Iggy's Reckin' Balls

Description

n64Review Game developers seem to be under the impression that fans of the puzzle genre, and to benefit the analogy, we might as well throw in the driving genre, too, are the types who'd actually attempt to dig their way out of prison with the blunt end of a toothbrush. Why? Call it attention span; call it stubbornness. For better or worse, the games tend to be loaded with sick, addictive tasks that no matter how much you try to hate them, you can't even walk away from them. Acclaim's Iggy's Reckin' Balls for the N64 is no exception. Iguana's bizarre puzzle/racing/platform game isn't particularly difficult. In fact, some of the challenges are downright easy. However, the game is fairly steep, with four modes of play, about ten levels in each (including hidden ones), with about ten towers of difficulty in each one of the levels. There are eight main characters available immediately, with nine hidden ones you open up later. These game personalities are balls with faces. That's right, including a room-temperature-cool Iggy, a cooing strange female with a bow, a large grinning thing, a pumpkin, and others. They're fairly ineffectual as characters, but fortunately, they're not developed enough to be ingratiatingly annoying - actually, ignoring them becomes pretty easy once you start cracking levels. It's with one of these characters that you enter into one of four modes. In arcade mode, you race up to three other CPU opponents or humans in one of five open levels or five hidden levels, once you unlock them. There are ten stages of difficulty, known as towers, within each level. Beat one, you move on to the next, and so on. When the race starts, you move to the top of the vertical, spiraling course by climbing to the plank above you or adjacent to you by grappling with your tongue. Some sections of the track you can't grab on to, so you'll need to race along horizontally until you find a clearing or a grabable surface. Now the cool thing is, you can actually grapple your opponents as well. Someone getting ahead of you? No sweat. Stick out your tongue and whip him around a few times. You can make some time while he recovers. You're also equipped with jumping ability, a turbo, and the benefits of any of the power-ups you gather along the way, such as little bombs you can leave for your enemies or a destructive energy ball that seeks them out while you progress through the course. But some of these power-ups do nasty things to you as well, like make you really small and slow or reverse your controls. And one big, huge frustrating thing to have happen is to run out of turbos before you're at the end of the course. While there's plenty of bounding from trampolines and grappling from plank to plank, the sections of track between the areas you can grab onto are awfully far apart if you can't zip to them quickly with your turbo. Since you only have a limited amount, you have to use them very wisely or else go crazy, especially in the longer towers. Another mode is the mix-up or create-your-own-championship challenge. This is actually pretty fun, especially in multiplayer. You select the ten levels you want to play, as well as the tower within that level, hence tailoring the difficulty and progression of difficulty to your liking. For example, you could set the championship up to begin in The Deep, Tower 5, and then make it easier by choosing Easy Street, Tower 1 to go next, and then make it difficult again by choosing Candyland, Tower 10 for the next one and so on. And once those are selected, the challenge is the standard race to the top before the other guys within each level. The time-trial mode challenges you to beat the best time for each level on your own or go up against human opponents. This is actually more difficult than the other modes, as well as frustrating. If you want to challenge your friends, the versus, or head-to-head mode and the other modes are much more interesting, with the exception of the battle mode. In this one,

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UPC Number: 02148164159

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