So there's this cartoon which I vaguely remember, having neither watched it nor any program it might have been advertised during. But I do know, somehow, that it involved the shape-shifting-but-not-into-anything-useful decendant of Quisp traveling to earth to help solve minor, inconsequential envirommental issues. Obviously, this cartoon was designed to target an audience who couldn't handle the serious and not at all farfetched moral dilemmas encountered by the Planeteers. Wisely, Atlus chose not to incorporate any of that into the game. Not incredibly wisely, of course, as the wisest decision of all would have been to cancel the project altogether, or even better, not have ever considered it. As I said, I didn't enjoy it. At least, not the way it was intended to be. That's just the way things work around here.
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I also wouldn't have guessed it was made by a company I could name one other game by. A shock that neither Konmai nor Capcom were able to snatch up the coveted Widget license.
You're possibly wondering where the picture of the title screen logo is. You don't necessarily want to see it, but you're probably wondering where it is. Here it is, you whiner, so stop whining.
I think I have good reason to be scared of it.
Note that the “Super” refers to the Nintendo system which it runs on, and nothing more.
kidnapping Widget (by the hair, no less) and making you start over if you get hit too many times, I can only gather that its role is that of an all powerful evil tormentor, one which you are helpless to stop, because it is after all a floating exposed brain head.
Remember when I said that videogames based on cartoons usually have good animation, because that's all they could possibly have going for them? I hope you don't, because it turns out I was wrong (oh, shock). When beaten, most boss enemies are overtaken by the doubledragon blink effect which, honestly, didn't even look good in that game. But it looks worse here. I think Dungeons of the Unforgiven even had better animation than this, and it didn't have any.
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I'll take total lack of effort over apparent and disappointing effort any day. And at least some (as in, shareware module) of the stuff in that game was drawn kind of well. Everything here looks like it was made by the people who did that early '90s cartoon about the alien... what was it called? Oh, never mind.
Astoundingly, VEGI-LAND is not the least original level title in the game.
So your first mission is to "go get RATCHET." Seriously. You aren't told where to go to get the RATCHET, what to do with it once you get it, or even what a RATCHET is. You see, this is a puzzle game. What you need to figure out is "why am I playing this game?" Fortunately, we've already been over that. As it turns out, finding RATCHET, and in fact all tasks in the game are actually pretty easy. You just go to the right and hope for the best. When you progress to level two, you may find yourself wondering whatever happened to that RATCHET you were supposed to get, and that maybe this second level is your punishment for not getting it. Well, it turns out that RATCHET is actually the name of the pink creature you see at the end of level one, which didn't occur to me until the end of level six. You already "got" RATCHET. And RATCHET "got" away.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
That's how it's going to be for the whole page, folk.
What better way to show your love for natural splendor than by traveling to distant planets and bashing up their native [robot] inhabitants with your comically oversized I'm Sorry-esque fists of graft™? I can't think of one, and neither can our hero here. For a game based on an allegedly educational cartoon, this is pretty pogspammed violent. And the ever-smiling Widget couldn't look less remorseful throughout any of it.
Ehhh, so this is pretty much your average, unremarkable first level, with stupid looking plants, curiously hostile and nonsurprisingly easy enemies, and... something is definitely not right here.
If you were wondering, "who could possibly hate good ol' Widget, (which if you're like me you weren't, because you knew already that you, yourself hated good ol' Widget)" now you know. Bouncing mushrooms with faces. Like, duh.
The local hands aren't such big fans, either
That's our RATCHET. You might think that if I had watched the cartoon, I would know that already, and that the game was never intended to be played by people who hadn't watched the program, and that what I'm doing is terribly unfair. That is correct. Anyway, RATCHET looks to be an archnemisisly evil Widget, that is, assuming Widget isn't the evil one. In such constant company of Floating Exposed Brain Head, I imagine it's hard not to be.
