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Game: My Little Pony: Grand PuzzleVenture
Manufacturer: Milton Bradley
Release Date: 2006
Genre: Platforming/Puzzle/Arcade
...Yep. Today we're talking about a game based on a toy line that is to Hasbro what Barbie is to Mattel and Bratz are to MGA Entertainment: a long-running, insanely popular series meant for little girls that has endured through the years in various incarnations where the selling point is to buy as many accessories for and variations of the toys as possible, no matter how pointless or redundant!
"Don't you already have a Fluttershy doll?"
"Mom, it's not Fluttershy! It's Cupcake!"
"What's the difference?"
"Cupcake is pink, Mom! DUH!"
Because, as you know, there are no franchises aimed at the male adult demographic that implement that exact same strategy and I have absolutely no compulsion to collect any sort of franchise whatsoever, regardless of quality or function! ...Yeah...
Actually, speaking of which, I am FLABBERGASTED that Hasbro has NEVER licensed My Little Pony to a building brick company! Apparently, not even bootleg companies have taken a crack at it! The closest I could find were these Nanoblock statuettes of the current incarnation of the franchise, and I'm not sure if I should even classify them in the same category as Lego.
So a more niche franchise like Hello Kitty gets a Mega Bloks line before My Little Pony?! ...There's something wrong with this world...
But we're not talking about building brick sets in this post. Instead, we're talking a look at what seems to be the only Plug n Play game released based on the MLP franchise. ...And surprisingly, it's not based on the insanely popular current series, but on the G3 generation of the franchise.
You know? Where MLP was in between TV shows and was instead focusing on direct-to-video movies that featured the ponies having tea parties and playing dress-up while saving Santa Claus with magical candy canes and touching flowers to become pretty pony princesses? ...And yes, I did just use Wikipedia to look that up, as I will be doing through most of this review since I know nothing about this generation of the toy line.
And in case you want my thoughts on the fandom and what I think of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic... This game has nothing to do with that, so let's not waste our breath and just skip it.
...And with that, I've just lost my entire brony audience. ...Oh well. Moving on.
The console is designed similarly to an arcade control layout, surprisingly more so than the Konami game we looked at last time. A small joystick on the right serves to move the cursor while three big round buttons on the left interact with the various activities contained in this game.
And surprisingly, despite it being much bigger than the Konami game, it's much easier to handle. The buttons are much bigger while the joystick is smaller and closer to the bottom, allowing for a more comfortable grip. I think it's actually designed to be placed and controlled on a flat surface since it's designed for smaller, 5-year-old hands, but it's much more accessible than the previous game.
...And you know there's a problem when a random Plug n Play game looks and plays much more like an arcade layout than a game trying to emulate the arcade...
The design of the console is of a field, with a grassy texture and the buttons shaped like flowers. And while that doesn't really need an explanation due to the game's content, there seems to be a reason why it looks like a field.
Because the game originally came packaged with a toy version of the game's main character. So the idea was apparently to use the toy to stomp on the flower buttons. ...I think, because the girl at the top is still holding the controller like you would a regular controller. ...Do you see why I don't go out of my way to find the packaged versions of these games?
This game was made by Milton Bradley, the well-known board game company now owned by Hasbro, famous for bringing us Battleship, Simon, Twister, and a bunch of other games we get nostalgic for because we refuse to remember we only had enough patience to play them once.
As far as I can tell, Hasbro has only used the brand name for one other Plug n Play game: a TV version of their Whac-A-Mole game, which we'll also cover sometime down the road. And while I understand Hasbro deciding to continue using the Milton Bradley name to manufacture this version of Whac-A-Mole, why they decided to market the My Little Pony game under this name is beyond me...
The full title of this game is My Little Pony: Grand PuzzleVenture. And in case you missed the title in large flashy letters, the most surprising thing about this game occurs: The game reads the title to us! ...Yes, this game has fully spoken dialog throughout, nearly every line of text spoken by the game's characters!
