Toonstruck
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He's not a butler - he's a footman. Geddit? FOOT-MAN? Oh, never mind.

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This is Fluffy-Fluffy Bun-Bun, darling of Cutopia. Why are we saving this place again?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, when 3dfx cards were just a twinkle in the eye of, er, Mr. 3Dfx, we happily played all sorts of games without the merest thought of anti-aliasing, texture compression or lens flare. Hell, sometimes we even played 2D games, like point and click adventures. Of course, you wouldn't see one nowadays, what with your 'X-Box' and whatnot. Bah! But back then - oh, to relive those halcyon days...

Toonstruck is representative of an era when adventure games, while remaining true to their origins, underwent a bit of a makeover, introducing simplified control systems and SVGA (640x480 - woo!) graphics. It was critically quite well received at the time, with its main selling point the fact that in the game you are Christopher Lloyd (the Doc from Back To the Future). Quite why anyone thought this would help them shift copies of the game is mystifying, but in any case they were wrong because Toonstruck was soon to be found in bargain bins everywhere.

Lloyd plays Drew Blanc, a down-on-his-luck cartoonist who one day is suddenly sucked into his own cartoon world and forced to help out his own creations before he can escape back into the real world. While not exactly original, the story is quite well done, with an unexpected plot twist in the middle turning the whole game upside down and completely altering your aims and objectives. Graphically, the game is still reasonably impressive if you can handle the fact that it's all rather, er, flat, with the world apparently drawn by professional cartoonists. Aside from Lloyd himself, celebrity voices are provided courtesy of Dan Castalanetta (Homer Simpson) and Tim Curry.

By and large, it's all pretty standard fare, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Once you get going, examining items, talking to characters, solving the use-this-object-on-that-object puzzles, it all feels reassuringly familiar. Like a pair of old slippers. In fact, Toonstruck's biggest problem is with something that it tries to do a little bit differently - occasionally you are faced with situations where the solution is perfectly obvious but an act of superhuman dexterity with the mouse is required to progress. For example, on one occasion you have to escape from a cauldron by moving from side to side quickly in order to make it tip over. However, I only managed to make it do so after a marathon session of mouse-bashing more exhausting and frustrating than in any track and field game I can remember. Also totally unnecessary is the disturbingly large amount of cringe-worthy innuendo to be found in the script. What makes this worse is the fact that once the 'punchline' has been uttered, your game character starts laughing and slapping his thigh in order to hammer home the point that a joke has just been made.

That said, certain things in the game can cause a faint smirk, for example, the horrendously over-the-top, sugary-sweet world of 'Cutopia' in which you begin features a rabbit character called Fluffy-Fluffy Bun-Bun. In the next world along, the Itchy and Scratchy-esque antics of the inhabitants of 'Zanydu' also provide the odd moment of slapstick fun. And throughout there is a level of tongue-in-cheek cultural commentary reflected in the locations you visit and the characters you meet, a la Sam and Max or Monkey Island. It's not quite in the same league as those games, but there's at least enough there to make you want to keep playing.

The point, in case you were wondering, is this: while it may not scale the heights of greatness, Toonstruck is still a worthy and enjoyable game, engrossing and occasionally amusing. In any case, Escape from Monkey Island aside, 'pure' adventure games are so thin on the ground these days that if you're a fan of the genre you're pretty much screwed, unless you're willing to give older titles like Toonstruck a go. Seeing as the alternative is to embrace the watered-down action/adventure and get used to pulling levers and finding keys for locked doors, you may be as well trying to track it down.

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Count Nefarious' Malevolator. You need to build a machine that does the exact opposite...so you need to find a counterpart for all these items.

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If you disturb these little critters, they'll perform a vomit-inducing song and dance, just for you.


Requirements: Not designed for Windows, runs better in DOS. A 486/66 with 8MB RAM will do, although it can be a bugger to get it to recognise your graphics card.

Availability: It was released on the Sold Out label some time ago so you might find it in a shop somewhere, (or perhaps second-hand). Comes on 2 CDs, so abandonware sites are unlikely to have it.