Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

The extreme strategy involved in this game along with the time travel makes this one of the better games I have played in a long time. You should totally pick this game up and party on, dudes!

The guys look and talk just like their excellent movie-selves. In the game, you get to pick different responses for the guys to use when talking to other characters. The story's fun, too. Your out to save historical dudes and babes who don't want to be saved. There are some weak spots in the game, however, as the Power Meter indicates. It isn't easy finding items, which means you spend ages wandering around and that's frustrating. Luckily, there's a good manual that should help. Control is awkward, too - also a minus. Check this one out to see if it's for you.

All in all this is a nice combination of adventure and action, but too easy. The graphics are nice, but the sound is awful. This game deserves an average mark (3).

At its worst, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure doesn't make much sense. You have an inventory of items, but it's hard to tell what they do, and there's often no indication if an item is having any effect at all. It doesn't help that the manual (which folds out in the most annoying manner) reads more like a comic than instructions. A jaunty tune plays during the action, and a password feature lets you save your progress at any time. The password is critical because this game requires a few hours to complete. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure may not be excellent, but it isn't totally bogus either.

Though it does a reasonable job of making you feel like you're really exploring different historical periods, Bill & Ted's Excellent Videogame Adventure doesn't really do anything else right. Avoid it.

Over a decade ago, Abby Normal had this to say about Bill and Ted's Excellent Video Game in a review that she wrote for GamePro magazine: "In this just slightly excellent single player roleplay/action/adventure, B&T bee-bop through the Circuits of Time via their time-travelin' phone booth." Assuming that she meant "shameful excuse for a Nintendo game" instead of "just slightly excellent single player roleplay/action/adventure" and instead of "bee-bop through the Circuits of Time" she actually meant to say "rape my face," then I would have to agree with her.

Gamers hate licensed games. When a company announces a game based on our favorite movie, TV, or comic book characters, we feel our stomach's tighten because it's better than even money that they'll screw it up. E.T. for Atari, Total Recall for NES, and the recent Superman for the N64 have all proven this. Bill and Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure is difficult to review because it is a very rare exception to this rule. It fails at absolutely everything except the license.

Bei solchen Machwerken vergeht mir gleich die Lust, wieder Spiele zu testen. Die Grafik schwankt zwischen "uuaah" und "örks". Den auf der Packung gepriesenen AdLib-Sound konnte ich trotz mehrfacher Installation nicht entdecken - der Lautsprecher blieb stumm. Am schlimmsten ist aber das "Spiel": Die Actioneinlagen sind allesamt alte Hüte, schlecht programmiert und abwechslungsreich wie ein Telefonbuch: Durch Labyrinthe laufen, auf Leitern klettern, über Fäßer springen oder sich mit Cowboys prügeln - wie aufregend. Die "Wer kriegt was?"-Adventure-Elemente machen wenig Freude. Liest man die Anleitung, stolpert man über die Lösungen.

I suppose every concern I have about Bill & Ted's VG Adventure could easily be answered with, "Games based on licensed properties are usually little more than Get Rich Quick schemes". I guess it should also be no surprise that a game in which you spend most of your time falling on your ass should land squarely on its, too. Thankfully, the Bill & Ted movie got a proper sequel to cleanse the territory stolen by this forgettable outing, which is more of a "bogus journey" than the real sequel claimed itself to be.