**: You control Plucky, the green one. Buster, the blue one, flies in the air by helicoptering his ears, acting as a guide that points Plucky in the direction you should be going.

**Shane**: This whole entire platforming section is incredi-bad.

**Adam**: This is running off real PlayStation hardware and still, every input is delayed. Which is a big problem when everything here is trying to kill Plucky.

**Shane**: Everything. Every. Single. Thing.

**Adam**: You'll find TNT boxes on pogo sticks. Stand still long enough, and they blow you up.

**Shane**: You'll see mounted guns firing missiles at Plucky's head. Duck too late and you're toast.

**Adam**: There's anvils falling from the sky, boxing gloves hidden in mailboxes, and hidden panels that smack Plucky in the face, instantly throwing him to the previous screen.

**Shane**: All of this is going on will full sound effects, which makes the most maddening soundtrack ever.

**Adam**: And through all of this, you only got two moves: jump and duck. And did we mention our inputs are MASSIVELY DELAYED?

**Shane**: Clearing gaps in this level is a trial. The controller will randomly miss combination inputs, leading you to fall to your doom- forcing you to navigate back up through the beanstalk.

**Adam**: This game is shockingly bad. The only modicum of hope you have is Buster guiding you through the chaos.

**Shane**: If you're lucky, you'll finally make it to your destination, which is some random still-frame scene. This is where you do the pointing and clicking we referenced earlier.

**Adam**: Once you've found the object of your search, you're given one piece of a three-part key. Each time you find one and complete the scene, it's on to the next one- which means you're booted out to the exact same, terrible beanstalk crawling platforming gameplay. It's insanity!

**Shane**: Wait wait wait, hold on. How is there a platforming section in a point-and-click game? How did you play this with a mouse on the original PC version? That version doesn't use a keyboard.

**Adam**: Oh, you didn't.

**Shane**: What?

**Adam**: In the original release, Buster and Plucky moved from scene to scene easily by clicking on the edges of each image. There is no platforming. Zip! Zero! None!

**Shane**: And if you played the PC version, that's not the only difference you would've noticed.

**Adam**: There's a title screen. A saving system which believe it or not, the PlayStation port completely avoided. Instead, you use a password system like a chump!

**Shane**: And perhaps the biggest difference- remember when we mentioned how strange the beanstalk looked?

**Adam**: Well, in the PC version, it's just a regular, green beanstalk. In every single scene, it just looks like- like a big plant. You know, like what it usually looks like.

**Shane**: But for the PlayStation, they took TWO YEARS to build barely functional platforming, and needed the beanstalk to have gaps and strange items all over the place to provide obstacles to get around. So they turned it into this monstrosity. *The Great Beanstalk* on PlayStation is awful. Way worse than the PC version, which is saying a lot. And folks, this game can be beat in about **30 minutes**.

**Adam**: And even that will feel way too long. This game is very much designed for children, despite the fact that the built-in audience for this series were young adults at the time. It's just colors, obnoxious sounds, and mindless clicking. The jokes are bad, the gameplay is vapid, and there's no plot worth following.

**Shane**: *Tiny Toon Adventures: The Great Beanstalk* is a game to be avoided, and if anyone asks you what it's like, all you need to say is-

**Adam**: **IT'S JUST-**

**Shane**: WAIT!

**Adam**: What?

**Shane**: This wasn't the only Tiny Toon game released on the PlayStation. The same developers released a second game! And since *The Great Beanstalk* was so short, we're gonna jump into the next one right freakin' now!

**Adam**: No- I don't- I don't really think we should-

**Shane**: *Tiny Toon Adventures: Toonenstein: Dare to Scare!* is a game released in 1999 for the PlayStation and developed by TerraGlyph Interactive Studios. It arrived one year after the release of *The Great Beanstalk*, and furthered the gap between the audience this game would have been relevant for.

**Adam**: Just like in the previous game, most of the original voice cast has returned to reprise their toony roles. The plot of the game is delivered zippy-quick, with only a few sentences. But from what we can tell, it focuses on three characters: Plucky, Hamton, and Furrball. They've arrived at a castle and Elmyra is now an evil scientist that wants their brains to create a monster.

**Shane**: Look, I know it's unheard of on this show, but, let's give the developers a chance. Unlike *Beanstalk*, which was a port of a PC game, this one was released on the PlayStation alone. They likely made assets and designed the game from the ground up to actually make use of this hardware, right? Right?

**Adam**: Well actually, you're correct! They took away all of the cursor-based point and clicking and completely avoided making any platforming sequences.

