#025 – The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends

We are not Rocky and Bullwinkle’s friends.

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER: THQ

DEVELOPER: Radical Entertainment

GENRE: Platformer

RELEASE DATE: December 1992

Where to begin? I’m not really an angry guy, as my friends will attest, but I can understand how games like this birthed the Angry Video Game Nerd. This game should have never made it past the conceptual stage. No programmer should be content with a game where using your special move (a special that’s required to destroy enemies or progress in the game) decreases your health; where you can’t possibly avoid enemies, so you have to just absorb hits; where every section of the game spells “paycheck” and nothing more. Rocky and Bullwinkle was released in the early ’90’s, a time when excellent games were around every corner. Radical Entertainment should have paid attention.

I also hate Rocky and Bullwinkle as cartoon characters, but that’s not lowering my score any. It’s just signifying what I’ve always thought: Rocky and Bullwinkle (and friends) are poorly developed characters that hardly anyone cares about. If the programmers cared, they would have made a better game; if kids cared, they would have been upset that this game befouled their beloved animated creations. No, Rocky and Bullwinkle are beloved by few, and so, this crappy game fits right in with their canon of cartoons that have aged as poorly as Keith Richards. (My apologies if you actually like Rocky and Bullwinkle. So did I as a kid, but then I also liked “The Return of Jafar.” You can see how we can all be wrong.)

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