Tweety & The Magic Gems (Game Boy Advance) review "it's not all bad and shows promise, but is ultimately designed with complete contempt for the gaming public in mind. "

Kemco are at it again! Not happy bundling me with their Crazy Castle 4 game (All I wanted to do was buy Wario-Land 3) they've given me another! The store that sold me my Gameboy Advance gave me ANOTHER Kemco WB title free. 'Here take it, and may the curse go with you' is what the store owner said. Well o.k, maybe he didn't say that for fear of being thought of a freak. But since I have no such fear, I'm happily saying that to the next gameboy Advance owner I come across.

But this isn't story-telling time, this is boring old review time. So let's see what cretinous mistake Kemco's lumped our WB character this time, hm? Tweety goes deep into the forest and gets lost. Instead of finding his way home, Tweety finds a magic box and the fool opens it! His feet turn to stone, then the witch jumps out! Oh dear she says, you opened the box that stores all the evil forest magic (Well, you'd think they'd lock a box like that). so the witch (who looks suspiciously like Grandma) calls upon 6 famous WB characters (except for Marc Anthony, I don't have any idea where the hell he came from, but it certainly wasn't any WB cartoon I know). She then asks these characters to journey around the world to find gems to save Tweety.

I realise I've taken an early cynical turn in the review, but let's not forget I've played this game, and it's not pretty. I feel I should commend Kemco for not just doing a platformer. You see Tweety and the magic gems is a board game of all things, and instead of being as fun as Mario party it will make you very 'bored' (I had to do it, sorry). To search for the magic gems you must travel around a board which is barely animated and consists of the world. Each time you reach a city or country you enter it and in there find ANOTHER board. To finish the game you must go all through ALL of the boards. There are a ridiculous thirteen boards and they aren't tiny. You cannot pause the game, you cannot save the game, so you MUST play to the end.

The boards are broken up by various 'events' (Miss a turn) and there are also 16 mini-games to be played. Some of the mini-games are good for a quick spin, and some of them are identical (I dare you to find the difference between 'crush hammer' and 'crush ice'). And some of them are utterly unplayable, like the flag game. The explanation for the flag game is as incompetent as it is for the rest of the games, so after 'Hold up the right flag to win!' I was thrown into a screen where coloured flags came up 3 or so a second in a list of about 7, two seconds later a 'loser' cross came over my head. I played again, exactly the same thing happened again, even if I got it I don't think I'd have been having much fun. Other games like the whack -a-mole rip-off have some replay value, and are even *gasp* fun, but even they have stupid flaws. For instance in that very game, if you are standing at the first 'row' on the first 'column' and a monster appears one space below you and to the left, it will be impossible to get it in time, meaning that most of the monsters that appear you won't even be able to get. I know you probably didn't understand what I said there, but I'm basically saying none of the games are great, and very few are even good.

I can't really comment on the multiplayer, because I haven't played it. This is because of my friends who have GBA's, none of them got theirs bundled with Tweety. And, frankly, I don't think anyone's dumb enough to actually buy this game. But in one player, as I have experienced it, it was dull, unoriginal and had no clues apart from the characters, that I was playing a WB game. Kemco once again demonstrate an utter lack of knowledge that these stars are in some great cartoons, you might even stretch to say classics. Even where there are chances at showing personality in this game, they fail. Choose a character at the beginning and watch them blather on with generic phrases 'I'm going to win!' Yawn.

A couple of graphical touches, like animation, are nice. almost enough to make you think this was a generally good-looking game. But the intro and menu-screen aren't enough to fool anyone. Because aside from them you could be playing a gameboy colour game, you really could. There aren't even any voices. I wouldn't exactly be shocked if I was told that this WAS a GBC game originally, but they touched up a couple of screens and hurried it out for GBA launch. There's nothing wrong with the graphics, they aren't ugly, they just don't make good use of GBA's power AT ALL.

The sounds aren't actually that bad, I liked the intro music. the rest of it is also good enough to live with, shame it's repeated on and on. As with all Kemco games, Tweety is a little short on sound effects, sometimes lacking from where you really think they should be.

The game takes a long time to finally finish, but you will never EVER play it again once you've been through. Chances are you'll switch it off after a couple of minutes, and only return once every few months, for a quick play of bash the monsters, and even then you'll be annoyed that it's impossible to get most of the monsters.

Overall this is reminiscent of Crazy Castle 4, in the way that it's not all bad and shows promise, but is ultimately designed with complete contempt for the gaming public in mind. Kemco aren't a talentless company, but they should really throw away their WB licence and concentrate on making GOOD games.

Tweety Pie!
+ Some nice animation touches
+ A couple of games are o.k
+ competent board design
+ Some of the tunes are quite catchy

Puddy Tat!
- totally inconvenient to play
- mostly GBC graphics
- What, or who, the hell is Marc anthony?!
- most of the games are crap, and some are carbon copies
- You need four carts to multiplay, there probably aren't 4 people that own this
- Game explanation screens are incompetant
-Board games are eventless and go on for far, far too long

Community review by maxh (Date unavailable) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.