Toy Story (1996)
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Toy Story Review
Toy Story is a 1996 platform game for Sega Genesis by Disney Interactive Studios. It is one pretty good adaptation and a fun game in its own right.
The plot follows the story of the movie very closely. I liked that, but I did find the overabundance of title cards somewhat annoying. I would have liked to have seen a more cinematic approach with cutscenes. But still this is a very faithful game that perfectly incorporated gameplay into this now famous story.
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Let’s talk about that gameplay. It is a very diverse game. Obviously, it lacks originality as it borrows from various other platformers from its time and before, but the mix is very interesting and well pulled off. It is an incredibly fun game from beginning to end, though a bit too short.
It has 18 stages and some are annoying, but most are excellent and a lot of fun. The genre diversity is highly interesting as the game employs a first-person style gaming in one intriguing level as well as frequent racing which was very entertaining, but admittedly too easy.
I loved those running levels a lot as they were like all running levels – fast and short, but sweet and definitely demanding. The longer levels are also very interesting as they utilize on the toys and their environment so well thanks to pretty good and well crafted level design.
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I loved the incorporation of stars as it led to a more involving game for capable, more skilled players. Woody is well utilized with his rope, but I did find the jumping very weakly executed and clumsy in this game which was unfortunate. The controls overall aren’t great and count as some of the biggest flaws of the game. As for Buzz, he is memorable, but the rest of the characters are almost non-existent which was a shame.
‘Toy Story’ features groundbreaking animation for its time as the movie is admired to this day and it is thus fitting that the game itself looks great too. This came at a time when Disney Interactive Studios made a hit after hit and I do wish that that was the case today too. The game looks very polished in its 2D graphics, the 3D level also looks remarkably good for its time and the character design is faithful to the movie. The world building isn’t the greatest as the levels are too short and the camera is not all too exciting, but the visuals are terrific.
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Toy Story also has excellent sound and score. The music at the end of each level is wonderful and very catchy, perfectly accompanying the player’s victorious mood after each level. The same goes for the sound effects. The game definitely sounds good. As for its difficulty, I found some levels a bit too difficult, but for the most part the harder levels are well counteracted by those easier ones and thus it isn’t a too difficult game to finish.
Toy Story is a wonderful Disney Interactive Studios game which is too short, it needed more characters in it and the controls are far from great, but the gameplay is diverse and well utilized, the story is well adapted and the score and animation are both very strong. It’s a pretty amusing, sweet game and another win for this studio during the nineties.
