Data Design Interactive Shovelware Special

The Data Design Interactive Shovelware Special is the twenty-third episode of Just Bad Games, released on November 12, 2020. Four games by Data Design Interactive are reviewed in this episode: *Ninjabread Man*, *Anubis II*, *Myth Makers: Trixie in Toyland*, and *Rock 'n' Roll Adventures*.

## Transcript

**Adam**: *Ninjabread Man* is a platforming adventure game released in the mid-2000s for the Nintendo Wii.

**Shane**: Ha-ha, let's cut to the chase: **IT'S JUST BAD.**

**Adam**: Aha-ha, ah, but how bad is it?

**Shane**: How bad? Scrape the bottom of the Wii shovelware barrel, and then launch yourself, oh, tree times deeper.

**Adam**: Because this isn't just any ordinary game. This is merely a single layer in a story that's a Russian nesting doll of ineptitude, failure, and bizarre surprises.

**Shane**: And it all starts with the company behind the cookie-cutter hero himself, developer and publisher Data Design Interactive, otherwise known as DDI.

**Adam**: They got their start producing games for the popular ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 computer platforms under the name Data Design Systems, before growing and relabeling to Data Design Interactive in the '90s.

**Shane**: As the company expanded, they developed and published a slew of games for several big-name brands, like Tonka, Nickelodeon, and Lego.

**Adam**: Despite their work often getting mixed critical reception, they produced some memorable titles that had very positive feedback from the gaming community.

**Shane**: But heading into the 2000s, owner and president of Data Design Interactive, Stewart Green, wanted to shift the company's product direction, opting to focus on creating budget titles for consumers. And this is where things get interesting.

**Adam**: Fast-forward to 2005, when developer Metro3D entered bankruptcy proceedings. Shareholders sold off the company's European division to Stewart Green, who incorporated the unit into DDI under the name Metro3D Europe. Green sent this newly-acquired team on his affordable games initiative for the European market.

**Shane**: And then things got busy. Like, very, very busy. DDI, along with its newly-acquired team, released a double-digit blast of budget titles exclusive to Europe in just one year. These were released to the PlayStation 2 and PC, and covered a small sampling of genres.

**Adam**: Like "nightmare hamster race", and also- "nightmare hamster race".

**Shane**: Best of all, the wave of games was produced so 'efficiently' that they could be priced at the equivalent of just under $20. What could possibly go wrong?

**Adam**: Tons, apparently, because when these titles got into the hands of customers and critics alike, the reception was universally, well, not good.

**Shane**: Turns out audiences were expecting more from *Barry Hatter: The Sorcerer's Broomstick*- oh, sorry, did I say "Barry Hatter"? I meant uh, *Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing*, we swear this isn't a cashgrab.

**Adam**: DDI quickly gained a reputation for rapidly releasing shallow, buggy, and repetitious experiences that could be completed in minutes.

**Shane**: Now, one would think that a developer being stamped awful, ignoring loud criticisms, and continuing to aggressively release trash games would've led to the company's quick collapse.

**Adam**: But here's the thing: it didn't.

**Shane**: In fact, Data Design Interactive would go on to sell multiple millions of units of its titles in the next few years alone.

**Adam**: And why, exactly?

**Man**: Wii would like to play.

**Shane**: Tat's right. Late 2006 saw the launch of the Nintendo Wii, the motion-controlled phenomenon that quickly garnered attention beyond the core gaming demographic. It was for the whole family. The controls were intuitive, and it was bundled with a compilation of games so universal that even grandma and grandpa could play.

**Adam**: The Wii sold nearly 25 million units in its first two fiscal years alone. And as consoles flew off the shelves, the hunger for new software continued to grow.

**Shane**: And guess who was right there, with a huge, steaming pile of sh-

**TTS Voice**: Budget games for the whole family to enjoy?

**Adam**: Data Design Interactive. The company decided to self-publish and rerelease its PC and PS2 library again on the Wii in Europe.

**Shane**: Not only that, but the company landed a US publisher to slip their titles onto North American shelves as well: Conspiracy Entertainment. You may remember Conspiracy from-

*(Tiny Toon Adventures: Plucky's Big Adventure gameplay)*

Anyway, between 2007 and 8, DDI released twenty-eight games with a combined team of only two dozen people. That's an insane turnaround, but it paid off, because the company saw sales upwards of $30 million, and had secured a 40% market share of the budget games market in Europe. That means almost half the budget titles on shelves belonged to DDI.

