Nerdicus Genesis Review #8 : Adventures of Mighty Max

Title : Adventures of Mighty Max

Publisher : Ocean

Genre : Platformer

Players : 1 Player

Release Date : 1994

Estimated Value (as of today's date) : $5-$7

I eat video games like this for breakfast. HA! Get it? Norman.....no? Come on, you know you watched this show when you were a kid. It was one of the classic Saturday morning cartoons that you plopped yourself down on the couch with a pop tart and a glass of milk and watched for hours on end. I seriously think I owned every VHS of this series. 

How can anyone resist a inter-dimensional travelling kid fighting evil with a enormous, muscle-headed warrior and a talking chicken named Virgil at his side. Yes, I know. He's a fowl.

Before I talk about the video game, did anyone ever own those action figure play sets for MIGHTY MAX? You know the ones where they have little tiny people and the model opens up into adventure sets? I remember one I had was a skull, and you open it up, and it's the interior of a dungeon. Man - the hours I spent playing with those toys. And to think, they actually came out with a video game for both the GENESIS and SNES?

Oh, man. I was in HEAVEN when I was a kid. But.....alas...the game didn't own up to the epic-ness of the cartoon. Let's give it a whirl.

As expected, the SKULLMASTER is the major villain in this game, who due to is undying hatred for the portals, as used them to his advantage to secure different weapon caches in a plot to overtake the universe. As usual, it's up to Max to stop him. Oh, and his goofy sidekicks too that frankly I don't even remember from the cartoon (maybe? I don't know, if they were I just didn't care about 'em)

The game starts with the ability to choose from three characters. You would think you would be able to choose from Max, Virgil and Norman, but no it's only Max and two of his friends. UGH, who cares about them!? I want to swing Norman's sword dammit!

You'll take Max on his journey through five different levels with multiple stages in-between. Each stage is timed (Oh yeah, I love that), and in each stage you have to find the weapons that the Skullmaster is hiding and toss them into another portal. That doesn't sound too bad, if the game was made to be an ABSOLUTE disgrace!

Let me take a deep breath before I get into this. I can barely even describe how horrible this game is. They have taken my childhood dream cartoon and turned it into  a platforming mess. Controlling Max is a dizzying affair, and you end up jumping around like a wild man half the time just trying to avoid the obnoxious enemies. Don't even get me started how your only weapon is basically a gun that shoots ping pong balls. 

How the hell is shooting ping pong balls going to help you fight the Skullmaster????

Virgil and Norman make a few appearances in the game, but it's more like cameos to help you out in certain parts of the levels. I'd much rather play as them permanently. But then again, I can't imagine even putting them in the game would do it much justice.

Visually, it's not bad. I mean I can tell what I'm looking at. It's just that the animations don't seem fluid sometimes. I feel like I'm playing an amped up version of Commander Keen (which is a hundred times better than this crap). I think the most fun I had in this game was just seeing how high Max is able to jump. Because he can jump half the length of the screen. Probably the equivalent of twenty feet. Not bad for a kid, huh?

I can't say much more about this. This is one of the truly epic disappointments that Ocean released. It's funny how they are either a hit or complete miss company. This one, obviously a miss.

Thanks for ruining another one of my childhood cartoons :(

But do you know what WOULD have saved this game? TIM CURRY!!!! The voice of the Skullmaster! So there you have it, the cure to every game is Tim Curry.

Final Score (out of 5) :

Until next time. Keep on gaming!