**Shane**: Oh, fantastic! So- so what do we get instead?

**Adam**: A three-button based travel system- and that's the whole game.

**Shane**: I'm- I'm sorry. What? What kind of game design is that?

**Adam**: I don't know. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see all your directional button prompts. When you press one, a brief travel animation will play, and you'll find yourself looking at another static screen.

**Shane**: That's it?

**Adam**: Not exactly. Sometimes, you'll get to push a single face button that will interact with something.

**Shane**: I'm starting to think that we're playing a game that is worse than the last one we just played.

**Adam**: Oh yeah, it is. Far worse. The only real gameplay you'll find is when you activate the randomly-generated image for bomb bats. You'll get bats flying at you that are- that are bombs.

**Shane**: You'll need to hop on an ooze gun and blow snot rockets at the bombs to prevent them from blowing up.

**Adam**: Hey, look! I think we finally found reasonably entertaining gameplay!

**Shane**: You would think, but I quickly discovered that if you just leave the directional pad alone and don't aim, the gun aims itself, meaning all you need to do is just push or hold down the fire button and that's it.

**Adam**: This game- was made for toddlers, huh?

**Shane**: It would REALLY seem that way.

**Adam**: Folks, we'd really, really like to point to something good here, but even the animations that were sort of okay in the previous game have clearly lowered in quality in this one.

**Shane**: If you play this on easy mode, Elmyra, the main antagonist, doesn't even appear until you beat the game and see the end credits.

**Adam**: Oh, right, the credits.

**Toons**: *Everybody's talking 'bout Toonenstein.*

**Elmyra**: *I'm building a monster-*

**Toons**: *And it's blowing my mind!*

**Shane**: It's a *Tiny Toons* horror-themed rap song. This is likely one of the last things this voice cast worked on together for this IP- it's freaking embarrassing.

**Adam**: It's absolutely no wonder that this game has fallen into the void of forgotten releases.

**Shane**: *Tiny Toon Adventures: Toonenstein: Dare to Scare!* is even worse than the previous game, likely one of the reasons the developers, TerraGlyph Studios, shut down soon after, and if you ask us what we thought of it, we'd scream at you out from the darkness-

**Adam**: **IT'S JUST-**

**Shane**: WAIT!

**Adam**: Augh! Are you kidding me?

**Shane**: There's one more game we kinda need to talk about.

**Adam**: But the developers were done, right? They never made another PlayStation game!

**Shane**: Correct, but there happens to be a final *Tiny Toon Adventures* game. A last entry, creating a trilogy of officially-released licensed games on the PlayStation.

**Adam**: But there's no possible way that that exists.

**Shane**: *Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky's Big Adventure* is a 2001 PlayStation game that was developed by Warthog Games.

**Adam**: 2001? Are you kidding me? By this point, the original fans of *Tiny Toons* are in college!

**Shane and Adam**: Waassuuup?

**Shane**: True, but don't think for a moment they were making a game for them, exactly.

**Adam**: Ooh, great. It's another kids' game!

**Shane**: Yes, but it gets worse. As we already said, *Toonenstein* was the last time the cast got together to record anything for *Tiny Toon Adventures* as far as we can tell.

**Adam**: So, you're telling me this game is-

**Shane**: SILENT. Dead silent. There is no voiceover at all.

**Adam**: Maybe it's better this way. Listen to how they butchered the Tiny Toon theme song in the main menu:

*(Instrumental of the theme that isn't the same as the show's)*

**Shane**: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? They couldn't even get the rights to the original song? You got the characters! You must've known people! How did this happen?

**Adam**: This game doesn't even appear to have the 2-D animation seen in the previous two games. It's all poorly-generated 3-D models with very few frames of animation.

**Shane**: When you start up the game, you're faced with an incredibly awkward cutscene.

**Adam**: Turns out Plucky didn't do his homework, so now he needs to turn his bike into a time machine to go back in time and finish it.

**Shane**: We didn't make this up, folks. That's the story.

**Adam**: The gameplay has Plucky and his friends roaming around ACME Looniversity finding objects to help Plucky convert his bike into a time-travelling vehicle.

**Shane**: And here is how they messed all of this up: it's an item-finding game in which they limit the items you can carry at any given time to two!

**Adam**: Oh, okay. so there are only two items you need to find then.

**Shane**: No! There are several items you need to find, it's just you'll need to rotate the items out using a locker system.

**Adam**: But they couldn't just give you access to the lockers by pushing a button. No!

**Shane**: Each locker, and there are four of them in total, unlock using a unique number combination. So every time you need to insert or take out an item, you need to punch in a multi-digit code.

