Rugrats: Go Wild! - Watching the Movie... but Faster!

28/01/24

Sometimes, I wonder if it’s a blessing or a curse that some of these licensed titles are just so damn short. Because, sometimes, with a bit more playtime, something will bloom out of these. A new mechanic, or *something* that’ll make the game just work on a more basic level. On the other hand, I think it’s just as likely that the worst of the bunch will always be what they are - frustrating, transient experiences at the best of times, and being able to punch through these games in less than an hour are what’s best for me and my ever-dwindling sanity. Maybe Rugrats Go Wild would have something interesting to bring to the table with some time, but if its bare-bones approach, frustrating minigames, and incredibly simplistic game design are anything to go by… Well, maybe its extremely short length is for the best.

Whilst I don’t have a ton of memories about it these days, I remember adoring Rugrats, and I’m genuinely not sure why. Looking back, maybe it’s through the lens of a young adult, but the babies’ designs are kind of weird in a deformed, odd way, though the bevy of memes I see about how hilariously odd the parents are kind of rule inr retrospect. I dunno, once we didn’t have access to Nickelodeon, around when I was ten or so, I pretty much ceased being able to watch it, and it vanished from my pea-sized brain. I remember practically nothing of the Wild Thornberrys, beyond fantastic Nigel memes, or the crossover movie this game takes it’s label from, so when you string that all together, I really don’t have any nostalgia riding on this game… though I’ve quickly learnt via The Game Boy Abyss not to put much stock in nostalgia, beyond the tried and true classics of my childhood.

From what I can gather, whilst this game is a very, very rough adaptation of the film, it’s pretty much just playing lip service to a variety of moments, mostly through it’s minigames and scant dialogue - hell, the game, even played at a relatively normal pace, is shorter than the movie! All the beats seem to be here - the Rugrats gang have washed up on an island the Wild Thornberrys also happen to be on, and what follows is dual protagonists Tommy and Eliza interacting with the casts of each game, trying to find their way across the island and locate their respective families… and that’s it, really. There’s no real drama to the proceedings, seemingly no real adaptation of the more dramatic events of the film, just… go here, find this character, do what they need, repeat with some minigame spaced out and… yeah, there’s not a lot here to talk about. The game’s over before you know it, and there’s nothing really extra or bonus to collect or experience, so this is a one and done experience - unless you’re some sort of nutcase speedrunner who loves terrible games, in which case, I’ll pray for you.

From the start, it’s clear that Rugrats: Go Wild is a small-scale game, with incredibly little backstory and basically just a few pixely screenshots with text, and you’re off to the races. You’ll spend the majority of your time just wandering each of the tiny areas, sometimes as Tommy, and sometimes as Eliza, that make up the island, hunting down a variety of the characters and accomplishing a task to progress the plot. Usually, you’ll just be required to find an item that’s hidden somewhere in that area, though more often you’ll be thrust into a minigame instead. This adventure hub-like loop works well enough, and it’d be great for younger fans of the properties, but it’s not particularly engaging at the best of times, especially since the majority of characters and items are mere steps out of view, requiring very little… y’know, adventuring. Hell, half the time you don’t even have to go looking for them - simply open up your map, and odds are you’ll be able to just warp to them, just like that. Again, engaging. I wouldn’t say it reaches the point of being repetitive, but I think that probably has more to do with the game only being an hour long, and not any real statement on the overall quality of the game. Oof.

Really, it’s the minigames that’ll take up most of the time, and for the most part, these are… these are pretty bad. I mean, the concepts themselves are fine; several are sequences where you’re collecting fruits to throw at various jungle creatures to… actually, I’m not really sure why we’re harassing the wildlife - all I know it’s probably justified just from how poorly they control. Plus, the crocodile probably had it coming. Uh, anyway, there’s also a weird car slash boat race whilst collecting orbs whilst also fending off poachers (????), and there’s another where you hang out in a submarine and short stuff. It’s… it’s riveting stuff, really. And it’s not even as if they’re particularly challenging - some, like the car-boat races, are pathetically easy and seemingly near impossible to screw up, but fighting the monkeys and the crocodiles control so poorly, and commit the cardinal sin of having instant failures in a game for literal children is just insane to me. The fact they don’t perform that well, probably running at half speed, due to design or lag, just makes this bag of worms all the more worse. The floaty way the characters leap, the slow arc of the projectiles, it just feels utterly bad to play, and the fact you have to do all these minigames at least twice - in an hour long game, I remind you - is just awful. At least the submarine was short and entertaining, not the genuine slogs the animal fighting (damn, what a weird sentence in this context) provides.

Honestly, the most standard thing about it is its audio-visual experience. Again, there’s very little to say; everyone looks a bit off-model, a little weird, and a lot of the minigames look more than a little funky, but that’s nothing new for even the better titles on GBA, so i can’t really hold it against Rugrats Go Wild *that* much. It ain’t no American Idol, let’s just say that. The audio? Look, I can’t be bothered looking up anything again, but the fact I have no memory of anything, good or bad, means it can’t be that bad… Can it? Seriously though, it fits the game well enough; a lot of xylophones with a general ‘tropical’ motif throughout. Honestly, considering audio is one of the least important qualifiers for me for any game, the fact that it’s probably the strongest element does not bode well for it’s general standard of quality. But man, I just gotta say, there’s so little to say about his game? How much longer can I stretch this thing out?

I feel kind of bad having so little to say about this game, but how do you say more? I’ve played games even shorter than this for The Game Boy Abyss, but good or bad, they felt more… well, *more*. Muppets: On With The Show at least had decent minigames and genuine love for The Muppets, and Bratz and American Idol were so bad, I could at least rant for a paragraph or two about them. Somehow, more than these, Rugrats: Go Wild feels even more like disposable, quickly produced trash. Beyond children who’ve barely dipped their toes into gaming, Rugrats Go Wild will appeal to almost nobody, and the fact it’s so short maybe it's a very saving grace. And, really, that’s all she wrote.

Nothing more than tie-in trash, Rugrats: Go Wild is a waste of time and (if you’re particularly foolish) money, running shorter then the movie it’s based on, and having nothing to do but wander around, pick up some fish, and then play the same, poorly made minigames again and again and again… there’s very little to like here. The fact I have to say it’s functional, that I was able to beat the game without too much of a struggle - sans the awful minigame controls - goes to show how much of a *nothing* the title Rugrats Go Wild is. There’s nothing to talk about, nothing to make fun of. It’s a nothing game, a functional nothing, but a nothing nonetheless - and I can think of few more damning remarks then that.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Rugrats: Gone Wild on the Game Boy Abyss. Another quick, easy, and utterly pointless game, lovely. Next week we’ll be taking at something a little more notable, a title that never saw a release on the GBA in the West! As always, you can find me on Twitter @Lemmy7003, email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com or cckaiju@gmail.com, or on Twitch at GameBoyAbyss. Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next time.