Taz-Mania

[Stan]

I really need to beat this tonight. Must find time.

[anagrama]

Just breezed through this again this evening, and while it's a pleasant distraction for an hour or so, it still didn't do much for me - graphics are OK but nothing special, the level design is pretty basic, the beasties present no challenge, and it's simply insultingly easy - with the amount of 1-ups and health that's lying around, there's almost no excuse for dying unless you fall into a pit after being forced to make a blind jump, which happened occasionally and is never nice.
With the plethora of quality platformers the Master System offers, this really does nothing to stand out form the pack.

[Sinistral]

Been playing this for a few hours tonight, to be honest I can't really see anything original in it. The graphics are nice, sound is a little too repetitive.

[Stan]

Well, coming back to it, here's what I have to say.

1. The graphics are great, I think they really capture the feel of the cartoon, I just wish they were less repetitive, there were too many similar organizations all over the place.

2. The game mechanics were a bit annoying. Eventually, Taz can only really make some jumps using his annoying jump/spin combo where you lose some of the control and can fall off of platforms easily. If they added some more things for you to do, it would have worked out better, perhaps adding a punch for Taz or something. Even his normal jumps are a bit shaky, you can't control him perfectly.

3. I thought the music was fine, but my main problem with the sound is the effect for his spin attack. WAY too loud, it completely overshadows everything and since you use it so much it gets really annoying. It sounds like TV static and is simply overwhelming.

4. As most people have said, way too easy, I didn't get to beat it because I had to turn off the TV, but after about ten minutes I was in the second half of level three and there are only five levels in all. Could have upped the difficulty a bit and made it so there were less turkies and 1UPs all over the place, not to mention that you get an extra life every 20,000 points, which is quite simply too simple to do.

5. Still, I found it fun up to the point I played. I'm going to try to beat it tonight so I can give a more thorough opinion of it. As it stands, for now, it's good, but Escape From Mars is coming out above it.

[Stan]

Okay, beat it. Overall a decent game, but way too easy and short. The abundance of 1UPs all over the place made the difficulty laughable and the turkies for life didn't help either. I died a few times, mainly from what ana said about uncertainty as to what's below you on occasion. I ended up with 11 lives when I beat the game. The bosses are generally a breeze though I did die once on the gator boys. The final boss was a loser, but the ending wasn't so bad.

[Alianger]

Easy, but still very frustrating. Nice looking though.

[englishinvader]

What baffles me is why they didn't release this version on the GG?

The GG version of Taz-Mania is one of the worst games you will ever play.

[gabrielknight]

I remember this well, a friend of mine bought it in 1993 or 1994

It was fun and the cartoon graphics were awesome

[psychokidd]

I just completed this last night (seriously, go me!), so will add my two penneth worth.

Great clean graphics, really easy on the eye and made the actions super easy to track.

As already said, it's a tad on the easy side as it is quite repetative and the critters don't provide much of a challenge - however, I definitely invented a few new swear words as Taz repeatedly span off little ledges, jumped blindly into water/dark caverns and ate those god damn bombs despite my best efforts of spinning them away!

I found the bosses generally easy - although the boomerang welding croc took me a few attempts (I have no sense of timing lol). The final boss was disappointingly easy, much preferred the previous level's witches, at least there you had the two enemies to negotiate simultaneously.

So all in all, I love the graphics and enjoyed the game play, but doubt I will be rushing to rerun through it all in the near future. xxx

[theycallmeknuckles]

I have to give this a go.
I assumed it was the same game as the game gear version. Which was incredibly difficult when I was younger. It had the same cover, so...

Although I remember it having more varied stages than described here. ( including skiing parts if I'm not mistaken).

[Aypok]

Mar 18, 2011 10:46:01 GMT psychokidd said:

however, I definitely invented a few new swear words as Taz repeatedly span off little ledges, jumped blindly into water/dark caverns

Same. :) I used to curse all those "leap of faith" jumps until I realised I was doing it wrong - usually by trying to just fly along the highest points. I started taking it a bit more slowly along the lower-lying parts of the level and mostly eliminated that. Still, the last levels did have me swearing... Stupid water pits.

I think anagrama summed it up best in his post above. To paraphrase: it's not bad, but it's not great - there are better platformers to play.

Mar 18, 2011 12:32:09 GMT theycallmeknuckles said:

Although I remember it having more varied stages than described here. ( including skiing parts if I'm not mistaken).

Skiing parts? You're thinking of a different game - unless I managed to miss a level...

[playgeneration]

I decided to complete this game today for the first time since I was a kid. Maybe its me, but I didn't find it all that easy - I ended up using a few continues to get to the end. There's a fair few fiddly jumps, and poor Taz ended up falling down the same pits quite a few times. The enemies are easy though, and you can hit most of them and still finish the level without dying. If it wasn't for the pits, lava and water, then this game would be stupidly easy.

I do think its pretty good though, obviously no comparison with the likes of Castle of Illusion. But its got a charm of its own, and captures the feel of the cartoon really well.

[adfot1]

Bought it recently and has brought back some fond memories... fun and easy

[ian]

I need to give this a proper go. Every time I've played it I've got bored pretty quickly. It comes across to me as a pretty average platformer to me, falling into the same category as games such as Desert Speedtrap, Cheese Catastrophe and Daffy Duck.

[Batman666]

Just tried it for a few minutes.

I have to say i'm a little puzzled by the graphics. Reading the comments hearing people say they are great, I just...Don't see it. To me the graphics remind me of the cheaper Tec Toy games. It's not as colorful and bright as i'm used to with plattformers like Alex Kidd and the Disney games or for that matter Psycho Fox & Teddy Boy. Maybe it's just me and they tried to be faithful to the cartoon, but it doesn't feel like a SEGA developed plattformer.