Hidden Gems

We all grew up on this movie series. And 99% of the time, movie video games suck. And that’s a generous percentage. However, this game, for some reason is just so fun to play, even if some anal game reviewing sites don’t think so.

I’m talking about Toy Story 2 for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Dreamcast, . I haven’t met many people who have played it, and when I looked up reviews, generally it was average. However, I have as much fun playing the game now, as when I did when I grew up with it. You take control of the awesome Buzz Lightyear, and just like the movie, you have to find and save Woody from Big Al. In order to do so, you have to collect Pizza Planet Tokens, and each level has at least 5, and collecting certain tokens causes you to unlock some pretty interesting items.

There’s many reasons to like this game, as long as you have a heart or some kind of decent childhood. The same music from the movie appears in this game, and it just gives you a nice heart-warming feeling to hear one more time. All our favorite characters make an appearance on almost every level, with an occasional surprise guest sometimes.

Now you would think the game play would suck, I’m just so high on this game because of the atmosphere right? Wrong. The game play necessarily mechanically wise, graphically wise, and physically wise I will admit is not the best. But it isn’t so bad where it is unplayable, and for the Nintendo 64, the graphics are duable. It’s the wide variety of missions and goals that keep you intrigued.

Each level there’s a race with RC, which was always a nice little random mission, and past the first level is extremely difficult without power ups. Then you have the unique boss for each level, which are all difficult, with the exception of the first one of course. Then you have a “collect coins” for Hamm every level which can be fun because of the random spots of the coins.

It also has a collect 5 things mission unique to each level, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Lastly, there is always something random. For example, on the level Andy’s Neighborhood, you have to randomly blow up a rubber duck pool floaty and then jump on it as hard as possible to jump up to a token.

When you beat this game, you feel so accomplished, even more so then the first time when you see the heart-felt ending to the actual movie. I’ll even go as far to say, not only is this my hidden gem, I also will go out to say, personally, and I could also argue this if I really wanted to, that this is the best movie converted game out there.

The childish tasks, comforting atmosphere, and my personal bias towards Toy Story that makes this game to me feel like a hidden gem.