**Adam**: Where exactly do you find the codes for these lockers?

**Shane**: In the game manual, or somewhere in the game world, I don't know.

**Adam**: You may be asking why. Why would they do any of this? They chose this complex system over just giving the characters a backpack where they can take all the items with them.

**Shane**: It's all padding. The game is incredibly short, just like the previous two games, so they pushed in this mechanic to artificially lengthen the play time.

**Adam**: But that's not the only game padding you'll find here. They also include-

**Shane**: MOON LOGIC PUZZLES! What are those? Well, here's a brief explanation.

**Adam**: A moon logic puzzle is where you have to solve a problem by using items that do not seem to be connected, but once combined and proven to be a success in hindsight make vague sense.

**Shane**: The problem here is that if you didn't know what you had to do, it's crazy hard to know what the developers originally intended. Here is how one of these puzzles plays out in the game:

**Adam**: Plucky needs a tire puncture repair kit for his time-travelling bike. He's in a bike shed. Typically, you'd find one here, but you don't.

**Shane**: The solution involved going to a classroom with a film projector and searching a pile of old film canisters.

**Adam**: Plucky finds a film canister named *Cheesy Rider*, but can't open it himself.

**Shane**: So you search around the school until you go to a tennis court that happens to have a can opener on the net.

**Adam**: You use that can opener on the film canister, and inside you find a tire puncture repair kit.

**Shane**: Oh, oh what? Did that not make sense? Well, here's how it worked: *Cheesy Rider* is a film that is a play on the film *Easy Rider*, which had a bunch of motorcycles in it, which have tires, so inside is obviously a tire puncture repair kit. But why was there a can opener at the tennis court? Because the tennis balls that you get for tennis come in cans- which don't need can openers, but it's a joke, so, it's there.

**Adam**: This same logic is applied to several items and puzzles in the game, but it's not your job to find out YOUR solution to a problem. It's your job to find out what the developers thought was the most complicated and time-consuming solution they could possibly dream up.

**Shane**: And if the annoying lockers and aggravating puzzles don't slow you down, then Monty and Elmyra will. They run around the halls of the school and grab you and appear to choke you out! Your eyes slowly close as you flail the thumbstick back and forth trying to free yourself.

**Adam**: If you fail to flail, then you get locked away somewhere in the school, and it's up to another Tiny Toon to come to the rescue.

**Shane**: If you manage to do everything right and complete this shallow and very short experience, you'll help Plucky build his time machine by delivering the very last piece.

**Adam**: And well- here's what happens.

**Plucky**: Finally, I thought you'd got lost!

**Buster**: I hope you appreciate what I had to go through to get you this, Plucky!

**Plucky**: Okay, okay, I'm thankful already. Gimme gimme gimme!

**Shane**: This plays in total silence. There are no sound effects. We just wanted you to know this.

*(Plucky crashes his bike into the wall)*

**Buster**: Well, Toonsters, let that be a lesson to you all. You can't turn back time, so do your homework when you're meant to, or you'll end up like Plucky! That's... all folks!

**Adam**: Beautiful. A life lesson. Shane, do your homework.

**Shane**: No. Was that bike- was that Pee-wee Herman's bike from *Pee-wee's Big Adventure*?

**Adam**: I think it was! Look at the cover: "Plucky's Big Adventure". Talk about burying the lead.

**Shane**: But that movie has nothing to do with time travel, right?

**Adam**: WELL NOBODY SAID THEY WATCHED THE F\*\*KING MOVIE!

**Shane**: Anyway, you spend the entire game completing all these mundane tasks to get to an ending with absolutely no payoff. It's like going to the grocery store, buying a bunch of ingredients to make a really awesome pizza, combining everything, making it, and throwing it at a wall!

**Adam**: This whole game was just stupid. I can't imagine it was made for kids, but I also can't imagine this game being made for anyone!

**Shane**: It's mind-boggling. All three *Tiny Toon Adventure* games on PlayStation- they're all utter garbage.

**Adam**: While some developers might have attempted to reach greater heights with such a beloved IP, these games just got worse and worse.

**Shane**: They're all afterthoughts, timewasters, money-burners. No one, not even kids, deserve to be subjected to these pathetic experiences. If you ever see any of them out in the wild, you'll know to avoid each and every one because-

**Adam**: **IT'S JUST-**

**Shane**: Wait!

**Adam**: What?

**Shane**: It's more than one game, so you can't say "it's".

**Adam**: Like, "they're"?

**Shane**: Yeah. I think that would work.

**Adam**: **THEY'RE**-

**Shane**: NO! **THEY'RE JUST BAD.**

**Adam**: AUGH!

**Shane**: It's always my line!