Toonstruck

Continuing the trend of talking about games that no one has ever heard of, I'd like to tell you all about Toonstruck, a point-and-click adventure game released in 1996. My girlfriend and I finally finished this game a little while ago after playing it for several weeks. Pretty long for a non-episodic point-and-click game.

I stumbled upon this gem a couple months ago while online looking up different adventure games to play. The description for the game sounded interesting enough, then I read the casting roles. Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta, Tim Curry, Jeff Bennett, Dom DeLuise, AND Jim Cummings!? Why hadn't I heard of this game before???

Needless to say I had to start this game right away. I told my girlfriend about it and she was interested too, so we decided to play it together. We started up the game one night and boy, lemme tell ya, nothing is greater than Doc from Back to the Future complaining about pink fluffy animated bunnies.


...Off to a good start. As we played I starting noticing popular 90's cartoon voice actors left and right. It was amazing. The guard from Aladdin as a frog who works at a bakery, the cat from American Tail as a sarcastic octopus, Johnny Bravo as an extremely flamboyant "carecrow," NIGEL THORNBERRY AS THE MOST EVIL CARTOON CHARACTER OF ALL TIME! This game was amazing. Then this happened.


...What more can I say? If you're a big fan of 90's cartoons and you like parodies, you need to play this game.

Video Game Review: Back to the Future: The Game

Honestly... This was quite possibly the best point-and-click adventure game I've ever played. Granted I haven't played too many point-and-click adventure games, I thought it was at least better than Sam and Max and the old Humongous Entertainment games. Don't get me wrong, Humongous Entertainment was amazing, but unfortunately all of their games were kid-oriented.

The story for this game went from so-so, to cool, to what!?, to downright amazing. It seemed like the story picked up after each episode and got more and more interesting. I suppose it helps that the game had an entire movie trilogy to play off of, but the developers really did a fantastic job of implementing a wonderful new story while stile incorporating most if not all of the important aspects from the movies.

In Back to the Future: The Game, you're joined by the same (mostly) lovable cast from the movies as well as a few new additions. The voice acting is beautifully done and they even use the same soundtrack from the movies. The graphics were... not the best, but the developers still did a really good job of working with what they had, I assume using the Telltale design kit to the fullest of their abilities. While most of the animation consisted of bits of dialogue between two or more characters, there were also a few pretty cool cutscenes involving the Time Traveling DeLorean.

Nothing changes from playthrough to playthrough so there's essentially no replay value unless you forgot certain parts or just want to see some parts over again for whatever reason. So that's my only real complaint with the game aside from the sub-par graphics which are extremely easy to look over. For that reason, I'd say this game is probably a rental, but I would still definitely recommend at least one playthrough to anyone who is even remotely interested in adventure games. I give Back to the Future: The Game an 8/10.