As far as I could research, which, being a Plug n Play game, wasn't much, this is only one of two Plug n Play games, the other being Sesame Street Beat, to have a fully voiced script with every conversation performed by voice actors. Even the more modern Plug n Play games omit most spoken dialog, besides the occasional sound bite, due to time, budgetary issues, and the lack of storage space, so to have a Plug n Play game from 2006 have a full audio track is surprising to say the least! ...Admittedly, the audio is severely compressed and I can't tell if there are multiple actors or just one voicing all the characters, but, for a Plug n Play game, it is EXTREMELY satisfying to hear the dialog actually spoken.
By the way, this post is going to be a little Gif heavy due to the large amount of dialog and animation. Woe be unto those who still use dial-up...
Anyway, the game centers around this pony named Puzzlemint(get it? ha ha) who, as her name suggests, is obsessed with puzzles.
One day, she finds a strange box covered with buttons and switches, which she plays with, eventually opening a gateway to hell and discovering a race called the Cenobites, who then proceed to torture her both mentally and physically until she-
Nah, kidding. ...Though I'm surprised nobody else has made that connection... To all fanfiction writers who are fans(or even haters) of the G3 ponies, I'm giving you an easy one here!
No, what actually happens is that she's visited by Pinkie Pie
...Close, but not quite...
Who tells her that since Puzzlemint loves puzzles, she made her a puzzle piece. ...Which by sheer coincidence, I guess, happens to be a part of the same puzzle Puzzlemint also has a piece to.
And because it's not a puzzle with only two pieces, especially since Puzzlemint has already laid out a 9 piece grid just in case everyone so happened to have a piece to that exact puzzle, Puzzlemint is inspired to build a giant puzzle, and thus she sets out on her Grand PuzzleVenture.
And that's the premise of the game. To lead Puzzlemint around Ponyville(or whatever the place is called in G3 MLP) and complete activities to earn puzzle pieces to complete her giant puzzle! ...Yeah, not exactly Mass Effect-level storytelling, but it's a Plug n Play game based on the G3 My Little Pony franchise. You take what you can get.
By the way, it's probably worth noting that before you start the game, you're given the choice of Easy or Hard difficulty. Normally with games designed for younger players, the "Hard" difficulty means hard for the target audience, so "Hard" would more likely mean "Easy" or even "Normal" for older, more experienced gamers. With this in mind, I chose the Hard difficulty, thinking I'd breeze through it without even noticing a difficulty spike. ...I was wrong, as you can see in the video and as I'll explain later.
So the land of Ponyville(Ponyland?) is comprised of six locations, each with a different activity to complete to get a puzzle piece. In order, we have
Twinkle Twirl's Dance Studio
Sew and So's Closet
Celebration Castle
Breezie Blossom
Butterfly Island
and Crystal Rainbow Castle
The game is laid out in a linear format, each location having to be completed in turn to unlock the next location. But no matter what the activity, the goal remains the same: Earn enough points to earn the puzzle piece, which, again, is much harder than it sounds...
First up on our PuzzleVenture is Twinkle Twirl's Dance Studio!
Here we meet the danceaholic Twinkle Twirl, who is a maniac on the floor and who dances like she's never danced before.
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| Fanart by Stinkehund |
And yet, appallingly, none of her dances end with her doing this! How can I sledgehammer the Flashdance references into this review now?!
Anyway, she hosts the first activity, which is basically a DDR-style game where the goal is to hit as many moving notes in a row as possible. ...And it's this game that showed me that this wasn't going to follow the standard Easy/Hard difficulty of games made for younger kids...
And if that's not hard enough, every time a note is hit, the speed increases! So just as I'm adjusting to the wonky inverted controls, I suddenly find myself with notes coming at me from all angles and I have half a split second to guess which note needs to be hit first! If I miss a note, the multiplier and speed reset, but then I'm basically screwed since the game's allowance for error is extremely low. Miss about 5 notes and you can't get a high enough score to qualify. I kid you not when I say that the gameplay you see in the video is the result of an HOUR of playing it over and over again and the score I finally achieved was just BARELY good enough to pass! Talk about a game taking my low expectations for required effort, crumpling them up, and beating me over the head with them!
