Mitsota's Awful Tarzan (PS1) Review
Disney's Tarzan (the version I played anyway) is a 1999 2.5D action platformer, developed by Eurocom; at the time known for their ports of Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat 4, and Cruis'n World for the Nintendo 64. The game is a tie-in with the Disney animated film Tarzan; It was released shortly after film and follows the same plot. (although prior viewing of the film is necessary to follow the plot in the game)
The game follows the story of Tarzan, a baby that was adopted by a gorilla and raised in the jungle as an ape after the tragic death of his parents, and eventually encounters a camp of human explorers whom attempt to change his way of life. The story is mostly conveyed in strangely high quality film clips, offset by how short they are, and how they leave out key story elements from the film. The game recreates key scenes from he film in some of it's stages, including the fight with Saber, Jane's baboon scene, the campsite trashing scene, and the boat scene.
Gameplay consists of 2D style platforming segments, usually in a jungle environment. The player controls Tarzan, and must navigate a series of platforming challenges while avoiding animals. The player can throw fruits at animals to defend themselves, or can find a knife weapon in each of Tarzan's platforming levels. I found the knife more or less useless in my playthrough, doing the same damage as the unlimited ammo ranged attack. The player can also collect rare colored fruits with different weapon properties, these were more helpful than the knife. Other collectables count towards 100% completion, and include: Coins, collecting 100 will earn an extra life. T, A,R,Z,A, and N letters that unlock film clips to view on the main menu. Lastly, 4 pieces of a baby baboon drawing, which allow you to go to a short bonus round to collect more coins.
Levels are fairly challenging, demanding a decent level of skill from the player, (boss fights in particular are pretty hard) but are easily completeable with practice. While there are a few stages I really enjoyed, a lot of the stages are very generic jungle levels, that, while packed with enemies and collectables, feel very copy/paste. However, non-jungle levels like the boat scene and the campsite scenes stand out to me as well designed and fun.
While running around the jungle collecting floaty garbage, you'll be listening to various remixes of songs from the film, as well as a few original (if generic) instrumental pieces. While not particularly memorable, the music fills it's role nicely. Much like the voice cast! (ooh, segue!) The voice cast in the game are all imitators, and all of hem fill heir roles nicely. (I'd like to give props to Audrey Wasilewski, who convinced me that Rosie reprized her role as Terk.) The only voice that stuck out to me as odd was young Tarzan, but you don't play as him for long, and he doesn't speak any words.
While the gameplay was engaging, was very generic. It held my interest the entire game; But that isn't saying much, considering I completed the game in less than 5 hours. I'd give the game a solid 7 out of 10, but I also wouldn't pay more than 20 bucks for it.