An American Tail - Final Rating

By Torch

Waaait a minute.. I didn’t see any candy cane guns in the game. Talk about false advertising

With a few exceptions games based on movies haven’t historically been known for their quality. Sometimes they are practically considered merchandise and are hastily slapped together to capitalize on the release of the associated movie. This game, with the snappy title An American Tail: The Computer Adventures of Fievel and His Friends, was released in 1993, 7 years after the first movie it’s based on (An American tail, 1986) and 2 years after the second one (An American tail II: Fievel goes west, 1991). In other words, it doesn’t seem like the game developers were aiming for a release that coincided with any of the movies. If they were, they certainly missed their mark, by quite a margin.

An American Tail - Won!

By Torch

So my previous play session lasted all of 30 minutes and got me through the first part of the game, which is based on the first movie. I’ll just spoil some of the fun right now, and let you know that this second part took me about twice as long to complete. But was it more enjoyable because of this? Let’s find out

Like the first part, the second starts with some PowerPoint exposition. (I’m not including all the slides. There were a fair few)

A new antagonist enters the stage, with a new pun for a name. Caterwaul…

Also, for whatever reason

Right after, I’m dropped onto the westbound train.

I wonder why Fievel is the only guy who has access to a color protecting laundry detergent

An American Tail - Get Shorty

By Torch

At this point I’ve elected not to watch the movie(s) before playing the game. Though it would probably give me a bunch of context, it might also give away plot points or possibly puzzles. Also, I’d like to see if the game is able to stand on its own feet with regards to storytelling, or if it will just assume that I already know what’s going on.

But let’s take it from the start. As you may recall from the intro post, I’m playing poor little mouse Fievel Mousekewitz, who just migrated from his home in Russia to New York, and got separated from his family along the way.

We start off at the dock in New York, where the only thing I can interact with is a somewhat suspicious looking rat, Fievel himself and a couple of exits. One thing of note: I can’t move Fievel around on a screen. He just stands firmly in one spot until I click an exit, after which he does a short walking animation.

Hey! Matching outfits!

Game 126: An American Tail - The Computer Adventures of Fievel / Fievel Goes West

By Torch

In 1986 Amblin Entertainment (Steven Spielberg’s movie studio) decided to challenge a certain other animation studio’s market dominance on animated anthropomorphic mice. Their champion was a movie about a jewish-russian mouse named Fievel Mousekewitz, who has to leave Russia with his family, to avoid persecution by anti-semittic cats. The Mousekewitzes decide to go to America after being told that there are no cats there. They manage to board a ship to New York (where else?), but before they arrive at their destination, there’s a storm, and Fievel gets washed overboard. Believing that he’s dead, the rest of his family continue on their journey. Fievel manages to hike a ride with a floating empty bottle and ends up in New York after all, where he sets out to reunite with his family.

Ah, the play on words (tail/tale)