However, even though this first stage was a pain to get through, I can't bring myself to get too mad at it since it showcases the game's other major strength: its animation. This is some of the best 2D animation I've ever seen in... ANY traditionally animated game. Just look at how fluid Puzzlemint is! How many frames of animation they put into making her dance and transition into other dancing moves! Look at the care they put into making her hair move and her facial expressions changing ever so slightly! This is top notch quality! In fact, it's better than the animation featured in the movies this is based on(at least what little I've seen) and at least as good as the animation from the current MLP series! Admittedly, this is the best it looks throughout the game and it sometimes becomes a little choppy, but for them to raise their standards this high, and for a Plug n Play game made in 2006?! ...
Anyway, after that taste of what you're in for, Twinkle Twirl congratulates you on your practicing and awards you a puzzle piece. ...And you realize this is only the first stop... Most of the games don't get anywhere near as hard as this first one, but trust me when I say this is only the beginning of the gauntlet this game throws at you...
The next stop on our Grand PuzzleVenture takes us to Sew & So's Closet. ...I know the jokes that can be made with that name, so I'm taking the high road and not making any of them.
Here, Sew & So invites Puzzlemint into her closet(again, no easy jokes) to sort through her outfits, leading to the next minigame.
The goal this time is to pick the outfit piece that's out of place on the left as fast as possible in the allotted time frame each round gives you. Each of the six rounds is comprised of 15 seconds, giving you about a minute and a half to sort as much as possible. And this is doable... once you figure out what you need to do in the first place...
The problem I had the first time I played this, which you can see in the video, is that I didn't know if I needed to pick the item that didn't fit the outfit or that didn't fit the the occasion. Take this picture for example. The calendar starts with a picture of a party, then Puzzlemint steps out of the closet(*sigh*) wearing an outfit. So I figured that I needed to pick the outfit piece that didn't match a party. ...Except that all the items looked like something worn to a party. I'm no fashion expert, but I think the outfit she's wearing fits. If a girl walked into a party wearing what she's wearing, I would ask her out. So then I figured that I needed to find the item that was too out of the way, so I selected the shoes since they seemed too fancy for a birthday party. ...That was wrong. So I selected the scarf. ...That was wrong as well. So I finally selected the bow, and that was the item out of place. But it still took me halfway through the level to realize that I needed to select the piece of the outfit that didn't match the others, so I should have selected the bow because it's light blue while the other two have dark blue spots. ...Sorry, I guess my adult critic brain was overanalyzing the situation. When they say "even a two-year-old can do it", they should actually say "ONLY a two-year-old can do it since only a two-year-old can notice the bleeding obvious..."
Now a few of the things are a little more obvious what you need to pick, so even an idiot like me can tell that a two piece bathing suit doesn't go with winter wear... or on a pony at all. Seriously, what's the point on a horse? What are they covering up for decency?
Then there's wearing a mailbag with pajamas. ...Why would a pony even consider that? Seriously, name one pony that's not only stupid enough to wear a mailbag to sleep, but who would even have a mailbag to sleep with in the first place?!
...Fair enough...
But that's not even the strange part. What's even stranger is that after time runs out and you've matched as many outfits as possible, the doors close on Puzzlemint... only to have Sew & So come out of the closet!
...Anyway, score high enough and the Skrull-er, I mean, Sew and So thanks you for your help and gives Puzzlemint another puzzle piece.
Next on the map, Celebration Castle, where the Princess Ponies live. And apparently in this reality, being a princess doesn't require years of study and heroic acts of great acclaim, but just finding a flower somewhere and finding out it's part of a 1000-year-old prophecy that whomever finds it will become a princess, or being one of the lucky friends she just decides to make a princess afterwards. ...So, real world royalty as opposed to ideal leadership I guess...
Here, Puzzlemint runs into Princess Wysteria(who's an earth pony, so at least the title of princess isn't racist in this incarnation), who tells her that being a princess is fun except that her servants continually misplace her "princessy things", so, as expected from royalty, she sends Puzzlemint to do her grunt work and find her junk around the castle.
