Ugly little voices? Check (in 16-bit cartridge terms). How does the game match my impression? Ugly little blue things? Check. All my mercifully slim acquaintance with the Smurfs TV show has left me with is an impression of a gang of ugly little blue things prattling in ugly little voices through a slideshow of backgrounds known as Smurf Village. I come to cartoon-based games because I play video games, not watch cartoons. This also means Les Schtroumpfs smurf LESS in English than in French.įranchise fidelity here is not at a premium, which isn’t to say I’m an expert. For example, night falls “over” the village instead of on it. Speaking of which, the game’s native tongue is French, and its English text is second-language stuff. Yes, the Smurfs are indeed so self-absorbed a race that they use their own name as a verb. One skips from tree to tree, rock to rock, here and there, daydreaming or nodding off, but those can be preferable alternatives to throwing a controller or telling a game to go *smurf* itself. It makes the play feel aimless but keeps the challenge down whilst adding a sense of freedom typically lacking in a corridor platformer. Rather than a serious game’s feeling of control and destiny, such games as Smurfs 2 give the impression the designer swirled a scarf in front of a grid paper and wherever that scarf happened to touch the surface he penciled in an object. Children especially were the target as is evidenced equally by the theme and floaty stage design. Come to think of it, I believe that line is straight from the TV show’s marketing campaign. A good fit for novice children, insomniacs, and drunks. For the most part it’s a low stress, low attention game as well. If nothing else, the Smurfs 2 is broadly pleasant to behold and hear. What do all these annals portend? As is often the case with games smeared across half a dozen platforms, a work of mediocrity at best.
Virtual Studios appears to have been a nonce division or renaming under Infogrames who developed every version of this game. All were limited to European release, and the MD version is region locked. The MD and SNES games are fundamentally identical a word will be said later about their differences. At a glance, the handheld versions appear to have been chopped down. The Smurfs Travel the World, aka Smurfs 2, was released in 1996 for the Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Master System, Game Gear, and Game Boy. Genre: Platformer Developer: Virtual Studio Publisher: Infogrames Players: 1 Released: 1996
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