Reviews from

in the past


Its a great little game. Quick to beat and fun to master! I love the music but I might be a little broken! Need to do a speedrun and put it up on Speedrun.com

This Christmas morning I made a big mistake, I got out of bed.

Some kids were over for the afternoon and spotted my CRT setup and asked to play something, it was then I subconsciously went to turn on my Sega Genesis and moved the cursor of my MegaEverdrive's menu to Taz-Mania. I could've simply just put on Sonic 2 or even Rocket Knight Adventures as a form of kid friendly entertainment, but somewhere in my mind I was bent on destruction.

The joke was on me however, as after about ten minutes of them floundering about on the second stage not knowing how to traverse Taz-Mania's leap of faith style platforming, the controller found it's way back to it's owner. They had the time of their life after that, watching me immediately get flattened into the ground by the truck boss entering the stage without warning, and bursting into laughter at the hundreds of times I slammed into obstacles on the minecart stage that could potentially get Battletoads to respond to it's cacophonous mating calls that make up it's poor attempt at a dynamic soundtrack. It's a bit hard to describe, it's kind of like if the world's most flaccid digitized slide whistle accompanied your every movement. It's a far cry from Desert Demolition's masterful attempt on the same system.

I felled Taz-Mania this day, but at what cost? My stomach has exploded so many times from mean-spirited bomb placement, I've gotten hypothermia in real life from the amount of times I fell in frozen water, and have been zapped dozens of times by pulling the wrong lever.

Well... at least they had a good time.

If you like mediocre plataformers and Frank Zappa's "Jazz from Hell" album, then this is the perfect game for you!

Taz-Mania (1992): Sólo tiene un problema, pero a su vez es lo peor que puede ser un juego de esta época: Es aburrido, mucho. Un plataformas 2D simplón, de tirar para adelante y repetir el mismo patrón. Al menos no se alarga demasiado y no se hace pesado (4,95)


Could of been good. But poor level design, bad music, and frustrating controls makes this a game that is not worth checking out.

Today marks a very important day for me. I am no longer a boy. I am a man.

Nineteen Ninety Two's 'Taz-Mania' for the Sega Genesis is a revolutionary title; not only for its time but of all time. This game's importance for founding one of the many institutions that civilization needs to continue inspires people to this very day.

'Taz-Mania' follows a member of a fictional race of marsupials from Tanzania called the "The Tasmanian Devils" named Taz. He goes on an adventure few have matched in any form of story telling with more laughs, tears and thought put into this one experience than what one author puts out in their entire life.

'Taz-Mania' is a truly life changing experience. It has not only opened my third eye, but my fourth and fifth as well. A game; no, an experience such as this one is something that all man should experience before they succumb to an endless thoughtless abyss.

For all these reasons; that is why 'Taz-Mania' is fucking shit.

Introduction:

Hello, you may be wondering why my review is uncharacteristically long for myself. That's because I played this game growing up, it's weird because for the longest time it felt my brain was keeping it on the down low, like it's some kind of dirty secret that I'm not allowed to remember. It wasn't until I found out later that this game is apparently uber popular on the site. It seriously took me by surprise, but recently I decided to play this again and just now made a real effort to beat it. Despite how absurdly short it is, it obviously wasn't easy. But hey, it did eventually happen.

Act I: Uh Oh

We begin play and right away Taz is being chased by a large ball of shit that kills him in one hit, it's always great to have zero time to get used to the game's controls and horrifically choppy scrolling. Your ability to spin and get away from this thing is tied to your health meter for some dickbrained reason, and you have to constantly restore it by picking up fried chicken and bottles of some sort of fluid that I'm not taking any guesses as to what it is. Just like in the dumbass Genesis version of this game you can accidentally destroy items with your spin though, so be fucking careful. I think you can miss like one or two maybe, but it's also worth note there seems to be a nice case of rng here where sometimes a rat bastard will throw a rock on your head as you're trying to pick up a chicken/fluid bottle.

After all this chasing what are you expected to do? You come across a cliff and just take your death right? Wishful thinking, but nope. Leap of faith. Remember that for later.

Act II: Minecart Madness Part 0

We're only two stages deep and the game is already mocking me with it's repeated high-pitched notes and trying to bamboozle me with a minecart maze. The joke's on it though, because I already know how to get past this thing. Out of everything I can actually remember about this damn game it's this, everything else past a certain point is basically a memory that was sealed away never to be heard from again. Probably for good reason.

The most humorous thing about this stage is making the minecart spring upwards and smash Taz's body into the low-hanging ceilings of one of the shafts, obliterating all of his bones and rendering him completely paralyzed for life. That'll fuckin' teach him.

Act III: 1080 Coolboarder

Taz makes his way out of the mine and decides to start snowboarding on a tree branch, all while sporting the most despaired look he could possibly give. He's well aware he put himself into this situation right? He should know what he signed up for.