This minigame takes the form of a top down adventure game, where you move Puzzlemint around the castle to find 25 missing items in 6 minutes. Pretty straightforward, but the size of the castle can make you nervous if you're unfamiliar with just how big the area is.
There are 5 areas to explore, each one pretty sizable, and just walking through them the first time made me feel like I wouldn't even be able to clear the first room before the time limit was up.
There is an arrow that points to off-screen items, but only in their general direction, which can become confusing in this maze of a castle.
Especially when the item is behind a secret door, causing you to search all around the room for a switch or something that unlocks the door before figuring you can't grab it yet and will come back for it.
And just to make things even more unnecessarily confusing and difficult, Wysteria's servants, these pony pixie things called Breezies, are flying throughout each area, and if one runs into you, they'll steal an item and put it back, forcing you to walk back and grab it all over again! ...I see a lot of violence in Celebration Castle's future...
Near the end of the first runthrough of the castle, you run into Spike.
Now you know how Spike in the current series is this lovable, fun dragon who is consistently ALMOST a main character but for some reason, Hasbro is so paranoid the show will lose its young girl demographic if he's given any major importance to the point they made him a dog in Equestria Girls?
Well, here's this series' Spike. A thousand-year-old midget dragon librarian. ...And he has the voice of Geronimo Stilton. ...I don't have a joke, it's just a bit of character whiplash.
So he gives you a key that allows you to unlock the secret doors and grab the final few items.
And as we walk toward the princess, we're reminded once again that the amount of effort they put into animating these character sprites is beautiful!
So with her "princessy things" found, Wysteria allows Puzzlemint to momentarily sit on the throne and wear her royal crown... just to rub it in that there are some things in life that Puzzlemint will never accomplish and that people who do half the work she does will get more benefits than she'll ever know.
Oh, and she gives Puzzlemint the next puzzle piece, so that makes it all fine, I guess.
Continuing on, we journey to the park area Breezie Blossom for the next piece. And if you thought the Breezies from the last level were annoying, how about a whole field of them?!
Because it's here Puzzlemint now has to help a Breezie named ZipZee find her friends hidden in the flowers around the park. Now if I was in her shoes(hooves?), I'd grab a big can of Raid and spray the entire park as payback for what they just put me through, but thanks to an extra helping of important NPC shields, that's not happening here, so I'm stuck helping the little twerps...
And wouldn't you know it, this game is easily the most infuriating. You have five rounds with 30 seconds each to score points by pressing a button on the controller that corresponds to the same colored dancing flower, which releases a random bug that gives you a certain amount of points. Bees are worth 5, Ladybugs are worth 10, and Breezies are worth 50, while time balloons stop the timer and cupcakes add seconds to the timer. Now this may not sound too hard, and it wouldn't be if not for the controller layout.
The buttons on the controller are clustered together, with purple on top, pink slightly right, and yellow on the bottom. However, the game organizes the colors in a straight line, so it's easy to confuse which color is which on the controller, especially when you have no time to glance down to remind yourself.
And you won't, because each round gets progressively faster until you're basically ramming random buttons in a desperate attempt to hit a dancing flower before it stops.
And every time you press the wrong button, the flowers droop for a split second and cease dancing, so no opportunities for points pop up. Add the fact that the buttons on the controller can easily stick if pushed too quickly and/or in the wrong angle, and you get a frustratingly stressful button masher that can take several tries and a whole lot of luck before you've scored enough points to complete the level! I guess technically the dancing game was harder, but that at least had skill, some beautiful dancing animation, and the choice of three different music tracks. Here, the only thing I have to look forward to is the sound of Breezies laughing at my desperation!
So after finally appeasing the pesky pony pixies, Puzzlemint is given another puzzle piece and she goes on her way, no doubt already drawing up a petition for Breezie Blossom to be rezoned as a landfill...
On her way to Butterfly Island, Puzzlemint offhandedly wishes that she could fly, and she is abducted by the butterfly mafia.
