Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!

The Good
This Tiny Toon Adventures platformer was made for the Super Nintendo in 1993 by a team associated with the Goemon games for the Super Famicom. This game isn't much like Goemon but it does share a similar theme of variety, novelty, and entertaining stages with Buster running up walls, skipping rope, scoring a touchdown, playing mini-games, and traveling to space.

Unlike many platformers and previous games in the series Buster doesn't attack by jumping on his foe's head, instead he uses a weird flipping attack or a dash jump/slide. Dashing is Buster's signature move in this game and is required to get across large gaps and run up walls. Between the flipping and dashing this game has a flavor all its own.

Occasionally poor dialog aside, the game's presentation is done very well and is probably the game's strongest attribute. This might just be one of the best looking games for the SNES with lots of color, special effects only possible on the SNES, and some very well animated sprites (something I usually associate more with Genesis games). The music is also quite good although you can definitely recognize those familiar SNES sound chip instruments. The story and humor is right out of the show and, unlike other games, follows an episode-style format with each stage having its own plot.

The Bad
I first played this game as a rental when I was a kid; it didn't end well. I just couldn't get anywhere, even on the lowest difficulty, so I never rented it again (I really wanted to see that football stage too). The game just controls weird, you can't jump on enemies like in many other games and Buster's attacks are awkward. This game is also full of little counter intuitive elements such as running up walls or bosses that can be stunned but not truly damaged with normal attacks and it all seems simple and clever just as long as you get what you're supposed to do but if you don't it's a nightmare. A little lateral intelligence will definitely go a long way in enjoying this game.

The game's main design issue is that, due in large part to its unique dash move, level design has a tendency to be thrown under the bus in favor of balance in game flow. This is most noticeable in the first stage whose largely featureless hallways give so little freedom to explore and experiment that it gives you the weirdly unsettling feeling that you're playing a cut scene (unless you're like I was as a kid, then it's like you're playing a cut scene that has frozen). Later levels are more interactive but not always by much with automatic scrolling and linear level design being used way too often to either force or limit the use of Buster's dash.

The Bottom Line
Buster Busts Loose is a fine game with great graphics and highly novel stages that fans of the series will love. It's best attribute is its overall art design but its worst is its suffocating level design. You could say that this platformer has both the best and the worst aspects of a playable cartoon.