I never actually watched it Little ones. I don’t think I could relate to that. I was never a kid. At least I don’t remember. So it wasn’t a license that came with Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland that’s what drew me to it, but more because it’s a modern game for the NES. I don’t know about kids, but I know the NES.
The console version has a current front-end to play with, giving it a more cartoon-like feel. Aside from being layered on an 8-bit skeleton, everything is animated in the way you’d expect from a current 2D platformer, with background effects like parallax scrolling. But it’s all built on a game that was built to run on hardware that first hit the market in 1983. That’s how you play it; it’s an NES game.
However, if Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland If it had been released in, say, 1991, when the cartoon first aired, we would probably still be talking about it with a similar reverence to Duck Stories.
So I don’t really know Little ones. Even as a 90s kid I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the show and never watched an episode. I wouldn’t be able to put the names to the characters. The plot is about kids who want to play the modern video game Reptar, but because they’re slackers with no jobs they can’t afford it. So they just imagine it.
There are six levels to choose from at the beginning. There is no suggested order, although there is quite equal in terms of difficulty. However, children do not gain modern skills, nor is there Mega Man-style bosses, so it doesn’t really matter where you go first. They’re all areas around the house, but while they start in the physical world where the parents live, the levels quickly change into environments that are more like video games.
The gameplay clearly draws inspiration from several different titles, but the most crucial one is Super Mario Bros. 2. Some enemies are throwable, and the desert level reeks of Subcon. The flow of the game is completely different though. It’s not a clone of anything, you’re just digging up dirt tiles and picking up enemies. You can feel that quite clearly.
When I watched the demo earlier this year, I had some concerns about the inclusion of co-op. The main concern was that the two giant player sprites would take up most of the horizontal limit on the NES, leaving little room for enemies to move without a lot of flickering. The developers got imaginative to avoid that.
There aren’t that many enemies to begin with. Most of the challenge comes from strategic enemy placement combined with brief but hard platforming sections. It’s also a fairly slow-paced game, using rotating screens to break up level segments. Enemies are generally placed at different heights, which helps avoid taking up more of that precious sprite quota. There’s some flickering (which is fun on Switch, although there’s no option to turn it off), but it’s a perfectly acceptable amount and isn’t at all Great dodgeball game territory.
You can also change the style to HD, which is where the game actually starts. Both the music and the graphics can be swapped. I didn’t like it as much in HD. It starts by zooming in to a 16:9 aspect ratio, which cuts off the top and bottom of the screen. Worse, the backgrounds get blurry when zoomed in, while the player characters don’t. I’m not sure if this is a Switch-specific issue, but it doesn’t look pretty. Luckily, you can zoom in to a 4:3 aspect ratio, where everything looks better.
I mostly played 8-bit because I’m elderly (not 8-bit elderly). Partly because the art style is more readable. You can tell exactly how high each kid jumps and where the edge of the platform is. It’s not that I had problems with the HD graphics. I just love the NES. We’ve established that.
The 8-bit soundtrack is particularly good. It’s not that it’s infectiously catchy like something from Mega Man 2but it makes good apply of the various instrumental effects. Each level has its own distinct sound, but no song seems weaker than the others. The HD versions are good, but with the added sound range, it seems a bit flat.
There are three difficulty levels to choose from, with the default allowing you to switch between the four playable kids at any given time: Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil. Each has different lifting and jumping stats (again, similar to Mario 2), and if one of them takes too much damage, you can swap with another to save them. That’s besides the highest difficulty, where you pick one little guy and are trapped with him for the entire level. It’s not as challenging as it sounds, and it can be better than listening to the pause sound over and over again. It’s not a bad sound, but I’ve heard it too many times.
The bosses aren’t particularly impressive either. Some are reasonable, but others were in dire need of some tuning. Even the final boss, while an engaging concept, isn’t particularly exhilarating. It’s nothing outrageous, but if I had to point out one place in Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland that could be improved, these are my priorities.
And you have to understand that Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is an NES game that fits all the NES limitations. The HD options are nice; it’s like a current remaster released simultaneously. But if you’re not a fan of classic platformers, this will be a challenging sell. It’s a fairly brief experience and isn’t Mega Man.
However, when it comes to NES games, Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is as solid as it gets. I’ve said this before, but if it had come out during the NES era, it probably would have been remembered well. Maybe not as well as one of the system’s absolute classics, but at least in the same niche as Little Nemo: The Dream Master. Released today, this is another very engaging case of a modern licensed game being released on an elderly console. That’s already very exhilarating to me, so the fact that it’s also a well-tuned game is just a bonus.