Thankfully, a pegasus named Star Catcher saves her by taking over the minds of the butterflies, before allowing Puzzlemint to take her revenge by capturing each and every butterfly she comes across in the infamous Battle Royale game of "Butterfly Tag." True story! ...Except for what I made up...
Out of all the games, this is probably the easiest one. All you have to do is fly around a scrolling plane, avoiding obstacles and completing all 4 collections of butterflies at the top in each of the three levels before time runs out. ...That's basically it. There's no penalty for grabbing butterflies you've already collected, so just grab everything on the screen, look out for balloons that lengthen the time limit, and don't crash into anything.
And to make things even easier, you can just rip a butterfly you haven't collected yet out of its cocoon!
...Yeah, you're not getting on Fluttershy's good side with this section of the game...
So while this is the most mundane and straightforward of the games, I like to see it as recovery from the last level. Why not follow up on an insane button masher with a calm, cruising flight over a beach?
But all good things must come to an end, so after you've collected all the butterflies and severely weakened the butterfly mafia's hold on seaside territory, Star Catcher comes back and gives you her puzzle piece.
So, after her long journey, Puzzlemint finally arrives at the last place in the game: the Crystal Rainbow Castle, the source of all the rainbows in the pony universe.
At least until some sicko decides 5 years later that rainbows are actually made from ponies. ...But I digress.
It's here that Puzzlemint runs into Rarity
...Not even close...
Who answers Puzzlemint's question of how rainbows are made by saying she's not sure... before offering to show her how to make a rainbow. ...Ok...
Of all the games featured on this console, this one is probably my favorite... and it's a little hard to describe why. The goal is to collect enough of each color to make a rainbow while avoiding black ribbons which deplete your color stock. But you have to do it fast, because not only do you have only 3 minutes on each of the 3 stages to complete the rainbows, but the color ribbons disappear if you're not fast enough. More may show up, but that entails walking far enough left or right and avoiding reappearing black ribbons, hoping you can grab it before it disappears again.
I guess what I really like about this particular game are its platforming elements, which most other Plug n Play games pass over in favor of racing and puzzles. After slogging through hundreds of mediocre-to-terrible 8-bit clones(which I will feature in a future review), it's actually refreshing to be playing a game where you can run and jump from platform to platform, especially when more of this beautiful animation is featured.
I've even gotten Puzzlemint to do a backflip! ...Completely by accident and I haven't been able to replicate it, but it's nice that they bothered to include the feature.
So while there's not much to this level and it can be a little frustrating collecting all the colors in the time limit, it's challenging and entertaining enough that you want to keep playing and enjoy a bit of platforming after all the puzzles and quick time events this game threw at us.
And with the rainbows completed, Rarity thanks us for making her position completely pointless and gives Puzzlemint the last puzzle piece.
So, now that we have all the pieces, it's time to fit the puzzle together!
Here, the game adopts a bit of a PC feel, since you're now controlling a mouse pointer to pick up and drag the pieces. It's always been a little weird for me when I've had to use a joystick or directional pad to move a cursor across a screen, but here, I guess it's the easiest way for kids to put together a puzzle.
Despite only nine pieces, there is actually a bit of a challenge in putting the puzzle together. It's not obvious what all the pictures on the pieces are and some have to be rotated to make them fit. It's not exactly an Impossibles puzzle, but it's nice the game's not treating you as an idiot either.
And what's the reward for putting the pieces together? What do we get for several hours of mastering dance steps impossible for equines, reorganizing both figurative and literal closets, performing free maid service for randomly chosen royalty, resisting the urge to squash tiny pony flies, pulling butterflies out of cocoons most likely before they're fully metamorphosed, and building rainbows for unicorns who say rainbows can't be built?
This, followed by a boot back to the title screen. ...I'd say I'm disappointed, but this is a Plug n Play game, so I wasn't really expecting more. ...Still, after this grand puzzleventure, I think we deserve a proper sendoff.