**Pink Money Ghost**: Name?

**Yellow Money Ghost**: I'm the ghost of the money wasted on Data Design Interactive games.

**Pink Money Ghost**: Holy sh\*t!

**Yellow Money Ghost**: Existence is pain.

**Shane**: According to Stewart Green, president of DDI, in 2008 the company was one of the biggest and most reliable Wii developers in the entire world.

**Adam**: If the company boasts a stature like that at the peak of the Wii's popularity, we gotta assume DDI's old PC and PS2 ports played tremendously on the Wii.

*(Ninjabread Man gameplay shown)*

Right.

**Shane**: There's more to the bizarre story of DDI, but to properly understand it, we have to fight through the tears, power on our Wiimotes, and force down a rancid bite of *Ninjabread Man*.

**Adam**: We start the game, and are met with- absolutely no music on the intro page. No sound effects, no excitement, no fanfare.

**Shane**: Just a cold back-and-forth glimpse into the game world. "The life of a ninjabread man is without flourish or excess. We are a warrior of cookie".

**Adam**: And what's a warrior without awesome warrior moves? It's time to get into the game and start our training.

**Shane**: At the level select, we have four options, three of which are crossed out. We're guessing there are three hub worlds with multiple zones that we have to get through one at a time.

**Adam**: We enter the Training Dough-Jo, the tutorial of the game. Time to learn what makes this stealthy ninja cookie tick. We got a candy-coated central hub encircled by unwalkable biscuit paths that must lead to incredible confectionary ninjitsu skills.

**Shane**: Like jumping.

**Adam**: With motion controls.

**Shane**: And attacking.

**Adam**: With motion controls.

**Shane**: And ranged attacks.

**Adam**: With motion controls.

**Shane**: You serious? Everything is motion control-driven?

**Adam**: Yeah, it's basically the core of the game.

**Shane**: (whispering) I hate motion controls.

**Adam**: What?

**Shane**: I HATE MOTION CONTROLS!

**Adam**: Surely if a game confidently layers Wiimote waggle onto most of its control scheme, they gotta have a pretty good handle on its implementation.

**Shane**: That's what you'd think, but waggling to attack is incredibly finicky. We consistently had problems doing our melee sword attack, which requires you to simply jerk the Wiimote side to side. Ninjabread Man often swipes just once, and then stops while you continue to whip the Wiimote back and forth like an idiot.

**Adam**: Look, we're struggling to hit these defenseless, stationary training dummies. How are we supposed to attack targets that do things like, I don't know, move?

**Shane**: Your success using motion controls to jump is about the same. Shake the left Nunchuk to maybe jump, shake more in the air to maybe double jump, oh, and remember to press forward on the thumbstick of the Nunchuk you're wildly jiggling in order to move forward while you leap, because that's easy.

**Adam**: The dev team likely realized how stupid and unresponsive this was, because we discovered that "jump" is also mapped to the Z button. They just don't tell you this in the tutorial.

**Shane**: "Hey, kids! How would you rather control a game that handles movements about as an 80-year old on an all-cheese diet? Use your controller as a Shake Weight, or just push the Z button"?

*(Cartoon boy points at the shaking Nunchuk)*

"You're a moron"! We found ourselves sticking with physical buttons for controls instead of wildly flailing our hands around. Ninjabread Man's ranged shot can be executed by pointing the Wiimote at the screen and pressing the B button. This completely makes waggling to use your sword obsolete. It's still not great, but it's better than the twitchy alternative.

**Adam**: The tutorial went beyond the barriers of its three basic lessons to show us more.

**Shane**: Like how Ninjabread Man seems to have difficulty using stairs.

**Adam**: And how Ninjabread Man often clips through items multiple times before being able to pick them up.

**Shane**: Also, Ninjabread Man can get around level locations he's yet to unlock, effectively trapping him forever behind perpetually locked doors.

**Adam**: Oh, and of course, Ninjabread Man can easily clip through level geometry, causing him to fall into a pit of nothingness and fail the tutorial. Uh, let me say that again: FAIL the TUTORIAL. The developers must've been aware of this issue, as there's a failure prompt- they just decided not to fix it, I guess.

