My Top 100: #93: Tiny Toon Adventures

When you were young, those last few days leading up to Christmas were pretty damn exciting.  Once school was out for the holiday break, the only true hurdle left was Christmas Eve mass.  It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the reasons I was brought to church, but doing it on the single most exciting night of the year??  I always had a rough time paying attention on a normal Sunday, so on Christmas Eve, forget about it.

On the last day of school (a half-day!) before Christmas of ’91, it was sunny and abnormally warm.  I rented the brand new Tiny Toons NES game, ate some Pizza Delight with my mom and her friend, then went home and started my break with lots of gaming.  We had to bring it back to Blockbuster before going to church a couple days later, but I was thrilled to find it laying under our tree the next morning.

Tiny Toon Adventures isn’t exactly one of the first games you’d think of when looking at some of the best platformers on the NES.  With a name like Konami behind it, they were actually able to crank out a few quality games for the Genesis and Super NES as well.

 

 

They were obviously trying to imitate another smash hit – Super Mario Bros. 3 – to the point where the on-screen display was pretty much identical.  It wasn’t quite as addictive in terms of power-ups and hidden secrets, but it did set itself apart by having the fun ability to switch characters.  Before each level, you could choose between Plucky Duck, Dizzy Devil and Furball as alternate playable characters with special abilities.

How did you know which one was best-suited for each level?  You just had to know.  That’s it.

Fun platforming, fun graphics, fun music, fun game!