 while back I was asked on the polykill collect call podcast how I got the name SNES drunk well I had to come up with something and I thought saying SNES as one word made you sound drunk plus I enjoy an adult beverage or two every now and again before that name I nearly settled on the name SNES dog or SNES dog and I wanted to make it seem like my dog Clyde was the one doing the reviews and voiceovers and he would be the only one to ever appear on camera instead of me upon hearing this longtime viewer Phil came up with a good idea how about a video going over every Super Nintendo game featuring and starring a dog now I know that lots of games have dogs in them stuff like Harvest Moon, Big Sky Trooper, Robo Trek, Illusion of Gaia, Earthbound, Big Man 7, heck even Goof Troop kind of qualifies but I'm talking about games where the dog is the main character front and center so we'll start with Beethoven's second the ultimate canine caper this game is based on the series of kid friendly movies starring Charles Groden and unfortunately we're off to a bad start because this game is pretty crappy it's clearly a game made for kids obviously but even by those standards it's lousy it's one of those platformers where your sprite is too big for its own good and everything does damage so you have to play it over and over to get a feel for the spacing and speed of everything but this game just doesn't offer any incentive to play it that often it's just your typical generic movie licensed platformer avoid this game next is a series of super Famicom games featuring a mascot for Japanese developers Zoom Incorporated named Doolucky okay Doolucky is actually a cat but the first game in the series Doolucky know Kusayaku is a baseball game made up of teams of animals everything from cats bears rabbits chickens and you guessed it dogs their team is the Fanta Fire Poochies Fanta is in the soda drink yeah this may be a corporate sponsored game but it's actually not bad pitching is easy enough fielding is pretty simple since the camera view point gives you plenty of room but hitting can take a while to get the hang of this game had a North American release scheduled titled Zoo Ball but it was canceled still if you enjoy the novelty of playing baseball as anthropomorphic animals dogs in particular then this is a worthwhile pickup it's a perfectly okay baseball game and hey it helps that the dog team is actually one of the best to play as in this game the next Doolucky game released was Doolucky's a league soccer and once again we have a team of dogs this time it's the pochy funky dogs doing battle with cats rabbits and bears on the pitch this game is played up for comedy so there's all sorts of bizarre sprite animations I'm not a soccer guy at all since I didn't grow up with the sport but this game is pretty enjoyable I love how the dogs all have huge feet this is an arcade style game where there's no fouls or offsides or anything like that so you can dive into other players and cause all kinds of chaos this is a pretty decent game especially if you enjoy this kind of art style but it's probably best enjoyed with a second player last in the Doolucky series there's Doolucky no puzzle tour 94 okay so there's not much dog presence in this one but you can play as a dog for what it's worth and it's a perfectly okay puzzle game where you launch blocks upward as patterns of blocks cascade down toward you use the Y button to flip colors and B to fling them up you have to create a line of five of one color one way or another I should point out that all three of the Doolucky Super Famicom games are English friendly and don't need a translation patch they're just simple straightforward plug-and-play games with a goofy art style so if that's what you're looking for then here you go back to North America we go with family dog this game is based on a primetime television show of the same name and they did a great job making the game look just like the show but the game itself is seriously uninspired just like the Beethoven game I talked about earlier the controls feel like there's about a quarter-second delay to them you can get used to it if you play this long enough but again there's not really any incentive to do that here the big flaw with this one is that certain levels have different objectives other than just getting to the end of the level but the game doesn't bother to tell you what they are you're just supposed to figure it out family dog is better than the Beethoven game but that's not saying much let's go back to the Super Famicom for Heisei Inu Monogatari Bo Pop and Smash many of you out there are familiar with the Hello Kitty themed game Sanrio World Smash Ball and this is the same kind of game where it's kind of like a two-player competitive version of Breakout and of course this makes this particular list because the main character is a dog named Bow Wow the game is based on a manga series and there's power-ups there's oddly shaped arenas there's different rackets to choose from like a baseball bat or a tree branch it's pretty weird but it's a perfectly okay two-player game if that's what you're looking for next there's the Ren and Stimpy games yeah in case you didn't know Ren is actually a Chihuahua there are four Ren and Stimpy games on the Super Nintendo and each of them were made by a different developer let's just go alphabetically and start with Ren and Stimpy buckaroos developed by Imagineering the same group who made the home alone games family dog Casper home improvement so yeah don't get your hopes up too high here this actually isn't that bad though especially compared to those other games you at least get different things to shoot at enemies like chickens watermelons and plungers and you get to smack things with your oversized cartoon hand you can eventually flip between the two characters and the settings are based on actual episodes of the show there are two killer flaws here though one is how slow and lethargic the gameplay is these levels seem to stretch on forever and the second is the god awful sound design they took a six second loop of music and it's all you're stuck with as you slog your way through each long level buckaroos is extremely mediocre but you know what it was actually better than I thought it was gonna be which isn't saying much next is