**Shane**: This forces you to completely restart the tutorial. Now, some of you out there are surely taking all this in and thinking "this is so poorly-built and buggy, it plays like a half-baked early concept demo".

**Adam**: And to that, we say-

**Shane**: "Congratulations, smartypants"!

*(The cartoon boy reappears, pointing at himself)*

"No, not you, dum-dum! Folks, there's a very good reason why *Ninjabread Man* feels like a behind closed-doors undercooked concept cookie".

**Adam**: Remember when we were talking about Data Design's early foray into budget gaming in the mid-2000s? Well, there was once a rumor that DDI was involved with a very special project around that exact time.

**Shane**: Word on the street was that Data Design had acquired the rights to create a sequel to a popular games franchise, a franchise started on Amiga computers in the early '90s to compete with a certain blue blur in the burgeoning mascot platformer market.

**Adam**: And that franchise was *Zool*.

**Shane and Adam**: Everyone loves *Zool*!

*(Children cheer, then party horn sound)*

**Shane**: Yes. Apparently Data Design did a fair amount of work on a build of an all-new 3D *Zool* platformer. And when the DDI team brought their work to *Zool's* rightsholders, Zoo Digital Publishing, the company was less than enthusiastic with what they saw.

**Adam**: In fact, they thought so little of what they were shown that Zoo Digital quickly pulled the *Zool* franchise from DDI completely, leaving them with a shoddy 3D mascot platformer without a mascot.

**Shane**: Of course, that's all a rumor. But if it were true, what could DDI do with an unfinished and unacceptable game project? Toss it to the side and move on? Work hard to polish what they've made thus far? Create a new universe and exciting new characters?

**Adam**: No! They made Zool into a f\*\*king cookie!

**Shane**: They sure did! Oh, and how do we think we know this?

**Adam**: Despite gameplay footage of DDI's original *Zool* build not surfacing, the introductory cutscene of the game has. And here it is! It shows Zool flying through space and crash-landing on a planet made of candies and desserts.

**Shane**: This planet is likely a reference to the original *Zool's* candy-filled levels that were made in a promotional deal struck with Chupa Chups. That's right. *Zool* was originally created in partnership with a lollipop company.

**Adam**: The cutscene itself is short and rough around the edges, but it gives us direct connections to assets that we can see in the tutorial section of *Ninjabread Man*. Anything look familiar?

**Shane**: Hmm. If I had to guess, I'd say Ninjabread Man likely looks the way he does because the developers couldn't look beyond Zool's iconic red-bandanaed ninja character design.

**Adam**: Right.

**Shane**: And Ninjabread Man is a cookie because they wanted him to fit in with the pastry surroundings they created for their failed *Zool* prototype instead of working on new ones?

**Adam**: Ding ding ding! And here's the kicker: *Ninjabread Man* was originally released in July of 2005 for the PC and PS2. The *Zool* build shown off to Zoo Digital was also rumored to be around the same time. Know what that means? It's very likely that little changed from the *Zool* demo to the final release of *Ninjabread Man*.

**Shane**: And it shows! Look at this visual glitch in the game. Parts of the level that are far-off are simply not rendering. Usually, in a finished game, this would be corrected so players don't see it, but here, it's proudly on display.

**Adam**: Or how about when our cookie-based hero falls into this- I wanna say jam, or maybe soda. In any other game that presents a liquid-based obstacle, you'd slowly sink into it because, you know, it's liquid. But not here. Ninjabread Man gets hurt, dies, but just sort of lays down on the top of the mystery substance.

**Shane**: And if you needed more proof that this was most likely a tech demo for another game, have a closer look at what happens when you defeat enemies. You'll see little hearts with wings flutter up into the air. That's pulled directly from *Zool*.

**Adam**: Speaking of enemies, there are bees that look a heck of a lot like the enemies from *Zool* here, too. We've taken out a lot of them with our long-range attack in *Ninjabread Man*, but if you're too close to a bee while locking on, this happens:

**Shane**: Your homing shot breaks and spins around before flying off the screen. Great. We have a melee attack that's completely unreliable, and a ranged attack that's only effective sometimes.

**Adam**: What's going on here? What exactly are we trying to accomplish in this game? Is there any kind of plot, backstory, or big bad nemesis?