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Design: The console design is fine, with a joystick and buttons large enough for a kid to set on a table and tap the buttons with a My Little Pony toy, but small enough for older players to hold onto and control with their thumbs. It's a little oversized, yes, but again, I think the intention was for kids to use it as a playset with their pony toys, and the field layout is nicely detailed, so I can't complain there. I would have preferred the buttons all in a row since it can get confusing what buttons to press during certain parts of the game, but overall, it's pretty solidly made.
Controls: The game controls very smoothly, with every button within easy reach of the player's thumbs and no lag between pushing a button and actions occurring. Again, it would be nice if the buttons were in a row and I could know what I was pressing without having to look down, as well as buttons that didn't stick, but it all works and my complaints are nitpicky at best.
Music & Sound: I LOVE the sound in this game! I am beyond amazed that they bothered to include fully voiced dialog and, if they didn't get the original actors themselves, to get actors that sound like the original voice cast from the movies. You can easily tell who's talking and what they're saying and the voice work sounds professional! ...Most of the time. The music's not bad either, with nice sounding soft tunes throughout that match the mood of the levels and I could easily imagine hearing in My Little Pony media, especially the well crafted MIDI of the franchise's theme. Admittedly, it all sounds a bit compressed, but seeing as how this is a Plug n Play game, that's understandable and I can't complain.
Graphics: If I haven't made it clear by now, these are some of the best graphics I've ever seen in a traditionally animated budget game. The animation is fluid and varied, the colors are bright and vibrant, and the attention to detail is stunning. They have succeeded in giving us at least TV quality animation and outdoing the actual movies this game shares a universe with, which, for a game not many people are going to play, is beyond belief! Just the amount of work they put into the characters, backgrounds, and other sprites nearly makes me want to join the fandom because of how much it shows that Hasbro and their designers and animators care about their franchise.
Gameplay: I surprisingly had a lot of fun playing this game. There's a lot of variation given to its six levels and I never felt like I was playing the same minigame twice. Also, it steered away from most cheap cliched game genres(Bejeweled/Tetris knockoff, Atari 2600-style "race", memory matching, Space Invaders-esque shooter, etc.) and presented several games not many compilations include. I especially enjoyed the dancing and the rainbow building games for their creativity and skill needed to win, keeping it challenging, but fun enough that you want to keep playing despite the unexpectedly high difficulty. Some of the games can get annoying, especially the Breezie Blossom level, and it can get frustrating when you're not given an example of what to do, but these roadblocks aren't impossible to overcome and you can pretty quickly figure them out. And I really appreciate that they implemented difficulty settings that can suit either beginning gamers or experienced players without making it insultingly easy or incredibly hard.
Replay Value: Once you've completed the game, there's sadly not much to come back to. There's no variation given to any of the games for subsequent playthroughs, save maybe for the different dance music choices in the first level, and the games are too short and linear to explore, so once you've played through each, you've basically completed them 100%. However, the games do have a nice arcade feel to them where you can play each to try for higher scores, and I could even argue it's worth coming back just to see the animation. Also, if you're really curious and haven't already seen them, I guess you could replay the levels to see what happens when you don't score enough points or fail miserably in another fashion. So there's not a huge amount of reason to play this game over again, but if you're bored, curious, or want to be reminded of the game's stellar animation, it could be worth another shot.
Overall:
I understand this game's not for everyone, being aimed at the young girl demographic, and more serious gamers may want something with a little more substance, but for what it is, I feel that they went above and beyond their duty. They could have just created a cheap cash-in of mediocre minigames and graphics based on a toy franchise based around cashing in, but instead they gave us a fun little adventure with amazing animation and a large cast of characters, each with their own personality and unique voice. I had no idea what it was going in, I thought it would be terrible, and I was pleasantly surprised at what I got. So if you're a fan of the franchise, or just want a fun, quick game, then I can't recommend this enough.
Though there is one final question I have. ...What's up with Puzzlemint's catchphrase? Every other time she talks, she exclaims out of nowhere "No kidding?!" Heck, she even uses it when the conversation had nothing to do with her sudden outburst! Was this a thing in the movies or the show? ...Well, I can't think of an answer, but maybe if you watch this supercut over and over again, the answer will come to you.
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