Summary: 15/100

Introduction

This CD-ROM begins wonderfully. It was such fun that I was really hoping that they would maintain that terrific style throughout the game. Unfortunately, they did not. To preserve the pleasure of the opening I won't describe it, except to say that it's non-interactive, clever, and funny.

When the opening sequence finishes, you're playing the game proper. Actually, the game involves playing a series of smaller games. There's a very vague premise that your hard drive is corrupted and you need to play these games to fix things. You drive around on the circuit board of your computer, visiting "corrupted sites" where completing a round of a game serves to fix the error. There are seven different games, and as you drive around the circuit board you end up playing many rounds of each. The further you travel from your starting point the harder the games get.

So there are really two things here: the Muppets themselves, and the games.

The Muppets

I love the Muppets; I even tried to get a summer job with them during the first season of Sesame Street. The sense of joy that pervades the Muppet universe is delightful. The particular version of Muppet life we get here is the crew from the Muppet TV show. This was one of my least favorite of the Muppet projects. Although good-spirited, I never found it very funny, and obvious laugh track was painful.

But this formula works much better on the CD-ROM. There's lots of video of Muppet skits from the shows, but they only appear after the games are solved - almost like commercials between shows. And even then they're usually very short - only five or seconds. That frequency and length worked just right for me. The Muppets are great cultural recyclers, and delight in re-using and appropriating everything they can find and gently making it their own. In moderation, even the deliberately stupid jokes are fun.

The Game

When you're not watching the occasional video, you're playing one of the seven games. And that's a problem. One or two rounds of each game are fun - they're cute. But over the course of playing the CD-ROM you end up playing a dozen or more rounds of each one, and by the time I got near to clearing up the board I was coming to loathe the games. If I wasn't really curious to see the payoff at the end, I would have stopped a quarter of the way through.

The games are mostly familiar. Although they've been slightly adapted, it's easy to recognize the old TV game shows Hollywood Squares and Name That Tune. Similarly, there's a version of the old video arcade game Missile Command. Another game involves a grid of blocks where each face has a bit of picture; you turn the blocks to form a single image. In one of the games you shoot a Muppet from a cannon through obstacles towards a target, choosing the strength of the blast, the angle, and the timing. There's a goofy adaptation of the computer game Doom. And finally, there's a game where you have to reassemble a Muppet skit by selecting four short video clips from that skit and getting them in order.

Each of these games is briefly fun, but they all wear out. After a half-dozen rounds of each, I was ready to throw in the towel. I played on because I hoped that the big payoff at the end would be as much fun as the opening sequence, and I was willing to invest a few hours for what I hoped would be a simply wonderful couple of minutes. I regret to report that although there is a closing sequence, it's not even distantly worth the effort.

I don't have any kids, so I don't know if this sort of repetition is of the sort that they love or hate. I can imagine kids loving to come back to the same sort of game each time, but I can also imagine them getting quickly bored. The box says it's for "Ages 99 and under."
The CD-ROM also contains "Muppets Inside", which is a set of cursors and sounds for your Windows '95 computer. They're cute, and I kept them on my home machine while playing the game.

Summary

If this CD-ROM didn't have the Muppets, I wouldn't even consider it worth reviewing. Sadly, even the Muppets can't save this game. However, if you happen to come across a copy, do install it and watch the wonderful opening. You might even take a shot at a few of the games while you're there. But quit when it stops being fun. Not recommended.