Don't be misled. At first, it might seem to imply that BRIAN was kidnapped, but as the level takes place at WONDERLAND, "BRIAN from WONDERLAND" must mean that BRIAN lives there, and Dr. DANTE was doing a whole different kind of grabbing, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. By the way, I know this is WONDERLAND, because of this
decadently lit, eye catching sign in the background.
The name is very apt. That's WONDER as in: “I WONDER why anyone would ever go to such a boring amusement park.”
It's a theme-park style level, (the theme being 'blandly generic') which means several things: lots of floating platforms in the place of proper rides, yellow, a wholly non-fun funhouse that somehow manages to make up half the level, and undoubtedly clown imagery of some sort. I can't personally recall the last time I saw a clown at one of these places, and I'd remember if I had, because that's just the sort of thing I'd not want to remember, and thus would.
WIDGET, didn't your mother ever tell you not to take W-coins from strangers? Wait... don't answer that. WIDGET is one of those characters that I don't like to imagine having a mother.
See? The "nice man" in the lab coat becomes a gangly evil eyed creep once he gains your trust.
Fortunately, WIDGET attended Ron Kosakowski's seminar, and knows that the best way to fend off a pedophile is to utilize “combative styles that are not quite yet popular to the public,” one such style being that of mercilessly jumping on their head, over and over again.
Oh, you're a big help.
Ohhh-kay...
Why the bimp are they growing inside the volcano?!
With all the censorship Nintendo imposed on its third parties over the years, it surprises me that not one of the multitudinal instances of bird defecation that showed up was ever considered obscene. Look, it's even green. That's just gross.
Alright, first of all, why? You still haven't told me what RATCHET's done that's so terrible. Having a terribly unfashionable hairstyle is the only thing that comes immediately to mind.
I think I see who George Wabbush got his mid-east policy from. Except I can't imagine a cartoon from 1992 featuring any "gassing own people and erecting statue in self's honor" episodes. Well, maybe Denver the last Dinosaur, but I think when you're the last frupping dinosaur you're entitled to certain liberties. Like gassing all the other dinosaurs so that you're the last and thus given the right to do stuff like that. I think the last sentence was deeper than this entire game.
Hey, what's this "we" business, all of a sudden? Where were you when I had to deal with that diarretic pigeon? Loading GakTM into the birdfeeder, I'll bet.
Wait a minute. RATCHET flopes around in that? It doesn't matter how self-centered you think someone you know is. Nothing is more vain than driving a vehicle shaped like yourself. I want to kill that conceited little toad.
After that level it shows me this. I haven't forgotten what game I was playing, so that must mean this is the ending. Yes, that makes sense. The arch-nemesis has been defeated, and in the
level at which the map display stopped scrolling, no less. I'm glad it's finally over...
Oh, naw.
Alright, ya blue freak, what do you want?!
Not eeeeevil villains! They've gone and conquered all the kindly villains that normally keep them in line, in guess.
Hey hey HEY. I only take orders from disembodied heads with exposed brains! This game is oh-vah! You agree with me, don't you, WIDGET?
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“AGUA PLANET” or possibly AQUA PLANET...with this game's font it's hard to tell.
This level came about because Atlus realized they'd done six stages and hadn't used any mode7 effects yet.
And we learn that MEGA SLANK is poisoning all the water. Perhaps to atone for all his years sabotaging pizzas as
the noid and stealing hamburgers as the hamburglar, he felt a personal obligation to give something back to the non-healthy consumables community.
Brilliant, hoe. Or, alternatively, you could drop me off on THE OTHER SIDE of the poisonous sea. Evil tormentor, I tell you!
This foot like object (or more likely just a shoe at the end of a pole) which can be found on PLANET OF THE GIANTS continually stomps down in the same place, regardless of whether anything crushable is there or not. So save for the purposes of a hoedown, or even, dare I type it, a hootenanny, this makes no sense. And even if that was the explanation I was expected to arrive at, when does a hoedown ever make sense? Come to think of it, there's only one leg to speak of, one less than is required for such things, so it's probably merely the result of lazy game-making. You know, unlike everything else. But all has not been for naught. I did get to type "hootenanny," after all. Twice.
