Nostalgia Corner: Austin Powers - Oh Behave! (GBC)

Back when I was a 14 or 15 year old girl when this game came out (oh yes, I just aged myself big time by saying that), I was all sorts of excited. I loved Austin Powers, I loved video games, what could be better? (YEAH BABY! *cough* I'm alright. Really.) Apparently...a lot of things. Things that aren't this game.

My parents wouldn't buy the game for me not because they thought Austin was too vulgar or anything...they just thought he was "too stupid". (In retrospect, they're right.) My cousin, on the other hand, had both this and the Dr. Evil game that came out at pretty much the same time. I asked her if I could borrow it. Her reply?

"No, you don't want to."

"Why not?"

"It's too stupid."

.....Okay, did everybody just hold a meeting behind my back and come to a mutual decision that Austin Powers deserves a Darwin Award or something? I couldn't understand it. Unlike my parents, my cousin was an Austin fan! Why would she feel that way about the game? Try as I might, I couldn't get her to loan me the stupid thing. It wasn't very long before I forgot about it and never really gave that game another thought.

Until about a week ago.

Having finally learned how to do GBA emulation, that in turn led to figuring out oldschool Game Boy and GBC emulation as well, and guess what I ran across again in my travels? That's right. That old Austin Powers game I'd long since forgotten about. I downloaded it straight away before anything else.

Now I wish I hadn't and would have left well enough alone.

First off: this game had a teen rating. For some of the racier language in it, I can see why, but I don't think ANY teen would realistically enjoy this game. It is, dare I say it.......... "too stupid". And not just because it's horribly dated and the graphics are horrendous. I mean there is very literally almost no real game here. Here's a rundown:

When you turn on the game, it cycles through this mock-DOS loading sequence, complete with such ridiculous commands as: "Trendy Shagadelic Virus Guard Engaged", "Diskette Drive A: I like those figures 38-24-36 Oh behave!", "Display Type: I like the way you look, baby! It's very shagadelic!", "Serial Ports: Well connected baby! Have you topped and tailed?", and so on and so on. It clicks by so fast that it's no doubt the ONLY way they got past the ratings censors, I'm pretty sure. (I pity any kid's parent who unknowingly bought this game for them and ended up having to answer a million awkward questions thanks for the dialogue.) Then we're brought to a screen that mimicks the old Windows 98 opening screen (remember with the flying Microsoft flag in front of the clouds? You know you do...)

We are then plopped into what I can only describe as an assault on our senses. Horribly MIDI-fied music of....I don't know if it's even supposed to be anything, it's that unrecognizable. And the screen itself is every neon color, turned up full blast, full contrast. There's a very grainy 'video' (more like an animated .GIF file) of Austin making faces in the lower right corner of the screen, and it takes a moment to realize that you are, in fact, in the desktop of what's supposed to be Austin's computer. (Horrifying, isn't it?) There's 3 folders down the side; one with a die, one with a Game Boy, and one with a calculator. There's also a large male symbol in the lower left corner you can click as well as a small circular button beside it that simply reads "MOJO". This layout sure doesn't tell you a whole lot about what you're supposed to be doing, does it? Let's explore.

Clicking on the folder with the die will take you to the Games screen. Down the lefthand side of the screen, we again see three icons: the top being a rock, a paper, and a pair of scissors (gee, I don't know what game THAT might be!), the one below it looks like a primitive maze, and the one below that appears to be either tic tac toe...or bingo. Or some strange hybrid of the two. I don't know.

Selecting the Rock, Paper, Scissors game takes you to just what you think it will. You choose your opponent, you choose your move, and there you go. Unfortunately for you, they give you SUCH a brief time to figure out what you're going to do that more often than not, you'll miss your whole turn in a matter of mere seconds. More frustration than it's worth.

That maze-looking icon? Oh, it is. And it's just as terrible as you'd imagine it to be.

And for that bingo/tic tac toe hybrid? It's evidently a game entitled Domination. It's sort of like tic tac toe and chess put together. Actually, it reminds me more of the old 7-UP NES game Spot from forever (okay, 20 years) ago, where you had to fill the board with dots, and your opponent would jump yours to turn them their color, and you'd go back and forth to see who could get the most dots in their color by the end of the game. This is the SAME EXACT THING. Minus the cute factor and with much worse graphics. So what else is there?

