Retro Review - Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure
The Looney Tunes were a very important part of my childhood (and in the childhood of many people around the world), they were and are a product that endure today, after so many years, however, I have never played a game of these mythical cartoons as such, since I once played the demo of the game "Sheep Raider", but being only a demo had a time limit, so I had never played a game itself, of this franchise until a few days ago. Tiny Toon Adventures could be considered as a spin-off of the classic Looney Tunes, since it takes place in the same universe, but the main characters are different (although they are representations of the main characters like Bugs Bunny), however in this spin-off series also appear the classic characters, so it was an excellent way to introduce a new generation to the old Warner Bros. characters. Anyway, this was a series that I liked a lot when I was a kid and I didn't know it had a videogame, which is the one I will talk about today, being this the "first" game of the Looney Tunes franchise that I have played (although I plan to play the others). Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure.
The story of this game is quite random, something very characteristic in the history of the Looney Tunes. This adventure begins when Buster Bunny and his other Looney Tunes classmates are at college cleaning a warehouse when Buster finds a rather strange map, one of his classmates, the greedy Montana Max snatches the map and confirms that it is a treasure map, so Montana steals the map to find the treasure on his own, however, the greed of this character is so great that to entertain Buster while he searches for the treasure he manages, through the scientist Dr. Gene Splicer, to manipulate the minds of Buster's friends so that they are against him and also, as if it were a treasure map, to manipulate the minds of Buster's friends so that they are against him. Gene Splicer, to manipulate the minds of Buster's friends so that they are against him and also, as if that were not enough, he also kidnaps Babsy Bunny. Therefore, taking control of Buster Bunny, we must go through a series of platforming scenarios in order to bring our friends back to normal, save Babs Bunny and recover the stolen map to find the treasure.
Graphically it is a very colorful game, logically being a game based on the classic Looney Tunes, the representation of the Warner characters are very faithful to their animated counterparts, with very good designs, very well defined and with fairly fluid animations, also have typical expressions of these characters that could not miss for the representation to be 10/10.
However in terms of scenario design is quite simple, it is not something that stands out too much is this game, usually all scenarios fulfill their purpose, but they do lack a more decorated or elements that make them stand out even more, but still are not all bad, they are equally colorful as well as the characters, plus there is a good variety of places to go.
The soundtrack fully accompanies the cheerful and animated tone of the Looney Tunes, they are simple but effective and give that tone of joy and adventure so typical in platform games. We can even listen to some classic melodies of the animated series, likewise the sound effects despite being simple are very good and very consistent with the situations that we will live with our main character.
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure is a very conventional platform game, which does not innovate in any of its mechanics and gameplay, but it is still extremely fun because of its characters, since the Tiny Toon, as many know are characters with a lot of charisma and personality so they are very funny. The game presents us with a map that will remind us of Super Mario 3 (or other games of this saga), which after advancing with little through the scenarios, we can replay old ones to complete them 100%.
The gameplay and control over our character is extremely easy, it is a simple game, like any other of the most basic platform genre, in which we must advance through a side scrolling scenario and every certain stage we must face a final boss (in this case it is one of Buster's friends which is being controlled mentally). It also has certain elements of Sonic, as Buster can run quite similar to Sega's blue hedgehog, but without reaching his extreme speeds, even some scenarios will also have certain elements of exploration, although generally this game is based on platforming.
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden is a game developed by Konami, an old Konami when it was still considered a great and excellent video game company and not for what it is known today, which only a few years ago has become a company that has stopped making video games to just make money at the expense of "Pachinkos" using the image of their most outstanding creations (Metal Gear, Silent Hill). But anyway, at least in its great catalog of video games we can find games like this one that will remain in history.
