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.