Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Fourteen years old, Toonstruck has dated in some respects, primarily the scan-line FMV. But being cartoon, in others it remains as lovely today. The main trouble is how hard it is to get to run, requiring DosBox with special instructions, or Virtual Machine. Or better yet, and I’m increasingly tempted to do this, building a box out of ancient PC parts and installing Win 95 on it. Like Day Of The Tentacle, as I played it for Eurogamer I couldn’t help but take screenshots of everything. Below are but some of them. (You can have fun giving yourself a seizure by scrolling the first few images and watching them strobe.)

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Eurogamer currently sports my retrospective of Toonstruck, the 1996 point and click adventure starring Christopher Lloyd and some cartoons. I went back to it having forgotten if I even liked it 14 years ago, and was absolutely delighted to discover that it’s fantastic. I say things like:

“In looking back at some of the best (and worst) adventure games of the eighties and nineties, it’s too easy to remain within the archives of LucasArts and Sierra. Perhaps Westwood’s Bladerunner gets quickly remembered, Cecil’s Broken Sword games, and someone will recall Adventure Soft’s Simon The Sorcerer games. But what about The Legend of Kyrania series, also from Westwood? Access’s Tex Murphy games? Microids’ Syberia? And what about Burst Studio’s Toonstruck? Why isn’t everyone talking about it? It’s absolutely bloody brilliant..”

And it continues here. Also, I can’t resist doing a gallery for this one either, so that’s coming up.

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