Home Alone
Sega Genesis
I was a massive Home Alone fan when I was a kid. When this game came out, it seemed like a foregone conclusion I would buy it. I remember going to Funco Land with my mom and my brother. In case you are too young to remember, Funco Land was a video game store full of TVs and game consoles that let you test a game out before you decided to buy it. Even though my mind was already made up that I wanted Home Alone, my mom and my brother urged me to play a couple of minutes to see if I liked it. I remember firing the game up and seeing how you could ride your sled around the neighborhood and go around to different houses and pick things up. From the two minutes I played, I thought it was awesome.
But my mom and my brother thought it looked stupid, and encouraged me to check out some other games. It was then that I noticed Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on the shelf. I tested that game out and immediately fell in love. And who was I to say no to a Michael Jackson game? I was a huge fan of his at the time. My mom and my brother approved, too. I ended up leaving the store with Moonwalker. And I would never play Home Alone again until now: 2023. This game came out in 1991. That's a good 32 year gap. Wow. Every day that passes I find myself in shock at how old I am.
Anyway, this memory always stands out to me, because it is one of the only cases of video game related peer pressure that I can remember. I let my brother and my mom talk me out of getting this game. I think about the butterfly effect. Where would I be in life right now if I had stuck to my guns and picked Home Alone instead? I'd probably be a millionaire CEO of a publishing company, or something. Gee, thanks mom!
Story:
The events of the game are loosely based on the movie. Not only has Kevin been left home alone, the entire neighborhood also seems to be on vacation as well. It is up to Kevin to defend not just his house, but the houses of his neighbors as well.
Gameplay:
This game is surprisingly complex considering it is meant for kids. The basic premise is that the neighborhood, consisting of five houses, is being raided by the Wet Bandits. Playing from a top-down perspective as Kevin, you have to zip around the neighborhood from house to house on your motorized sled.
When the Bandits arrive at a house, you'll see a meter that says "Loot" on the top right hand corner of the screen. If this meter fills up, the Bandits have successfully robbed the house, and they will move onto the next house. Your goal is to stop them from robbing all five houses in the neighborhood. If you can hold them off long enough for the 20 minute timer to run out, the police will arrive and arrest them.
While waiting for the Bandits to find a house to rob, you have a few options. You can zoom around, looking to stock up on items that you can use to craft into weapons to fight the Bandits. Crashing into snowmen gives you said items. Or you can scout out a house in advance and plant traps in it. You have a limited number of traps at your disposal, and as far as I know you can't refill them. So you can either use them all on one or two houses, or you can spread them out across all five house.
When the Bandits arrive at a house, you have to quickly enter the house and fight them. This is where the game switches to a 2D side-scroller. If you've planted traps in the house, the Bandits will occasionally walk into these traps and hurt themselves. Otherwise you will have to fight them with the materials you collected while zipping around on your sled. You can gain new materials by finding them in the houses as well. You can use tires you've collected from the outside to bounce high in the air and reach items that might normally seem out of reach.
There are only two difficulty levels: beginner and expert. I usually play on normal, but it is not an option in this game. So I picked beginner, the default difficulty. Apparently on beginner, the game automatically crafts the items you pick up into weapons. If you are playing on expert, you have to do it yourself. Once you have a weapon selected, you have to use it on the Bandits to drain their health. Weapons include a snowball launcher, a BB gun, and a glue gun. Harry and Marv have a collective health bar. You basically have to just keep hitting them with your weapons (and luring them into the traps you set beforehand) until that health bar goes down to zero. Once it does, the house is saved and the Bandits retreat and attack another house.
This is the entire game. Scoot around outside to collect items, set traps in the houses, enter the houses the Bandits are raiding, and fight them until their health is drained and they leave. Once the 20 minute timer runs out, the police arrive and you win. Game over, at least on beginner difficulty. On expert, the timer is 40 minutes and you have to craft everything yourself. Meh. Never had much of a desire to do that. I considered the game to be beaten after completing it on beginner. Maybe if I had enjoyed the game a little more, I would have tried to tackle expert. But I just really did not have fun with it at all.
Graphics:
This is a decent looking game. The overhead sections look nice, like a quaint little snowy village. Not very accurate to the movie, but I enjoy the aesthetic. I'd love to see an RPG set here.
The side scrolling sections look good too. All the different houses have themes (country house, futuristic house, dilapidated house, etc). This lends a little visual variety to the game, as they do not all look the same. I just wish Kevin's house looked like it does in the movie. Harry, Marv, and Kevin themselves are all instantly recognizable from the films.
There is not really much else to say. While it is not a bad looking game, I can't lie and say it is too visually exciting either.
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Sound:
The sound is a bit of a stumbling block for this game. The classic Home Alone theme is not present. The title music sounds more like Ninja Turtles music than anything. There's barely any Christmas music either. There is a small portion of the overworld music that sounds like Carol of the Bells, but that is it. The music sounds like it could belong to any generic Genesis platformer.
Sound effects are nothing special either. The buzz of the sled can be annoying, I guess. Just very forgettable all around in the sound department. They couldn't even throw us some crummy 90s voice effects, like Kevin's scream, from time to time? Lazy.
Overall:
Despite all my bickering and complaining, this game is not a complete failure. I can see what they were trying to do here, and they almost had it. Almost. And I'm sure there are some people out there that like this game. I'm glad for them. It's just not for me.
Will I ever play this game again? I can't see that happening. Life is too short, and there are so many other games out there to check out that I've never played before. Why waste my time on something I didn't have fun with? While there are some redeeming things here, and I wouldn't say the game is complete trash. It's just not for me. And that is okay.
THE GRADE:
D
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Oh yeah, the much maligned Home Alone 2 for the NES is better. Check out my review here.
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