Tiny Toon Adventures: Cartoon Workshop

The Good
Did you know that you can record games using a VCR? Well you can, although very few games ever expected you too (pretty much just this and Mario Paint). Anyway, there is no game in this "game", instead you create cartoon scenes with Tiny Toons characters which can then be recorded with a VCR and even stitched together to create actual episode size stories.

Usually games like this tend to be difficult with clumsy interfaces and few preset options forcing you to spend so much time to do anything it never feels worth it, but this is surprisingly easy to use. A simple walking animation just requires you to place a walking animation and tell it to move forward, from there you move ahead X number frames until you want something else to happen, then you can add another character, prop, dialog, sound effect, and/or change the walking animation to a different animation. Changed your mind? Want to add music or a joke? Just flip back through the frames and make changes, it's simple!

The Bad
As you might expect, as an NES game, this game has some big limitations. First off, there are only six characters that you can use (Buster, Babs, Plucky, Furrball, Calamity, and Little Beeper) all with a very limited number of animations. You can also only use two characters/props at the same time and, most disappointingly, there is no custom dialog allowed.

Trying to create a story with this game is very hard because dialog choices are limited and animations are very limited, consisting mostly of physical comedy stuff. You'll get the feeling when you create scenes with this game that you're making the cartoons the developers wanted you to create and not the ones you wanted to create.

The Bottom Line
Games like these are easy to write off and to be fair many of them deserve to be, but this game is easy enough for a Tiny Toons fan to use and get absorbed into that, even after you think you've done it all, you'll think of something new you can do with that limited tool set and come back to it. Still, a game like this could've been so much better with just a little bit more (general reactions and gestures, custom dialog, a less restrictive choice of console) you'll wonder why games like these are no longer made.