Homer Simpson and the bad guy from Roger Rabbit star in this top-notch point&clicker



Type of game: Point & Click Adventure

Published by: Virgin Interactive

Developed by: Burst

After playing numerous new, flashy games and demos like Kingpin and X-Wing Alliance, I felt kinda empty inside. Next to my violant, bloodthirsty side, I also have a place for an old passion of mine: point & click adventures. Aah, I remember 5-8 years ago adventures were so popular and dominant. A time that Sierra was still a big name in the PC-games business with various adventure series as Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest and Space Quest. Now, (anno 1999) adventures like the good old days are as good as gone, luckily Lucasarts still keeps pride in its adventure tradition (Indiana Jones, Monkey Island 1 & 2, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Sam & Max,...) with new releases like Monkey Island 3 and Grim Fandango. Sierra however is pretty much abandoning the adventures and is exploring new genres (GP Legends: Racing, Sierra Pro Pilot: Flight Sim, Halflife: 3D Shoot-Em-Up).

So, I decided to dive in to my very extensive game collection (See also Ultimate Rankings II) and to take out a good adventure. Hmm, let’s see. Grim Fandango? Already reviewed. Monkey Island 3? Dito. Leisure Suit Larry 7? Mmm, maybe some other time. Toonstruck? YES!

Toonstruck is a big adventure featuring Christopher Lloyd (Who framed Roger Rabbit, The Adams Family) as Drew, the hero, and Dan Castenaletta (Homer Simpson) as Flux Wildly, his sarcastic yet oh-so funny sidekick. The story goes as follows.

Drew is a cartoon animator who draws Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun, a (sickening) cute bunny. He’s quite tired of Fluffy, his job, his boss and generally his life. Somehow, he later on finds himself in a cartoon world, devided in three parts: Cutopia, home of all that is sweet, dear and friendly (and sappy too). Zanydu, hometown of Flux, a place that could’ve come right out of a Looney Tunes movie. The toons there are sarcastic yet incredibly funny. And last but not not least, you have the Malevolands, a downright nasty place ruled by the evil count Nefarious. This man has invented a machine that can corrupt everything that is sweet and kind to a typical computer game project leader (bad to the bone). Your job is to find the missing parts of a machine which produces the opposite effect (From Madonna to gospel singer). But trust me, the storyline developes and becomes more complex.

Although Toonstruck isn’t made by Lucasarts, it has a lot of similarities with the style and humor of the boys from Lucas. First of all, you have the graphics. These are all drawn in the typical cartoon-style we all know well from various Lucas classics like Monkey Island. Drew however is a "human" character in a cartoon world which adds an extra dimension to the game. The humor is also very similar to Lucas’ Monkey Island. It’s all soo sarcastic: Your sidekick Flux Wildly will crack you up everytime with his witty remarks. Another good comparison is the cast. The actors are excellently chosen, just like with Lucas adventures. The music is great too, it’s like the Warner Brothers themselves came to the developers’ studio to compose the typical, looney songs! I can’t say anything less than bravo to Burst.

Bad things or errors in the game are very hard to find. If there is one thing that might be disturbing is the pretty high difficulty: the puzzles are all very logical, but sometimes it really seems far away... Next to that, you may also experience some trouble when playing on a newer (PII or above) computer: Some of the mini-games implemented in the game will run incredibly fast, thus making it very hard to win them. These mini-games often give you valuable items so a lot of patience is recommended (Of course I had some old savegames from the time I had a "slow" computer, so that was no problem for me). There was also a problem with the UniVbe driver, mainly because it is an older game. With some newer 2D (/3D) cards you may experience difficulties with the display: My problem was that my cursor and most of the characters flickered, a problem I could solve by adding a small extension to the .bat file. This was mentioned though in the troubleshooting guide. There could also be a problem with your sound card because Toonstruck mainly is a DOS game with limited Windows 95 support. But I had no problems even with my new SB Live. All these "compatibily" problems are perfectly normal for a game that is 3 years old.

EP sez:

Next to the relatively high difficulty and some "age" flaws, Toonstruck is a hilarious and fun adventure. With this, my love for adventures is awake again. If you have this game already in your collection and you’ve forgotten it, blow of the dust from Toonstruck and replay, you won’t regret it. As for the rest of you, Toonstruck isn’t for sale as a budget game and the chances of finding a copy are slim to nil so... Have fun with your Quakes, Unreals and Halflifes, okay?

The following score is of course a bit subjecitve. I’ll grade it as a new game, because Toonstruck really deserves it.
You can agree or disagree, but you’ll just have to suck it up, OK?

(c) 1999 Erwin's Pages
Erwin "Reaper" Husin

Score

Gameplay: 9,5

Graphics: 9

Sound & Music: 9

Addictiviness (When you aren’t stuck): 8,5

Overall: 91,5%

Links

> Gamespot Toonstruck Walkthrough