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| title | date | score | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_genre | game_release_year | game_developer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Montana's Movie Madness | 2023-03-26T20:47:00+02:00 | 1 | 12759 | 1.5 | Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Montana's Movie Madness | 2D Platformer | 1993 | Konami |
Barely a year after the adequate but far from impressive Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break, Konami takes a shot to redeem itself with Montana's Movie Madness. The formula does not change: it's a 2D platformer based on the Tiny Toon license Konami hopes will still lay golden eggs, it's still very short, and it's still a meagre MBC1 128 KB cartridge that in 1993, four years after the Japanese Game Boy launch, really feels like we as consumer are being ripped off.
As a result, Tiny Toon Adventures 2 can indeed rightly be called Madness. At first glance, you might be inclined to think that, hey, the spritework has been upped, so there must have been effort put in, right? But remember that in the nineties, there was no Analogue Pocket: there were instead hideous ghosting issues with too large sprites. If you fire up a GB debugger, you'll notice that Buster Bunny's sprite in reality takes up eight slots of 8x16 sprites, including the long ears!
Granted, this doesn't show on the screenshots, and in fact, it could even be called appealing in some sections of a stage. And yes, the original game also featured bulky sprites, but here, it becomes difficult to guess what will be coming at you due to the tiny screen resolution.
At least I'm glad Konami fixed the floatyness so the jumping mechanics should be on point. Except that they're not: many jumps require very precise timing, often to the point of you almost floating on top of a gap, standing on the last pixel of the edge, before making the jump. At a certain point in the game, in stage 3, you're required to make a huge jump in your space ship. I simply couldn't cross that gap, not matter what button combination I pressed. Not cool.
Also not cool: enemies are even dumber than in the predecessor. They just stand there, make a few steps to the left and a few to the right. That's it. Huh? In the Samurai stage (2), some dare to throw projectiles at you, but that's about it when it comes to a challenge. I guess the real challenge is crossing those gaps! On top of that, the press-down-to-toggle-run mechanic is clumsy, especially considered in the first game, you press down to... well... duck? I vaguely remember playing this game as a kid and never even making it past stage 2 because of how awkward the run controls work: it's a requirement in certain places to jump higher.
The platforming gameplay of Babs' Big Break was broken up by the odd minigame, which also returns in Montana's Movie Madness. Unfortunately, the minigames such as a wheel of fortune are simplly not as compelling as in its predecessor. The only thing they've actively improved upon besides the handling of the character is the music. Every stage has its own theme, as Montana plays a different movie where Buster features in. For example, the first stage is a Western, the second one features samurai warriors and takes place in Japan, and the third in space. The tunes do neatly match the atmosphere.
That doesn't make it a better game though. For a 1993 Game Boy game, Montana's Movie Madness is a disappointment; a sloppy cash grab that might have fooled a few parents with its flashy magazine ads trap.
If you owned a SEGA Mega Drive back in the day, you were better off playing Konami's Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, released in the same year. Tiny Toon 2 for the Game Boy is not a worthy port nor a worthy successor to the already questionable previous entry.