Ren and Stimpy fire dogs made by Argonaut games now this is along the lines of some of the terrible games I mentioned earlier this game is awful you play as Stimpy at first who has to collect firefighting equipment and bring it back to the fire engine but he does it very slowly you have to avoid firefighters along the way get too close and you're dead and yes it's one hit deaths you can avoid firefighters by finding paint buckets which give you a Dalmatian pattern just like the episode so that's at least a nice touch but this game is terrible even if you manage to gather all the stuff you need you still have to contend with the time limit which is a whopping two minutes and 15 seconds and that's just the first level yeah you're gonna want to avoid this game Ren and Stimpy Time Warp might be the best-looking game out of the four this one was developed by Sculptured Software who also made other great-looking games like Looney Tunes Bee Ball it definitely does a good job of capturing the vibe of the show with all kinds of weird sprite animations like Ren's facial expressions and the happy happy joy joy celebration but again this game is mediocre at best because the enemy design is such simple to crap like right at the beginning here when you fight this dog and he just kind of bounces around and you slap him and it's all boring and uninspired plus it really gets tough and especially cheap the further you progress this is arguably a decent game but it's one of those cases where you're not missing anything if you don't play it I have similar feelings about the last Ren and Stimpy game here Vidiots developed by Grey Matter who made crap like the Wayne's World game it's more platforming stuff that you can find much better in like 30 or 40 other platformers on the SNES alone the graphics and art design are well done but again the sound design here is just I had to mute the TV while playing this one I appreciate that they're trying to recreate the same oddball sound effects the show had but it's half-assed and cheap sounding anyway Vidiots is another big pile of mediocre they at least try some different things with the level design here and there and the levels are mercifully shorter than they are in buckaroos and time warp but in the end it's just the same old stuff and not really that different from the other games I guess if you really had to pick one Ren and Stimpy SNES game the only sure thing is just to stay away from fire dogs the other three are okay at best and boring at worst but they at least represent the show reasonably well Rocco's modern life spunky's dangerous day is a tricky one to talk about first of all Rocco isn't a dog he's a wallaby the dog in this game is spunky but he's not a playable character instead you have to protect spunky and help him make it to the end of each level yep that's right this entire game is a series of escort missions now I know a lot of people can't stand these types of games me being one of them but spunky's dangerous day actually does a pretty good job of making this game interesting with some creative level design that has Rocco using springboards pulleys and other objects to help spunky make it to the end of the level Rocco doesn't take damage but spunky can and there are enemies here that you have to keep from harming him there's also tricks like giving spunky a bone which causes him to stop his progress for a bit giving you time to set up the next device to move him along like I said I don't usually like games predicated on escort missions like this I mean just look at Eek the cat that game is terrible but spunky's dangerous day is a surprisingly good puzzle platformer the music and art design are all well done and the difficulty curve isn't too steep plus there's checkpoints in each level the creative level design here makes this one worth playing today especially if you're a fan of the show scooby-doo mysteries is another different kind of game here you play as scooby and shaggy as the mystery incorporated gang investigates a series of four mysteries one on an old sunken ship then a fair a swamp and an old abandoned manor scooby and shaggy walk around looking for clues for each event and bring them back to Velma for analysis but the thing is instead of a life meter you have a scare meter if scooby and shaggy get too scared they lose a life thankfully though you can see Daphne and she gives you a scooby snack and that calms you down gee I wonder why you can also use some of the items you find to take care of the enemies you encounter to keep your scare meter down once you find all the clues you could you have to set a trap for the ghost or boss or whoever it is I appreciate that scooby-doo mystery tried something different here but ultimately this game is pretty boring it's very slow paced this might be a good game for little kids to play today if they're into scooby-doo but otherwise I'd pass on this one last their secret of evermore this is a game I have mixed feelings on for starters I love that your main characters companion is an AI controlled dog and you eventually get to play as the dog in certain sections of the game but it's a shame and a missed opportunity that this game is not to player compatible I've already done a video on this one it was one of the first I made four and a half years ago and it's a terrible video seriously I do a crappy job explaining what I do and don't like about it and I went way over the top with the hate I really do like the game story and atmosphere if only because it's so completely different than what you'd usually see in a 16-bit RPG I really like the campy B movie theme but three things in particular really bother me some of the mazes are incredibly boring and repetitive the flea market section is a gigantic mess that's barely decipherable and the hit detection is lousy in addition the alchemy system isn't balanced all that well I do think secret of evermore is worth checking out if only because it's so completely different in terms of visuals sound atmosphere and story plus you get to play with and eventually play as a dog in an action RPG how can you not love that but unfortunately this game has some serious flaws that some people may not be able to get past all right that's all for now I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a good rest of your day