**Shane**: Nope! Besides a shallow blurb about saving the day on the back of the game box, the manual just tells you that you need to collect Power Rods in order to activate a teleportation device. There are eight rods in every stage.

**Adam**: Ah, so the game's a collect-a-thon. The programmers have cleverly hidden their rods in all kinds of devious, unthinkable places. Guess we have to work hard and comb the level.

**Shane**: You'd think that, but no. You've got a compass that just points directly to the next rod location, which pulls all the fun and challenge out of finding them. They're not even cleverly hidden. Look, just twirling out here in the open. How embarrassing.

**Adam**: Once you collect all the rods, the teleporter's activated, and you're on to the next stage. That was quick! Let's jump back to the menu and see what percentage of the game we've completed so far.

**Shane**: Hmm, looks like 50.

**Adam**: Percent?

**Shane**: Yeah.

**Adam**: We've completed 50% of the game, and we've only beaten the first level?

**Shane**: Don't forget the tutorial! That counts, too.

**Adam**: You know, I was impressed with the sheer amount of titles Data Design Interactive was releasing back in the 2000s, but now it's crystal-clear how they did it: there's no game in this game.

**Shane**: One tutorial, three levels. That's it. We naively assumed that the low quantity of levels would mean higher quality, levels that each have their own unique look and feel. But here, look at these. They're all near-identical, and many of them have the same assets.

**Adam**: My least favorite level is the cookie and candy-themed one.

**Shane**: (clears throat) Guess.

**Adam**: Not only are you repeatedly playing what looks to be the same boring space, completing the same goal of powering a teleporter with rods, but you're always dealing with the same enemies.

**Shane**: Dumb as bricks, and either lock on and plow right into you, or shoot at you from a short distance. They're basically fodder. You usually see them putzing around a mile away, and can pick them off with your projectile attack.

**Adam**: Unless you're a certain distance away, in which case, your projectile completely glitches out again.

**Shane**: \*sigh\* Despite how frustrating it is, you should take out enemies. Successfully crushing the evil cakes and bees in Candyland powers up your attack.

**Adam**: Oh, and back to the winged hearts your enemies release when they're taken out: *Ninjabread Man* implements one of the oddest health and lives systems we've ever seen.

**Shane**: When you collect a flying heart, it adds one more heart to your health meter. When you fill up your health meter completely and get one more heart, you get an extra life, and your health meter is reduced to 50%. What even is this?! It's like we're being simultaneously rewarded and punished for picking up health!

**Adam**: Really though, you won't need to worry about your health or enemy attacks much, as the only real challenge in *Ninjabread Man* comes from the way the game controls.

**Shane**: Jumping, for example, feels awful, motion controls or not. You often find yourself missing platforms or pathetically float-sliding next to objects you try to traverse.

**Adam**: Heck, sometimes your jump leads you to getting completely trapped in level geometry. Look at this. We had to completely restart the game here. And if you're not having problems getting around levels or engaging enemies, then you have to deal with the game's awful, awful camera. It's a pain to deal with in open spaces. Luckily, you can press down on the D-pad to recalibrate it behind your character, but once you get forced near walls or into enclosed areas, good gosh, it's a total freakout.

**Shane**: Oh, this game is rough, alright. And when you persevere through this sugar-filled adventure and head into the last teleporter in the final level, what do you get?

**Adam**: Tossed right back to the main menu. No final boss, no story wrap-up, not even a single still image of the Ninjabread Man thanking you for flushing your money down to where this game crawled out of.

**Shane**: Oh look, we've 100%-ed *Ninjabread Man*- in about thirty freaking minutes.

**Adam**: But now, we've unlocked other modes. Oh, we can play "Score Pickups", where we collect hundreds of thoughtlessly-placed items, or "Hidden Pickups", where we collect more thoughtlessly-placed items. Or, we can play-

**Shane**: Another game!

**Adam**: We sure can, because our Data Design journey is far from over. There's just too much to talk about. Hey, did you know that that the original PC version of *Ninjabread Man* was rushed so quickly, that the developers used photos of Gingy, the gingerbread man from *Shrek*, in their "load saved game" images?

**Shane**: Someone call DreamWorks. I smell a lawsuit!

*(Barry Hatter, mentioned earlier, appears again)*

Uh, another lawsuit.