I love that they decided to give you a choice of path here. Want the bottom path with pits you can fall in, or the top path with at least one more place where you're guaranteed to take damage? Everyone on the task of making this game was hopped on at least four forms of hard drugs. It doesn't matter because this shit is easy, especially compared to the hell that awaits us.

Act IV: Hell Hath Frozen Over

This right here destroyed me for ages as a kid. The most hateful shit of all time, meanwhile the fucking game is constantly slurring at me in the form of 8-bit shrieks. Repeated shoutings of archaic terms meant for bundles of sticks being spat at me by this demented and evil game in an attempt to trip me up while trying to contend with Taz's absolutely abominable jumping. You can spin during this shit to speed up and get through the penguins, but what's even the point when both things do damage to you?

The worst part about this section is that it feels like it takes an eternity especially after how short the last one was, like I dunno what's going on but it feels like time forgot about this part. It doesn't help that I died the most to it. Even more insulting when I found out later you could spin out of being frozen as an ice cube.

Act V: Absolutely Abominable

After getting through all that homophobic shit, what could possibly be next? Oh, why a boss fight of course! It's that guy who wanted to hug and squeeze Daffy Duck that one time. Why does he want to kill Taz? How the fuck do you even kill this guy? The answer confounded me for ages, but the answer is to...jump and spin towards the icicles to make flames shoot out of the ground?!?!?!

...?!?!

...????????????????????????????????????????

Act VI: Flight of The Devil

God, tapping the button to keep flight? At this point my brain has astral projected itself elsewhere and I've checked out from this shit. Why do the piss clouds that you're supposed to get to and refill your energy make the rudest ringing noise? This game's bad manners bewilder me.

I think I died to this stage back in the day because I didn't realize the piss clouds restored my life, it was probably due to the damn ringing which doesn't sound like a good sound. Seriously, what were they thinking?

Act VII: LOG

At this point I'm kinda just sitting here wondering what is going on with the difficulty curve of this game. The ice stage completely obliterated the shit out of me, and the boss afterwards was basically a brick wall with "FUCK YOU" written on it. Afterwards everything so far now has just been incredibly easy, just ride the log. That's all you gotta do. It's so easy, but god forbid the music doesn't let up for at least a second on it's excessive molesting of a tiger electronic game to assault my dwindling consciousness.

Oh stupid me, I forgot my brain astral projected earlier. What is even going on anymore? Who are you? shot by sudden arrows from offscreen

Fuck you bow and arrow person.

Act VIII: Thy Brain Cells Consumed

Um, wow. An actual stage I can just move around in?! With no autoscrolling or thing to force me to move?! I dunno what to think, I'm lost. What can I do without some sort of guidance?!?!

I actually was kinda confused by this stage for a hot second, but then I just went up and up. It's funny too, because once you finally have free reign over movement you really sense just how absolutely baloney fucked the jumping is. If you jump straight up? The framerate is all fine and dandy. Jumping at an angle though? Oh god, the system just can't handle it! The sheer power of Taz jumping at a 45 degree angle completely destabilizes the entire universe. What a terrible reality to live in.

Oh yeah, at least three blind jumps by the way. Are you surprised? I hope not.

Act IX: MOMMA

Holy shit, another actual stage? Except instead of some temple it's random platforms on an island or something? I don't even know anymore, but you just go up and up again like in the last stage, except you have this obnoxious big ass bird constantly pestering you with even more guaranteed hits. I don't think I mentioned it yet, but I do wanna meet the person who thought it was great to make spinning take away your life, I want to call them inhuman and despicable before I repeatedly punch them in the groin.

So what do you get for all that? The egg hatches and sprouts legs, then it follows Taz thinking he's their mommy, despite presumably the real mommy constantly bothering us through the stage. So there you go, a mild comedy ending followed with a generic "you're winner!" screen where you get to find out that the composer knew that they sucked so fucking bad that they left their name off the credits.

Aftermath:

Well, what is there to say? I dunno man, I feel like others did a better job probably of describing this monstrosity. Should I be thankful that I revisited it? Absolutely, I seriously missed out on just how special this game truly was, cause god it's a seriously charming pile of trash. Peak kusoge. Mwah. 11/10

Very happy to know I grew up with this shit, thanks everyone.

Very challenging for a Taz-Mania game. I still remember how much I struggle as kid with the river and minecart levels. Its good tough.

Shitty platforming games be like

1) We will give you health, but the things that kill you (pitfalls) will be instant and will have you rely on making leaps of faith which are the ways to progress the level. < ---- THIS IS SOUL AND NOT A SHAM

2) We will have a game that relies on movement have the movement be sluggish, sometimes not register (especially if you're on a slope), and have the movement take a literal year to come to a stop.