We head back to the main desktop and click upon the calculator icon, and it brings us to a folder entitled, simply, "Groovy Stuff". Pity that not really one thing in there actually is groovy... All you'll find here is another 3 icons, Sounds, Cursors, and Color Schemes. These are all pretty self-explanatory...and as I already mentioned, these are very much un-groovy. What a waste of space.

Back to the desktop again, that brings us to the last of the folders. This one is simply Programs. Ah, but if there were any actual programs here, we might have something! These days, we'd refer to these as apps... at best. (I'm being generous here.) So now we have Austin's Pad, Internet, and the Shagulator. Wait....wait, wait, wait. We have Internet on this thing? This might not be so bad after all! Very much unlike myself, I explored something out of order and skipped straight ahead to the Internet app--I mean, "program". I don't know why, exactly, I had any high expectations here...about the closest thing to the real internet this function has is making mock dial-up sounds as it "connects". All this basically is is an excuse to tie the movie cast and such into the game in a very craptastic web 'browser'. How disappointing. I would've done SO much more with this, had I been the game's designer. But I'm not, so oh well.

Austin's Pad seems to be nothing more than a really primitive messaging system. I don't think there was ever a way to actually send said messages to and from each other... Maybe through the link cable. And an option to print with the gameboy printer. Another very overrated function of this game, along with the Shagulator....which is just a 60's looking calculator.

So, where is the actual GAME in all this? It's actually a little bit tricky to find. You have to click on that male symbol in the lower left corner of the desktop, and when it brings you to its screen, there will be a menu at the top of the screen with the options of Platform Game, Austin's Pad, and Sounds. Select Platform Game, and it will bring you to the actual game. For all the work it takes to find it, though... it's SO not worth it. It's a typical platform game, if you will...no, literally, you're jumping to and from platforms, collecting items, and diving through the time machine. That's it. That's the game. ...REALLY? Lord. I am SO glad I wasted no actual money on this trash.

I doubt that, this late after the fact, anyone would be going out of their way to track down this game, but just on the off-chance that you would? Don't. Just, don't. Trust me....it's too stupid. 1 out of 10 nerdy little Brit boys.

Nostalgia Corner: Felix the Cat (NES)

In thinking about my old NES game collection and remembering which games I have the most fond of memories of playing, Felix the Cat has always ranked pretty highly on that list...even if in part because it was the very first video game that I ever completed all on my own, with no help from either my dad (who was, at the time, the biggest gamer I knew) or from the Game Genie. (I don't think there ever were Game Genie codes for Felix...I could be wrong.) Regardless, upon recently figuring out NES emulation for my DS, Felix was the very first game on my list that I went out of my way to track down a copy of.

Instantly upon booting up the game, I was greeted by that friendly opening screen that I'd seen so many times before during my youth. It made me smile. That aside, once beginning the initial gameplay, I was immediately taken aback by how similar the gameplay is to the old Mario games, or even Mega Man. In modern games, you don't tend to run across side-scrollers too often anymore, so it was quite refreshing to play one again. The premise also reminded me of Mega Man, in that we have an evil scientist hellbent on destruction (who, in this case, is keeping Felix's girlfriend Kitty hostage). So, of course, Felix must save the world. (What else would this game be about?)

So here you are, in this Felix bizarro world of hamsters and cannons and sombrero monsters and walking trees--was somebody dropping acid when they created this game? I'm pretty sure that somebody was doing some heavy drugs. (Then again, this was all based off the old Felix the Cat cartoons. I'm pretty sure that opium was legal back then.) Like Mega Man (and unlike Mario), you cannot jump on your foes. Oh, no. Instead, all that you are armed with is your little yellow magic bag (we'll get back into that in just a second), out of which you can punch with a spring-loaded boxing glove. (It's all based VERY much off the old cartoons, which, if you've ever seen them, you'll understand.) Its range is VERY short, but it'll get you through long enough to either find a random heart or a power up bag.

Oh, what's this? Power up bags? Well, you know how in Mario, you travel through pipes? In Felix, you travel through giant versions of your magic bag. Once inside, you will find many powerups, usually a heart, and some milk cans. With each heart, you power up to the next ability level. (When you hit the last one, any additional hearts will just give you extra lives.) However, their usage is very limited. As soon as you get one of these powers, 10 hearts will appear in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. Each one stays for about 5 seconds, and when the hearts run out, you lose the power and are bumped back down to the next lower one. HOWEVER! You can get around this with those trusty milk cans! Each milk can will give you a few extra hearts, and I think if you manage to hook all three, it powers you back up completely. Not a bad deal....except that when you need them most, you can never seem to find the damn things. Sometimes these magic bags have a second bag on the righthand side of the screen that serves as a segway to further on in the level - again, much like the Mario pipelines.

