The Ren & Stimpy Show: Fire Dogs
Super Nintendo
Nostalgia Factor:
I first played this game back in 1994 or '95. I didn't have a Super Nintendo back then, but my stepbrother Kyle brought his over for the weekend. We went to Blockbuster and checked out this game. I remember being super excited to play it, only for that excitement to quickly turn into disappointment because the game sucked so bad. Back then, when you rented a game for the weekend, you generally forced yourself to try and like it, so you could squeeze your money's worth out of the game. But there was no forcing myself to like this one. My stepbrother and I abandoned it for the entire weekend after just an hour or two of playing it. All I remember from my time with the game was how we did not like it, and how it consisted of just two level types, looped over and over again.
I am not sure why I decided to revisit it here in 2024. I suppose my end goal of this blog is to review every game I have ever played in my life, so it was inevitable I'd eventually come around to this game.
Would I find that I had been too harsh on the game, or would I find that my bad memories of it were completely justified? Time to dive in.
Story:
This must be one of those games you need the instruction manual for, because NOTHING about the story is actually explained in-game. I have not seen the Ren & Stimpy episode this is based on either, so I came into this knowing absolutely nothing about what was going on.
From what I was able to gather from my short time with the game, Ren & Stimpy are trying to help out at the local fire station by gathering all the equipment for the firefighters and putting the equipment in the fire truck. But they are doing it undercover, as the firefighters do not like them because they aren't Dalmatians. So they have to paint themselves as Dalmatians to sneak by. Or something. I don't know.
Like I said, nothing is explained through in-game cutscenes or text sequences. You are just immediately thrust into the action.
Gameplay:
This game operates on a day-to-day schedule, similar to Paperboy. Once you've made it through all the days - you beat the game. Not that I bothered with trying to do that. I passed about two or three days before the game became too annoyingly difficult for me. So I told myself it just wasn't worth it and I stopped playing and shut the game off.
Yeah, it is that bad.
Each in-game day consists of two stages: a side-scrolling stage where you collect fire equipment at the fire station, and a stage where you run around with a trampoline catching things that are being thrown out of burning buildings. You don't actually fight any fires in this game.
Let's start with the side-scrolling stages, and why they suck. You start out by the fire truck in the station, and you see an outline of all the items you have to collect. A fireman helmet, coat, boots, rope, etc. You have to scour the station for these items as a timer winds down. If you don't collect them all and return to the fire truck in time, you die and lose a life. Then you have to start all over again.
The fire station is like a maze. The only way to make your way through it is by trial and error, remembering where all the items are hidden and how to get there. As the game progresses, the station gets bigger and bigger, more maze-like, and more difficult to navigate. Fires pop up and can burn you, smoke clouds cover your face, but most threatening of all is the fireman that roams the station, seemingly at random. If he touches you, he kills you with one hit. So you have to run away from him. He's like the alien stalking you in Alien Isolation, or the Nemesis in Resident Evil. He touches you once, you die and have to start the whole level over again. The way to avoid him is by painting yourself like a Dalmatian. He won't attack you when you look like one. Unfortunately, there are sprinklers and other obstacles set up to wash your paint off and make you vulnerable again.
When I first tried playing this game, I couldn't even make it past the first level. It took me like six attempts. I didn't realize there was a run button, and that you could use the items in your inventory, such as the fire extinguisher (which puts out small fires and freezes the pursuing fireman). I also didn't realize how the whole "paint yourself like a Dalmatian" thing worked. Nothing is explained in the game, and it never tells you which button does what. So I had a very miserable time trying to make it through the first level when I didn't know how anything worked. Another instance of it being valuable to have the manual for the game.
I was ready to say "fork this" and turn the game off, giving it an F score and labeling it as the worst game I've played for this blog. But I stepped away, found an online copy of the game's manual, and familiarized myself with the mechanics of the game. When I returned and played the first level again, I was able to beat it easily with the knowledge I had at hand. And you know what? I had a decent time doing it.
Then I moved onto the second part of the first day: the trampoline stage. In this stage, you have to catch things being thrown from a burning building in a trampoline that Ren and Stimpy are running around and holding. Once you save a pre-determined amount of items, gold coins are tossed down. You have to collect enough to fill a meter, at which point you clear the stage. Once again, you are timed. If the timer runs out and you haven't collected enough gold, you die and have to start the stage over again.
These stages are a MAJOR pain in the butt. I do not have a problem with them in theory, but in practice they are way too long. It takes you like six minutes to fill that meter. Six minutes of running around catching things, with little to no time to breathe, and no margin for error. It sucks.
But if you pass the stage, you make it to the next in-game day, where you again have to explore the fire house to collect all of the needed fire fighting items. Pass this stage, and you play another trampoline stage. Pass this, and you move along to the next in-game day. Each day gets progressively harder. Like I said, I didn't bother to play past the third day. I'd seen enough, and I was not having any fun whatsoever. Apparently you have to go through all seven days of the week, and then you see an ending sequence and you beat the game.
Noooooo thank you. I consider myself fairly easy to please. On top of that, I am someone who will almost never review a game until I've finished it, just to give it a fair shake. There was no chance of that happening here. That's how bad and repetitive it was.
Graphics:
I suppose the game looks okay. I am not too familiar with the source material, as I never watched Ren & Stimpy as a kid. But it seems to capture the look and feel of the show pretty well. The fire station looks good. The visual effects like the water sprinklers look nice, as do the character animations. I love the game's use of color, as well.
Unfortunately, as there are only two different level types (the fire station and the trampoline stages), you better get used to looking at the same thing over and over again.
Sound:
The game sounds good. It has a nice, upbeat soundtrack that sticks in your head as you play. The soundtrack may be the best thing about the game. A couple of the game's tunes are 16-bit versions of classical songs, such as Sevilla and the William Tell Overture. These immediately went onto my video game music playlist.
Overall:
This is not a good game, and it is indeed one of the worst games I've played for this blog. That said, once you understand the game's mechanics it does become a bit more fun to play. I suppose if I actually owned this game as a kid, I would have forced myself to play it over and over until I became a master of it. I would have tried to convince myself I liked it.
I am not going to give it an F. It's not unplayable garbage or anything like that. But let's be real and admit that this is not a good game, by any definable metric. The fact that I didn't even bother to finish it, when I generally make it a rule to finish every game I review, should tell you something about how bad this is. Even if you are a big Ren and Stimpy fan, I would suggest avoiding this game at all costs.
THE GRADE:
D-
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