**Adam**: As we mentioned earlier, there are several layers to this story, like an onion.

**Shane**: Let's peel back the gingerbread top layer to reveal our next game. According to Data Design Interactive's own website, this game was originally released for the PC and PlayStation 2 within just a few days of *Ninjabread Man*. Impressive! And that game is *Anubis II*.

**Adam**: Hold on, Anubis? Like, ancient Egyptian god of the dead and mummification Anubis?

**Shane**: That's right.

**Adam**: But "2".

**Shane**: Yes.

**Adam**: Did Data Design Interactive release an *Anubis I*?

**Shane**: No, they did not.

**Adam**: This is the only *Anubis* game they've made.

**Shane**: Yes.

**Adam**: And it's not a sequel?

**Shane**: Nope! Apparently, the character on the cover may be called "Anubis the Second", but we found no official evidence of this, including the game box, manual, game and all information on DDI's old websites. They just refer to the main character as "Anubis".

**Adam**: Uh, I'd like to act disappointed, but it's pretty on-brand for Data Design. Let's dive into *Anubis II*.

**Shane**: Once again, just like in *Ninjabread Man*, when you load up the game, you've got no music or sounds, and if you're wondering whether or not the two titles share any other similarities-

*(Side-by side shows near-identical levels)*

**Adam**: Hmm. Hmm... hmmm.... hmm- SHANE? Crazy thought: I think *Anubis II* may have taken slight inspiration from *Ninjabread Man*.

**Shane**: It's the exact same game!

**Adam**: \*gasp\* Accusations!

**Shane**: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm probably wrong. Maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Only the controls, player movements, attacks, camera systems, enemy types and motions, HUD, general mission goals, animations, health pickups, powerup systems, musical assets, sound effects, profile load screens, checkpoints, and likely a few dozen other things I've probably missed ARE ALL IDENTICAL.

**Adam**: Good to specify. Other than that?

**Shane**: Other than that, *Anubis II* is a completely different game from *Ninjabread Man*.

**Adam**: But seriously, look at this. At the beginning, they use a replicated tutorial section. You're taught identical abilities in the same order. Even the scroll assets you pick up are unchanged from *Ninjabread Man*.

**Shane**: They didn't even fix the game-breaking bugs that were such a big problem in the last game. You still get stuck easily behind locked sections of the tutorial. And yes, you're still capable of falling through level geometry into oblivion. Oh, but this time, you don't get a fail state. They just leave Anubis to float endlessly with a thousand-yard stare.

**Adam**: Yes, *Anubis II* offers the same base gameplay and collect-a-thon mission objectives in its levels as in *Ninjabread Man*, but this time they've tossed in a few puzzles for you to solve. Some of these require the player to hold the Wiimote vertically and do a stirring motion to use Anubis' level-manipulating magic.

**Shane**: And by our calculations, this motion is properly picked up by the game approximately -40% of the time.

**Adam**: The devs also beefed up the game with bonus levels between stages. They're top-down missions in which you have to collect points while getting insects to burn themselves alive. Utterly pointless, but by golly, they are here!

**Shane**: Overall, *Anubis II* manages to be a little less samey than *Ninjabread Man* in its level variations. This time, we have stages that take place both inside and outside of ancient Egyptian ruins, with slightly more to do. Unfortunately, the controls and attacks are still absolute trash.

**Adam**: When you do get lucky and successfully take out enemies, they explode into oversized bursts of bones with a spinal column. Giant mummy head? Bones with a spinal column. Sentient angry pyramid? Bones with a spinal column. Swarm of thousands of tiny flies? Bones with a spinal column!

**Shane**: Oh, and I guess this game is in the *Zool* expanded universe, because enemies still leave behind those iconic winged *Zool* hearts.

**Adam**: Finally! We can make a direct connection between ritualistic mummification and Chupa Chups.

**Mummy**: Chupa Chups. Remove my brain and other vital organs in preparation for the afterlife- but keep your hands off my Chups!

**Adam**: Throughout our journey, we found more of the same issues we had with *Ninjabread Man*. Not only does the game still look like a rough demo, but we also had problems with out character easily getting stuck in level geometry yet again.

**Shane**: Look, despite the game being only five levels long, having bonus stages and clocking in in around an hour to beat, it somehow still feels like an unbelievable slog to get through.

