Beethoven: The Ultimate Canine Caper
Super Nintendo
Beethoven, Beethoven: The Ultimate Canine Caper, Beethoven's 2nd... whatever its called, I just played it and finished it. Sunday, September 3rd, 2017: a day that will live on in history forever. Early in the day I finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and posted my review on the game. Now I have played and beaten the Beethoven game for the Super NES. Who would have thought I would complete and review two all time classic games like this on the same day? What are the odds?
I kid, I kid. This game is no all time classic. I picked it up from the bargain bin at a used video game store for just a couple dollars. I never even knew there was a Beethoven game for the Super Nintendo. I decided to go out on a limb and give the game a shot. It was only a few bucks. If it sucked, then oh well. No big loss. I looked up a few reviews on the game before popping it in and they were all negative. My expectations were not very high. However, I did not hate it as much as I thought I would. Far from it, in fact. I actually had a pretty enjoyable time playing this game. But let's be truthful. This is not a very memorable or even well made game.
I haven't seen any Beethoven movies past the first one. What have I been living under a rock or something? These movies are cinematic masterpieces. I need to go out and watch them all now!! Yeah yeah, I am kidding again. Aren't I funny? But I am going to just assume based on the game's title screen that it is based on the 2nd film in the series. Having not seen the movie, my guess based on the content of the game is that Beethoven and Mrs. Beethoven have lost their puppies in the big city and they must go on a quest to find them.
The game doesn't give you any kind of hint as to what you are supposed to do. There is no menu at the beginning of the game. No settings. All you know is that the puppies are missing and you have to find them. When you start a new game you are immediately thrown into the fray. I had to play with the controls to find out how the game worked. Aside from the usual motions like moving left to right, ducking, and jumping, the game has some interesting mechanics.
Your main mode of attack is barking at your enemies. The bark sends out a sound wave that acts as a projectile weapon that hurts your enemies. Just tapping the attack button sends out a short wave of sound that barely travels half-screen. If you hold the button down and then release it, the wave launches all the way to the edge of the screen, sometimes beyond. Most enemies take several blasts to kill. They freeze and start flashing when they are first hit, and then start moving again after a second or two. You have to time your barks perfectly or the enemies can recover and damage you between attacks. It is amusing to me that your main mode of attack is projectile barking. Who would have thought that a 2D side scrolling game about a dog would play out more like a shooter than anything else?
Another character function is a water attack. If you get wet you can hit a button that makes Beethoven shake himself off. The water kills everyone on screen. Why water would kill your enemies, I don't know. But this whole game is nonsensical and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You're fighting fat guys with shotguns and rabid poodles half the time. I am willing to bet you don't see either of those in the movie. The last thing your character can do is hit a button that makes Beethoven scoop stuff up off the ground into his mouth. If you see an item, you can't just walk over it. You have to line yourself up with it and hit this button. This button also picks up Beethoven's children after he locates them.
There are four missing puppies, each representing four different stages. The stages are the suburbs, a park, a kennel, and a wilderness environment. Each stage is broken into two parts. So it is really like the game is only eight stages long. In the first part of each stage, you play until you find your missing puppy. This marks the end of part one of the stage. Then you play part two, where you must pick up the missing puppy and carry him to the end of the level where Mrs. Beethoven creepily, motionlessly awaits.
I was a little intimidated by the fact that I'd have to pick up this puppy and protect him during these stages. If there is anything I have ever hated in video games it is the escort mission. But in this game it is not that bad. The puppy can't get hurt at all, nor will he ever aimlessly walk off an edge and kill itself. If you need to drop the puppy so you can engage in combat, it will be completely okay. Just kill your enemies, pick the puppy up again, and move on.
I had a fun time with the game but I have to admit that it is not very well made. The reward you get for completing the game is the same image the game uses for its title screen. The same music plays that plays when you look at the title screen. And then all you get is a weak congratulatory message at the bottom of the screen. And then the credits start rolling.
Graphically the game looks good for a Super Nintendo game. It is bright and colorful and cartoony. Some of the backgrounds, in particular the sunset used in the game's final stage, really add to that effect. The game's music score, however, is really bad. All I could think about when I was playing this game was that they took the introduction music to Judge Judy and turned it into some kind of weird combination of video game and elevator music. It's not good.
The controls are also not that great. There is definitely a learning curve here. When Beethoven starts moving, he moves very slowly. When he jumps, however, he moves very fast. If you get moving and get into a rhythm of running and jumping you can move along through the stages pretty quickly. But your character often has a hard time stopping himself and will slide like he was running on ice. This caused me to get hit by enemies more often than I care to admit. Let's not even mention all the ledges I slid off of during the kennel stage. Also, you don't jump very far from a standing or walking position. Often you have to run and jump in order to make it across a wide gap. But it takes Beethoven so long to get running, that this can be very hard to accomplish, especially on small ledges.
The game is a challenge, but one that can be easily overcome through repetition. There are a lot of cheap deaths to be found. Apparently this game thinks its cute to just have the floor fall out from under you with no warning whatsoever. Super cool. But keep powering through, taking in and remembering the layout each time you take a stab at it. Once you remember where to go, where the enemies are, and which ledges are dependable to jump across, you are golden.
Once you know what you are doing, the game is very short. It can be beaten in less than thirty minutes easily. I am glad I bought this game for only a few bucks. Not only is it short but there is almost zero replay value to be found here. This is a very basic no frills game. But I had fun with it. It was good for a play through or two. I must say though that if I had sunk forty or fifty bucks into this game as a kid I would have been super pissed. It is so short and so lacking in substance.
So I am not sure what grade to give the game. I had fun with it. I only spent a few dollars on it, so it was worth the money. But it is super short, has iffy controls, and there is NO replay value to be found here. However I liked it and thought it was a fun little distraction on my Sunday afternoon. I am willing to overlook the game's flaws and give it acknowledgment for keeping me entertained, if only for a short while.
Overall:
C
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