Virtual 100 – Game 30
I’ll start this off with a preface: I don’t know what the fuck a Marsupilami is. I don’t know what the fuck Hoobadventure means. I don’t know what any of this shit is, or was, or if it was even anything before it was a game that I got for cheap as part of a bundle and played it on my Xbox.
All I know is what it says on Wikipedia:
Marsupilami is a comic book character and fictional animal species created by André Franquin. Its first appearance was in the 31 January 1952 issue of the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou.[1] Since then it appeared regularly in the popular Belgian comics series Spirou & Fantasio, as a pet of the main characters, until Franquin stopped working on the series; the character’s final appearance in the series during Franquin’s lifetime was in 1970.
Apparently, after that it was a Saturday morning cartoon from Disney, and then later another cartoon series in the early 2000’s. Being a kid in the early 90’s I don’t remember this series in the slightest. Not sure if that’s because I was more interested in Ninja Turtles or the X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons, or if it came on a channel that got shitty reception, which was totally a thing back then, kids. Long story short, I have no memory of this character.
The only reason I even own this is because it came as a bundle that I bought on sale for about $5. Because I’m a whore and will play literally anything if it’s $5. This game came packaged with an Asterix and Obelisk game (which I admittedly also didn’t know anything about) and a Smurfs game. Total transparency, I bought it because of the Smurfs. That one DID speak to my childhood, and had it not been included I would have passed this over and you’d never be reading this.
I debated for a little while on whether to count this game as an individual Virtual 100 title or to actually force myself to beat all three and write about them as a whole, because they were purchased as a whole. And I entertained the thought of doing that because I pictured these games as being extremely short little romps that I could bust out in an afternoon, like any old six-stage Nintendo game back in the day.
But after finishing Marsupilami Hoobadventure I am considering it a stand-alone accomplishment. The games individually are budget releases, but do stand on their own, and they should be treated as such.
I have to admit, this game is actually not bad. It’s a pretty solid platformer. A bit on the easy side, obviously, as it’s aimed at a younger audience, but still not bad. The graphics are actually pretty nice, the framerate is rock-solid, and the controls are… mostly responsive. They’re not quite as responsive as I would like, but they work well enough, I suppose. Unlike some other platformers I’ve played while working through the Virtual 100 (I’m looking at YOU Pac-man, you fat fuck).
The game plays very much like a Donkey Kong Country, collecting secret items and finding hidden areas is a pretty big part of the game. There are secret levels that can only be accessed when enough feathers or tickets have been collected. The rewards for these secret areas are a bit on the trivial side, as they usually just reward the player with more lives, of which you will have MANY. But the tickets are the keys to the extra levels.
One of the main things I found interesting in this game is that the levels are quite a bit longer than you would expect. Take your average Mario or even Sonic platforming stage, and you could blow through it in a few minutes if you really wanted to. An average stage in Marsupilami usually took me upward of 10 minutes to get through. There were times I would be playing a stage, just casually jumping from one spot to another, and then I would think ‘holy shit.. I’m still playing this stage.’ And it’s not like it’s a challenging, methodical platformer where you inch along carefully. It’s not Mega Man. You’re running along at a pretty comfortable pace.
The basic concept of the game is that Marsupilami is an animal with a really long tail. Like, really, REALLY long. It usually just flails along behind him like a lasso, but he can use it to swing from rings or whip enemies from a distance. And I suppose he could make a noose out of it and hang himself, if he felt the need to end it all. It’s an impractically long tail, and since this was a traditionally animated TV show back in the day, I truly feel for the animators having to draw the in-betweens for that shit on a daily basis. Maybe that’s why it only lasted a season or two, because fuck that.
But I digress. The mechanics for the game don’t change much over the course of the levels. Marupilami jumps on platforms, hangs from different colored rings, bounces off mushrooms and gets shot out of toucans. As I said, it’s very Donkey Kong Country.
The thing that really did impress me about the game, though, were the graphics. This game looks way nicer than it probably should. I can’t imagine the budget on this game was high, but the entirety of the game looked really, really nice. The jungles were lush and expansive, with vistas stretching out into the background. Every once in a while the camera would zoom out during a platforming segment to give the player a sense of scale, and never once was I let down by it.
I do wish the gameplay variety was a tad more diverse. No matter the obstacles or the setting, the gameplay did still boil down to running from left to right and jumping on stuff. I know that’s not really fair, since Mario has literally been doing the same shit for 40 years, but I would’ve liked to see it mixed up a little. But that’s just me never being satisfied with anything. It is what it is.
A little bit shorter write-up this time around. There’s not a whole lot to say about this, other than if anyone is looking for a platformer for their kids or to entertain themselves for a few hours, you can definitely do worse. I’ve seen it on sale multiple times since I’ve purchased it, usually for a couple of bucks at the most. I would choose this over some other games at a similar price.
Don’t waste your money on Pac-Man World Re-Pac, is what I’m saying. Fuck that game. Fuck it hard.