The story for this level is that “GYP is
You know, for someone with the means to overpower and enslave giants,
GYP is surprisingly diminutive and non-hard-to-defeat. I suspect that following their one-legged hoedown, the giants all got terribly drunk off of
DRINK BRAND BEVERAGE (judging by the proportions exhibited in those images, they'd need both hands to hold one can), fell down, and quite simply could not get up.
And another level,
adding credibility to my suspiscion that this game was translated entirely by Babelfish. This level is notable, not only for it's
rainbow bubbles, which in the event you can't count, only come in four colors, but also because this was the point at which I gave up trying to play the game normally. “Normally,” of course, in the sense that I was already save-stating every couple of seconds and reloading after every hit taken, and this is an easy game anyway. So for me to turn to
ZSNES' cheat search for further assistance would imply either that: this is one of the most monotonous, repetetive, pointless things ever (Super Widget, I remind you, not this page), or I'm just really bad at video games. Yes.
Take a look at that. Yes, they really are rehashing level plots within the same game. But that's not what I want you to see.
Is that a great name, or what? I wish that was my name. But alas, it already belongs to whom I truly believe to be the greatest easily dispatched/forgotten villain of them all.
Yes, even better than Moraff's SHADOW ZEUS EVIL GOD. In case you were never made to study the relevant ology, let me tell you a bit about Zeus.
Zeus, AKA Zues was not the name of a person, but actually a species, one which puts lepus cuniculus' reproductive abilities to shame. So the next time you hear of something purported to have “bred like rabbits,” you can respond with “or Zues's, even.” (remind me again why I don't just make another page about Moraff)
Anyway,
Half pirate, half circus impresario, ALL DASTARDLY! Wow is right. To clear up a possible confusion, I get pirate from the flamboyant clothing choice, and not the bullhorn. Right.
It takes a true legend to be able keep a straight face whilst prancing around like that. I would attribute it to the afore mentioned animation deficiency, if not for the look of
utter horror and disgust FLIM FLAM displays after losing. But we just have to accept that a WIDGET game is one of those situations where everyone involved is going to be a loser.
Why do you need to tell me that? If it really was, wouldn't I recognize my HOME PLANET?
Would OUR HOME CITY have a name by any chance? And why is it even relevant whose HOME CITY it is? No one should have to live with... with trees nearby! That's just cruel!
Would anyone mind telling me why ROCK MONSTER's weapons of choice are Amelica OnLine free trial CDs? While I admit I can't at this time think of a better use for them, I'd think someone made out of rock with the power to move a forest that kills people would have a more lethal arsenal.
Maybe I'm just strange, but it strikes me as tremendously odd that the same place which gives us names like WIDGET and RATCHET also comes up with JAMIE.
Oh no, not ZUES!
According to a magazine with standards low enough to devote two pages to a WIDGET game (to their credit, it wasn't this one, though the existence of another doesn't exactly give me hope for the world-watched), this creature is called BIZARRE BRAIN. Like the other one's normal or something.
That wasn't the “FEROCIOUS MONSTER,” but when I found out it wasn't a Zues I lost interest, and figured that no one who's ever played the game [this far] will ever see the page anyhow, so I can pretend it was and move on to the end, as long as I don't say anything about it.
Alright, this time it's really over. I'm sure of it.
See? What did I tell you.
Wuh...?
DADA-D'DADADURN!
Five more pallete-swapped levels, with recycled boss enemies. It's almost as if Atlus was as bored with this game as I was (and yet I finished it. What's wrong with me?!). Ehhh. You know... no? I'll tell you then. Whenever I'm feeling overworked and under-appreciated, I put on a bouffant wig and congratulate myself in an orange-tinted mirror. On any other day, for me to say this would be irrelevant, possibly even embarrassing, but it turns out WIDGET does it too.
I thought I would feel better about it now, but I don't.
