Toy Story - Sega Genesis

Disney has brought us many great movies in the past; movies that not only are entertaining for the children, but are equally entertaining for the adults. They always had that way of incorporating both child appropriate and subtle adult humor to their films. This is one of the biggest reasons why the movies are as popular and loved as they are.

Disney is also responsible for releasing some of the best video games of the retro era. From great NES titles like Darkwing Duck, The Little Mermaid and DuckTales, to great 16-bit games like Bonkers and Goof Troop, Disney never ceased to impress the retro world. These games can also be looked at as being as popular as they were for almost the same reason as the movies can. They were perfectly developed for both the child and adult player. The games consisted of simple gaming ideas that a child could get into fairly easily, but as the games progressed, the games became increasingly difficult and required a greater bit of skill that could pull in the older audience.

As I said, there were obviously many great retro Disney games, but there is one game in particular that I feel stands on a pedestal of its own. Based on one of my favorite movies, Toy Story on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis is in my opinion, one of the most diverse and innovative games released in part by Disney. Toy Story can roughly be called a platformer, but in all reality, you can’t categorize this game at all. The game consists of seventeen stages (sixteen on the SNES), only five of which could be labeled as true platformer levels.

The other types of levels that the game presents the player are overhead driving levels, in which you need to collect battery packs to keep your RC car from running out of juice while driving through sharp turns and fast straight-aways. There are two constant motion avoidance levels, where you are constantly moving from left to right (either on Roller Bob or Rex) avoiding enemies coming from behind you, in the air, and on the ground. The final level in the game actually acts sort of like a 2-D side scrolling flyer, where you need fly Buzz and Woody to avoid on-coming traffic, stop lights and trees. Of course there are also the occasional boss battles that can be pretty tricky and definitely require a bit of skill and precision. There is also a 3-D first person level with Doom style graphics in which you need to rescue lost aliens inside the depths claw machine (this level is only accessible on the Sega Genesis port). This incredibly diverse dispersion of levels makes sure that the game will never get old as you play through it. You’ll never find yourself getting bogged down by the same old enemies in the same old environments. It really plays itself like seventeen smaller games inside of one larger compilation, which keeps the game really interesting.

Since the game changes styles so often, it makes it a really difficult game to master. Most popular games that Sega was releasing at the time consisted of the same gameplay from start to end. This allowed the player to become better at the game as they progressed through each level, learning from their mistakes and correcting themselves in future stages. But this game does not allow for that, because once a style of gameplay passes, it’s over and either won’t be coming back for a few levels, or won’t be coming back at all. This forces the player to instantly switch mindsets and play the game in a new light after each passing level. So to say that this game is in any way easy, would be ludicrous (I myself have yet to complete this game. I’ve only made it to the sixteenth stage on the Genesis port).

I think it is also worth mentioning that the game’s levels follow the movie’s plot very closely, and don’t seem to stray from the original storyline at all (The game even incorporates a nightmare style boss battle with Buzz that was actually a deleted scene from the original film). Any portions of the movie that may be skipped in the gameplay are present in the in-between-level text scenes that continue the story from the wherever you had last left off. This allows the player to relive the movie as if they were actually piloting the whole film.

If you have never played this one, I highly recommend you do so. You can pick it up at any retro game store or pawn shop for less than five bucks, guaranteed. To close this review up I can safely say that Toy Story on the Sega Genesis is one of my favorite games on the system and quite arguably one of the most ingenious Disney games ever made.