DAY 137 / GAME 137
Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention
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Back when my brother and I were young we absolutely adored Ren & Stimpy. For years we used to rent the VHS tapes of the series when we would spend the weekend at our dad's. We watched it religiously and would spend hours drawing Ren and Stimpy as often as possible.
I'm not sure what about it was so appealing back then. I mean, I know what I find appealing about it now, but it's not like I appreciated the particulars of John K's animation style back when I was 13. I know I did love the style; I used to love Bugs Bunny when I was growing up and John K. drew a lot of inspiration from those classic WB cartoons. There's also a certain air of crass absurdity that felt like it was more adult than something we should have been watching at the time, but really in the end it was just a ton of poop and fart jokes. And rubber nipples.
So of course, when a Ren & Stimpy game was released on the Sega Genesis, we were sure to jump on it. Stimpy's Invention was this great side scroller that was chock full of the same wacky John K. style, fart jokes, fantastic art and animation. BlueSky and it's crew did a great job of translating the show's art style onto the 16-bit platform. There are a ton of different actions accomplishable by the two characters, each of which have their own animations. The game contains a ton of different character sprites, all based on those from the show and the backgrounds all draw from the unique combination of simplified and hyper-detailed drawings of various episodes.
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Stimpy's Invention ended up being a great game for the two of us. The gameplay worked well as either a single or two-player game, giving you the option of choosing to play as either Ren with Stimpy tagging along, the flip of that, or each player controlling one or the other character. Single player gameplay still had the un-chosen Ren or Stimpy as a tag-along character since there were a few combo moves that required the two of them together to accomplish. This included Ren using Stimpy as a kind of bouncy pogo stick or Stimpy using Ren as a kind of helicopter, what with his big ears and all.
But that was half the fun. All the different rediculous things you could do with the two of them. Ren had his different moves, Stimpy had his and then there was the combo moves. Ren could roll Stimpy like a bowling ball, toss his nose at enemies, squeeze a fart out of him so hard you both shoot in the air, or just slap him left and right for the fun of it. Stimpy could use Ren like a croquet mallet, a baseball bat or many other things I forget. Aside from their own individual moves, apparently there were about 14 different combo moves in total. Good thing they had Doug Tennapel on the animation team!
The whole game was as ridiculous as the tv show. It drew as many references and influences as possible to really bring the two together and as two Ren and Stimpy nuts, my brother and I both found this game more than did the show it's justice. There was at least another few games made for both the SNES and Genesis based on the show, but in the end this is the only one we ever owned. Though, later we did rent one of the ones for the SNES which was quite good, but didn't feel as solid as this one and really overly difficult. Once again, this is one of those games I feel I should break out and play sometime soon. See how it has held up.
Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention
Back when my brother and I were young we absolutely adored Ren & Stimpy. For years we used to rent the VHS tapes of the series when we would spend the weekend at our dad's. We watched it religiously and would spend hours drawing Ren and Stimpy as often as possible. I'm not sure what about it was so appealing back then. I mean, I know what I find appealing about it now, but it's not like I appreciated the particulars of John K's animation style back when I was 13. I know I did love the style; I used to love Bugs Bunny when I was growing up and John K. drew a lot of inspiration from those classic WB cartoons. There's also a certain air of crass absurdity that felt like it was more adult than something we should have been watching at the time, but really in the end it was just a ton of poop and fart jokes. And rubber nipples.
So of course, when a Ren & Stimpy game was released on the Sega Genesis, we were sure to jump on it. Stimpy's Invention was this great side scroller that was chock full of the same wacky John K. style, fart jokes, fantastic art and animation. BlueSky and it's crew did a great job of translating the show's art style onto the 16-bit platform. There are a ton of different actions accomplishable by the two characters, each of which have their own animations. The game contains a ton of different character sprites, all based on those from the show and the backgrounds all draw from the unique combination of simplified and hyper-detailed drawings of various episodes. Stimpy's Invention ended up being a great game for the two of us. The gameplay worked well as either a single or two-player game, giving you the option of choosing to play as either Ren with Stimpy tagging along, the flip of that, or each player controlling one or the other character. Single player gameplay still had the un-chosen Ren or Stimpy as a tag-along character since there were a few combo moves that required the two of them together to accomplish. This included Ren using Stimpy as a kind of bouncy pogo stick or Stimpy using Ren as a kind of helicopter, what with his big ears and all. But that was half the fun. All the different rediculous things you could do with the two of them. Ren had his different moves, Stimpy had his and then there was the combo moves. Ren could roll Stimpy like a bowling ball, toss his nose at enemies, squeeze a fart out of him so hard you both shoot in the air, or just slap him left and right for the fun of it. Stimpy could use Ren like a croquet mallet, a baseball bat or many other things I forget. Aside from their own individual moves, apparently there were about 14 different combo moves in total. Good thing they had Doug Tennapel on the animation team! The whole game was as ridiculous as the tv show. It drew as many references and influences as possible to really bring the two together and as two Ren and Stimpy nuts, my brother and I both found this game more than did the show it's justice. There was at least another few games made for both the SNES and Genesis based on the show, but in the end this is the only one we ever owned. Though, later we did rent one of the ones for the SNES which was quite good, but didn't feel as solid as this one and really overly difficult. Once again, this is one of those games I feel I should break out and play sometime soon. See how it has held up.
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