Wayne’s World - Final Rating

by Michael

Okay, kids.  Grab some Red Vines and let’s rock out this final rating post.

So, we reached the end of Wayne’s World in the last post, and it’s time to reflect on the experience.  This can be a very educational experience, and with some soul-searching, this process will bring us to total harmony....

... NOT!

Seriously, this wasn’t a bad game.  It definitely has flaws, but I was expecting something much, much worse based on the games of this developer we played already.  Most recently, Alex briefed us on L.A. Law back in 1992, and Ilmari drove The Beverly Hillbillies to the view of civilization earlier this gaming year.  I think they made a better effort with this outing, but let’s see how it fares in the scoring.  

Wayne's World – Won!

by Michael

At the end of this game, we will be rescuing a princess.

Well, I have to take back some of my optimism about this game from the previous posts.  This last segment of the game made me feel as though I was constantly climbing ladders, dodging wine barrels being tossed my way.

I’m going to leave out a lot of the deliberations that went into my actions.  A lot of the puzzle solving in this last section came down to pure luck or brute force inventory application.  Sometimes, I could see where I might have been given a hint, had I arrived at a different screen first, but instead did not.

Last we saw, I found out my pookie had been babe-napped, and the money we raised to save the TV station had been stolen at the same time.

I dare you to say it three times, really fast.

Exploring the world after the tragedy, I made my way to the grocery store warehouse, where, housed within, was a meeting of the Secret Society of Sinusitus Sufferers.  Because that is the most likely place for a meeting, of course.

I could think of a better place for such a meeting.

Wayne's World - Welcome to Uncle Nutzy's Clubhouse

by Michael

This logo reminds me of another adventure game publisher...

So, last post, I said the game wasn’t as bad as I expected.  And that’s still true.  But it is far from the “Pinnacle of Entertainment Software” as their logo in the game loading sequence claims.

I probably could have finished the game in this session, but I really needed to take a break.  

Recapping from the last time, we’ve crossed 5 of the 10 items off of our to-do list.  So let’s see how to handle the rest of them.  First, my thoughts before I started out:

• Advertising - I’ll need to find the mascot mouse or a replacement to pep up the ad agency staff

• Volunteers - I need to befriend the biker gang

• TV air time - I’ll need to steal the time slot somehow from the gadget guy

• Electronic totals board - I’ll need to use the remote control to commandeer the televisions/computers from either the TV studio or the invention business

• Pizza ingredients - need to be obtained, somehow, from the supermarket

And it turns out that I’m right on 4 out of 5 of these.  Let’s see how I worked this out.

Wayne's World - Whoa, We're Halfway There

by Michael

So, how to start off this post?  How about a shocking thought:  this game is nowhere near as bad as I expected.

I'm not saying it's great.  I'm not even saying that it's good.  But there's actually a few things in here so far that are actually an improvement over the last game I played for the blog.  A LucasArts game, remember.

For example, some commenters on that last review were distressed by the lack of tool tips or mouse-over item descriptions.  This game has both.  It has icons that function very similarly to that of old-school LucasFilm games, where you can select an action, and then whip around the screen, the names of items showing at the bottom of the screen.  Not only do most items have a description when you look at them, but often, different descriptions when either Wayne or Garth is looking at the item.

Game 141: Wayne’s World - Introduction (1993)

By Michael

Last week, we wrote a blog post looking forward to the next “Year Ahead” post, when we choose the games to be played for the blog in the future.  Today, I’m cursing the 1993 post.  Yes, I’m looking at you, Andy Panthro.  See, he spent 200 of his valuable, hard-earned, CPU-harvested CAPs to force an unsuspecting TAG reviewer to play a game that normally wouldn’t have been on the list.  This is, of course, the 1993 adventure game Wayne’s World from Capstone Entertainment, not to be confused with two different action platformers released the same year, also under the same name.

Capstone Entertainment... that sounds vaguely familiar (and also is likely an oxymoron).  Hmmm... oh, yeah, they also produced the critically-acclaimed Beverly Hillbillies game, based on a TV series from the 1960s that Ilmari recently played here.

Before you count this game out, though, let’s talk about the Saturday Night Live skit turned movie that brought us here.  After all, this movie shows up right next to The Blues Brothers as the top-rated SNL movie of all time.