**Adam**: Anyway, there's one other standout difference between this game and *Ninjabread Man*: in *Anubis II*, there's actually a final boss fight.

**Shane**: That's right. In the last stage, you have to do battle with a giant mummy named Mumm'hotep.

**Adam**: At first, we weren't really sure how to defeat him. We fired off a few projectile shots, but it didn't seem to be working.

**Shane**: Then we noticed these platforms all around the room he was situated in, so we attempted to hop our way up them despite the game's terrible platforming controls. This really wasn't easy. Some platforms are only visible and usable for brief moments before disappearing and then reappearing again much later.

**Adam**: Awful controls, plus a terrible camera, plus heat-seeking attacks, plus disappearing platforms equals a completely frustrating gameplay experience.

**Shane**: But eventually, we made it to the top, where we found a weird sphere.

**Adam**: What exactly is that thing?

**Shane**: This is the first time we've collected one of these. I have no idea.

**Adam**: After flailing around and trying random inputs, we lobbed the thing. Turns out there's another new function that wasn't present in our favorite ninja cookie game: *Anubis II* has bombs that you use with motion controls. We must've missed that in the tutorial.

**Shane**: Ha-ha, no! Actually, we didn't. It wasn't IN the tutorial because the tutorial was the exact same tutorial copied and pasted from *Ninjabread Man*, a game without bombs.

**Adam**: This is a mess, and so is bomb hurling, which is incredibly inaccurate. Couple that with having to rerun the disappearing platform gauntlet to get more bombs while Mumm'hotep spews heat-seeking fire at you, and you got yourself a failure of a final boss encounter. When you beat Mumm'hotep- which we did by the skin of our teeth- he falls into a pit in the floor. This leads us to a new teleporter and the game's wonderful final message: "Congratulations! You have defeated the evil... Khufu"?

**Shane**: Who the heck is Khufu? "Ancient Egyptian monarch"? What? There is literally no other mention of Khufu anywhere else in this game! The last boss was Mumm'hotep. It's on the back of the game box twice. The freaking manual even has it.

**Adam**: Huh. Looks like they misspelt their own spelling of Mummho'tep in the manual, or they misspelt Mumm'hotep on the box.

**Shane**: There it is. *Anubis II*. Possibly *Anubis the Second*, a game which is a reskin of a cookie ninja game with a *Shrek* easter egg that is itself a reskin of a failed pitch demo for an old Amiga series from the early '90s.

**Adam**: Woah. Well, *Ninjabread Man* and *Anubis II* weren't the only DDI platformers ported to the Wii.

**Shane**: Oh goody goody gumdrops. Please, go on.

**Adam**: That very same year, *Myth Makers: Trixie in Toyland* made its way to North America.

**Shane**: THE *Myth Makers*? Beloved DDI franchise no one else has heard of until right now, and stars of *Myth Makers: Super Kart GP*?

**Adam**: Uh, yeah. And with this apparently being DDI's flagship franchise, according to themselves, with characters previously being involved in different game genres, it'll be interesting to see what they've brought to the table in *Myth Makers: Trixie in Toyland*.

**Shane**: No. There's no way. They didn't.

**Adam**: They did.

**Shane**: Those lunatics! Those utter, utter maniacs!

**Adam**: They reskinned and released three practically identical-playing games to the Wii.

**Shane**: Is there anything different about this one? Anything of note at all?

**Adam**: Well, the tutorial section is just a ripoff of the ones from *Anubis* and *Ninjabread Man*, but the few main levels that make up the game have a lot more verticality to them. Strangely enough, despite the game looking the most like it's for young kids and having the exact same style of gameplay as the others, it's somehow more difficult because of how poorly the levels are designed.

**Shane**: Great. Anything else?

**Adam**: There's voice acting.

**Trixie**: Take that, buster! (x6) Yay!

**Shane**: Golly gee. And let me guess, the goal is to collect eight hovering MacGuffins in every stage in order to jumpstart a portal to the next level.

**Adam**: Yep! Other than the level layout and a few bonus levels that play like they were designed in a middle school computer lab, it's a copy-and-paste job with a tweaked coat of paint.

**Shane**: Okay, I see, Um, quick question.

**Adam**: Shoot!

**Shane**: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

**Adam**: Well, as we said, the story of Data Design Interactive, much like its software, is sloppy and all over the place. In addition to publishing and developing games for various platforms, the company also designed their very own engine: the GODS engine.