So now that you've found your first heart, wherever it may have happened in the level, you'll no doubt notice that Felix's appearance has suddenly changed. He now wears a black top hat and carries a cane. No, not a cane, a magic wand. He's a magician now. (But according to my 10 year old sister, it's "totally a cane - Felix turned into a pimp!" Wowwww.) You will notice that when you go to attack an enemy now, you no longer get the springy punching bag. Instead, you throw a ring of stars out around your being in every which direction, creating a brief force field that will hit anything in close enough proximity. Still not a great power, but it definitely trumps the glove by a long shot.

Your next power up gives Felix a car. This vastly increases your mobility speed as well as gives you a projectile missile which shoots from the front of the car whenever you beep your horn. (It's one of the only vaguely realistic sounds in the game that doesn't sound like a bleep or boop.) I think that of the power ups for the regular ground levels (you have different powers in different levels, such as sky or sea), the car is my favorite. It's the most versatile and is easiest to work with.

Once you surpass the car, you get a tank. Sounds pretty awesome, right? It's big, it's heavy, it shoots cannon balls. What could be better? Um... the car. Seriously, the tank is bulky and cumbersome. You have to really work at making sure the trajectory on your cannon balls will actually hit your targets. You can't jump very high in it. It baffles me that this is the top power up in the regular land levels.

Of course, the power ups are different in different levels. In air levels, you start out with an umbrella (think: Mary Poppins) and upgrade to a hot air balloon which looks like Felix's head and throw what appear to be frisbees at enemies, and finally are upgraded to an airplane. I love that little plane... Then in the water levels (above water), you only have 2 power ups: you start out in a little inflatable raft, and you upgrade to a dolphin who you ride on the back of. Underwater, you start out with a snorkel, upgrade to riding on the back of a bubble-blowing sea turtle, and finally to a submarine that, like the hot air balloon, looks like Felix's head. This one, by far, is the best of the underwater abilities, as even though it's big and cumbersome, you can't beat this thing's missiles. They're long range, they shoot straight ahead (which is more than can be said for most of the projectiles in this game), and they're powerful. It's about the only thing that will really help you during boss battles.

It's overall a pretty typical oldschool NES game. You defeat bad guys; if you fall down holes or land in water, you die; your levels are timed, etc. All stuff that usually was a part of any video game back then. The levels are divided up in similar fashion to Mario as well (i.e. 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, etc) with three parts to a level...in most cases anyhow. There are 9 levels, and I suspect that since this is a game about a cat, 9 levels/9 lives. Get it? The last two are sort of a joke though. As you spend the game trying to reach the Professor, you reach level 8, and I think it only has one part to it. You just fly around in a spaceship and try not to die. (Easier said than done.) Level 9, if I recall, only has 2 parts before the final battle. Should you have had an easy time defeating all of the other bosses throughout the game, this will be a cinch for you. Especially since you have not one, not two, but THREE magic bags in the actual battle screen to duck down into to grab power ups and extra hearts inside of. You can come in completely unprepared and still get the tank to fight the Professor with. He takes a little bit longer to defeat than the other bosses, but it's the same general concept.

There's only two possible outcomes for this game. If you lose, you'll see a screen with a sad little Felix being tossed out into an alleyway while Kitty looks on longingly from the moon. However, should you succeed in beating the game, you'll reach Kitty, who's still all tied up, but hopping around in excitement for you finally have saved her; hearts floating up out of her head. "Congratulations! At least FELIX! You rescued Kitty! I love you, FELIX!" And then you watch a cutesy little sequence where Kitty and Felix fly off into the sunset--no wait, scratch that. They fly back home to Earth together, all smoochy and everything in the spaceship, and "THE END" flashes across the screen. Yes, it's short, but it's sweet, and a lot more memorable than a lot of other NES game endings of that time period. The ending has stuck with me over the years for some reason, and I didn't realize just how vividly I remembered it until seeing it again. This game, which took me all day to beat as a little kid, took me a grand total of just barely half an hour to complete this time around - playing it for the first time in about 17 years, to boot! (Damn, I'm old.) It's a pretty simple game, overall, and I'd say it's still a good early starter game for kids. Know your roots!

This was by no means the greatest ever game created for the NES, but I think it has quite a bit of quality to it that's stood the test of time. I'm going to go ahead and rate this 7 out of 10 little kitties.