Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a typical side-scrolling platform game based on the Disney movie of the same name. The player takes on the role of Beast. As Beast the player can walk around, jump and hit enemies with his fists. Beast can also climb against walls. The levels feature various power-ups that can be collected (such as hearts which earn the player extra life and a magnifying glass which shows the player an upcoming piece of the level) which can be and on the way the player must watch out for pit traps and various enemies.
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Beauty and the Beast is easily one of the greatest Disney animated films ever made but if this was your first experience with the film you wouldn't know that with how bad this game is.
Just a terrible terrible fuckin' terrible platformer across the board with the most insufferable enemies and platforming moments you'll encounter. It's quite incredible how they made the Beast feel utterly pathetic with him having to roar at things just to get somewhere only to get thrown off again by another bloody enemy so he has to start over.
What a shame though that such a wonderful film was treated in such a trite and haphazard way with this crap.
Just a terrible terrible fuckin' terrible platformer across the board with the most insufferable enemies and platforming moments you'll encounter. It's quite incredible how they made the Beast feel utterly pathetic with him having to roar at things just to get somewhere only to get thrown off again by another bloody enemy so he has to start over.
What a shame though that such a wonderful film was treated in such a trite and haphazard way with this crap.
Good graphics
Not sure why this was released three years after the movie. Maybe nobody had ideas for how to make a game out of it, but other Disney films from the time got their game adaptations pretty quickly as far as I know.
Anyway, they probably should have let someone else make it besides Probe Software. This game is not good, though it would admittedly be pretty inoffensive without two key problems. The movement is awkward and honestly pretty bad, with momentum seemingly being all over the place and making precise platforming a major chore. The enemy placement is also really unfair and cheap, right from the beginning to the end of the game.
The end result is pretty shockingly difficult for what you'd expect from a Beauty and the Beast video game adaptation. You'd think parents would get this for their younger kids, maybe in their single digits, likely not somebody who could complete a game this hard let alone pass the first couple of stages. I'd be pretty pissed off if I was that kid.
Anyway, they probably should have let someone else make it besides Probe Software. This game is not good, though it would admittedly be pretty inoffensive without two key problems. The movement is awkward and honestly pretty bad, with momentum seemingly being all over the place and making precise platforming a major chore. The enemy placement is also really unfair and cheap, right from the beginning to the end of the game.
The end result is pretty shockingly difficult for what you'd expect from a Beauty and the Beast video game adaptation. You'd think parents would get this for their younger kids, maybe in their single digits, likely not somebody who could complete a game this hard let alone pass the first couple of stages. I'd be pretty pissed off if I was that kid.
The positioning of the enemies makes the game unfairly harder...
I feel like me and my fellow 90's gamers all owe The Lion King an apology because we all let this game completely squeak under the radar when it feels way more actively spiteful towards its target audience than The Lion King ever did. This game's first level with its spike traps, time limits, and relentless enemy placement definitely made small children cry. At one point they place a spider directly above some collectibles purely to fuck with you.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a wonderful testament to just how bad a level's design can get while still being something that you can look at and go "Yeah, I GUESS this is a finished product that can be beaten". Every level is a labyrinthine trial of slow platforming and even slower combat with terrible hit detection. The second level - the second level of the game! - is an autoscrolling "race the spikes to the top" level where there's these timed fire traps in his own castle and the spikes rubberband worse than a Mario Kart AI. The Beast can roar and freeze enemies in place, which seems like a harmless addition to his moveset until it's also worked into the platforming somehow. Sometimes you have to roar to make floating platforms move (because magic...?) and there is a very terrible section in this game where The Beast has to roar at these tiny "barely-can-see-the-pixels-on-a-CRT-TV" sized bats that are flying around in his castle so that they freeze in place, just so he can platform on the tiny bats to get to the next area. The tiny bats also fall the moment you step on them. This game hates you.
The Beast can also wall climb, which is cool until you take damage from tiny enemies because you can't dodge very well while wall climbing. Read the last sentence of the previous paragraph again for emphasis.
Also, seriously, why did every game developer in the 90's look at this movie and decide that The Beast was a slow-moving block of wet tissue paper who throws slow punches and gets his shit rocked by rats, spiders, and frogs? The Beast feels like a character that would've been a slam dunk for a fun 2D platformer like Aladdin was, but instead I have to watch this giant dog/boar monster laboriously plod around his environments until a small animal ruins his day. It's hard to even say which Beauty and the Beast game is worse - the SNES game or the two Sunsoft Genesis games - because they're all uniquely terrible in their own magical ways.
Game at least gets an extra half star for the level where Belle and The Beast have a snowball fight and The Beast just dies if he misses three snowballs. Perfect.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a wonderful testament to just how bad a level's design can get while still being something that you can look at and go "Yeah, I GUESS this is a finished product that can be beaten". Every level is a labyrinthine trial of slow platforming and even slower combat with terrible hit detection. The second level - the second level of the game! - is an autoscrolling "race the spikes to the top" level where there's these timed fire traps in his own castle and the spikes rubberband worse than a Mario Kart AI. The Beast can roar and freeze enemies in place, which seems like a harmless addition to his moveset until it's also worked into the platforming somehow. Sometimes you have to roar to make floating platforms move (because magic...?) and there is a very terrible section in this game where The Beast has to roar at these tiny "barely-can-see-the-pixels-on-a-CRT-TV" sized bats that are flying around in his castle so that they freeze in place, just so he can platform on the tiny bats to get to the next area. The tiny bats also fall the moment you step on them. This game hates you.
The Beast can also wall climb, which is cool until you take damage from tiny enemies because you can't dodge very well while wall climbing. Read the last sentence of the previous paragraph again for emphasis.
Also, seriously, why did every game developer in the 90's look at this movie and decide that The Beast was a slow-moving block of wet tissue paper who throws slow punches and gets his shit rocked by rats, spiders, and frogs? The Beast feels like a character that would've been a slam dunk for a fun 2D platformer like Aladdin was, but instead I have to watch this giant dog/boar monster laboriously plod around his environments until a small animal ruins his day. It's hard to even say which Beauty and the Beast game is worse - the SNES game or the two Sunsoft Genesis games - because they're all uniquely terrible in their own magical ways.
Game at least gets an extra half star for the level where Belle and The Beast have a snowball fight and The Beast just dies if he misses three snowballs. Perfect.
I was certain Jaws would be the worst game I played this year. 1 hour later it wasn’t the worst game I played in a day. This game is so awful. I try not to rate games unless I beat them but I’d rather be doing anything than to waste another second on this game.