**Shane**: "GODS", huh? Probably stands for "Glitchy Old Defective Software".

**Adam**: Actually, "GODS" is an abbreviation for "Game-Orientated Development System". It was an engine that concentrated on ease of porting software to various platforms with a focus on quick asset swapping. It was particularly good at slipping old PC and PS2 software onto the Wii, as it was created to easily utilize the Wii's controls. In short, the GODS engine made it easy to tweak games, easy to port games, but the engine barely dabbled with, oh, you know, utilizing the actual power of the platform.

**Shane**: Great. So, we can say this game is a gift from the GODS.

**Adam**: Yep, and it explains why these games look as awful as they do and use so much of the same framework, music and graphics. Cause it was easy!

**Shane**: Ugh. I'd say that rounds thing off nicely, but I know there's still one more game for us to look at today.

**Adam**: And it's *Rock 'n' Roll Adventures*.

**Shane**: It's the same game again, isn't it?

**Adam**: What? No! We're in for a wild ride as we enter the land of music to thwart an army of crazed instruments. We take control of the world-renowned rocker Elviz.

**Elviz**: Uh-huh-huh. Thank you very much.

**Shane**: Wait, do you mean "Elvis"?

**Adam**: No, ElviZ, the world-renowned rocker.

**Elviz**: Uh-huh-huh. Thank you very much.

**Adam**: We enter the land of rock music and take him through-

**Shane**: The same tutorial we've already played three times today.

**Adam**: And we smack enemies with the-

**Shane**: Same exact mostly useless attacks.

**Adam**: Oh-ho, but we collect-

**Shane**: Orbs that unlock a portal to the next world, where we do the exact same things again and again, while reskinned lobotomized enemies barley react to our presence.

**Adam**: Have you played this before?

**Shane**: We both have! How is this any different from any of the other Data Design Interactive games we've played?

**Adam**: I think that's a MiniDisc over there.

**Shane**: This game, the last of the four DDI platformers released in North America, is the most shallow cashgrab of the entire lot. Not only is it a paper-thin attempt at monetizing the likeness of an iconic musician, but it features uninspired level design and corrects none of the countless issues we've had with all of Data Design's titles. It features many of the same sounds, glitches, and has next to no bonus content outside of its paltry three levels and photocopied tutorial.

**Adam**: I wished we could say that each consecutive game we've looked at today at least built off of the ideas of the last, but that's just not the case here. Instead, it seems like the only effort placed into these games was to make the cover artwork look fun or interesting so that someone would accidentally pick them up off the shelf, see the price point, and buy on a whim.

**Shane**: And just because a game goes for 20 bucks, that doesn't mean that it must be dribbled-out, retread garbage like this. Just look at the *Earth Defense Force* series. It rocketed to popularity in Japan as a similarly-priced value title, and has since had several successful sequels.

**Adam**: The lack of care placed into these titles is outrageous. The Wii library was labeled as a shovelware minefield a few years after its release by many gamers, and you're staring at four very compelling reasons why.

**Shane**: It doesn't even feel like four seperate experiences. It's like one horrible title's world map chunked off into smaller shoddy games. Here, you've got your candy-themed world, your desert pseudo-Egyptian world, your oversized toy world, and your music land. Glue them all together, and you know what? It still doesn't feel like a worthwhile release, even with budget pricing.

**Adam**: From rumored revitalized *Zool* franchise demo to bargain bin gerbil cage room divider, Data Design Interactive's cashgrab 3D platformer line-

**Shane**: **IT'S JUST BAD.**

**Yellow Money Ghost**: So, because they barely changed their games, I'm basically a manifestation of the same title they've suckered people into wasting money on over and over again.

**Pink Money Ghost**: Right right. I get it. Interesting.

**Blue Money Ghost**: Wha- whatever happened to DDI?

**Shane**: Data Design Interactive went defunct in 2012. Stewart Green, former CEO and owner of DDI, has since opened Carnival Games Studios, where they continue to port their old catalogue to the Nintendo Switch.

**Yellow Money Ghost**: What? Oh no, it's still happening!

*(The yellow Money Ghost explodes offscreen, causing the other Money Ghosts to scream in terror)*