3) We will have famous cartoon character.. and people will pay for brand... not product... hehehe...

Only reason I'm giving this 1 star and not zero is cause it's apparently hard (?) and it gives me a sense of accomplishment for finishing it. Otherwise, it's terrible, it sucks and the people who made it need to

American Psycho was an incredibly fascinating movie to watch as my first film of 2022. It has a reflection of the warped state of the average man, and its direction and the way its crafted is strange to the point that you start questioning what's real and what's not. All of that and more applies to this game.

Attempting to characterize a website with a diverse community is always something of a fool's errand, as by definition you are making a broad generalization about a very large group of people, which is usually not a good thing to do. However, I don't think it would be remiss of me to observe that, at least among the writers I follow routinely putting out wonderful pieces, there is an interest in examining friction in game design, games that push back against a player rather than yield to them. It's a subject I've been interested in for years, and in my time on Backloggd, I've been absolutely feasting on these perspectives.

Which is not to say I always agree with them. One game I was disappointed to find myself somewhat let down by was perennial backloggdcore crown jewel Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, which was a game I found to honestly be a little trite and vapid. As an aesthetic achievement it's wonderful, and I have nothing but praise for that side of the equation, but I found myself really disappointed by how ultimately unadventurous I found it's play. It reminded me of Spec Ops: The Line, another game that has much I find praiseworthy in it's presentation, but kinesthetically unsatisfying because of how the game's presentational and narrative ideas failed to transfer over to the play experience.

Despite the claims of many purveyors of the most profoundly annoying and vacuous "critique" ever made of a game, Spec Ops doesn't think you are evil for playing it, and it does want you to finish it, to see the end, which is partly why it remains an interesting but unsatisfying game for me. The same is true of Kane & Lynch 2: while I don't think that game wants you to finish it, exactly, as the basically nonexistent narrative has no direction or payoff and neither does the gameplay design, it doesn't really resist you either, beyond the initial culture shock that comes from trying to get to grips with this presentation. The thing that let me down about K&L2 is that I simply learned to deal with it, and play it like I would Spec Ops or Binary Domain. I think it's a fine game, but I don't really find it terribly remarkable in the same way that I don't get a lot out of A Serbian Film. It's an important step in the development of video games as an art-form, in that it's one of the first mainstream video games to successfully make me shrug and move on the same way I do at a lot of empty transgressive art.

While I am sure there are some artists who are able to derive fulfillment from the act of creation alone and have no need for an audience, I imagine that most artists are like myself, in that they need an audience for their work to come alive. Certainly, when I was making (excruciatingly bad) games more regularly, I wanted people to play them, wanted people to see the end, even when I wrote awful dialogue about how, actually, by playing this game you have fallen into some nebulously defined trap and how you should have simply stopped playing, blah blah blah. If I didn't need other people to see my work, to share my thoughts and ideas, then they would remain in my own head, where my words are immune to the cold gaze of time and the imperfect translation process of thought to word. Most of us make games because we want people to play them. It may be harder to work out why, exactly, we want people to play them, but I know that we do. And those of us who write and post do so because we want people to read what we have to say.

None of this is written with a shred of condemnation. It's natural, and good. But it presents a problem when it comes to making truly frictional art, games that actively do not want you to finish them, games that do not push back a little but eventually relent, because ultimately, most people care about their art, and most of those people want people to see it.

What then, would a truly repellant game look like? A game that truly did not want the player to finish it, to see it through to the end, a game that, in every aspect of it's construction, repelled enjoyment? Let me introduce you all to Taz-Mania: friction embodied, and the ultimate Backloggdcore video game.

I'll save you the trouble of regurgitating in detail the ways in which this game sucks, partly because it would be identical to a list of things that are in this game, but mostly because every other review for Taz-Mania have accomplished that task better than I ever could. Instead, I'd like to draw your attention to the GDQ run of this game where one of the co-commentators claims to unironically love this game. Before I sat down and actually tried to play this, I thought this was just hyperbole, but now...I think I'm with them. I think I love Taz-Mania too.

Preemptive apologies for the navel-gazing that is to follow here, but I've been thinking a lot lately about writing, about why I do it, and specifically why I write about video games and how they tell stories. Professionals in the industry are exhausted individuals who lead thankless jobs and who inevitably try to seek succor elsewhere in the industry or beyond it rather than continue to write guides for Horizon Two Dawn or whatever for GamerCum Dot Com. Why do I aspire to this? Why do I aspire to write my own games, when all around me people who write and talk about games assert wholeheartedly that games are just bad at telling stories compared to films? What worth is to be found here?

What is it for? Who is it for? Is it for me? Is it for you? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. Sometimes I fucking hate this place. Believe me, I have often wondered if I would be happier if I hadn't posted a stupid mean Xenoblade 2 review last year. But it's also given me a lot of joy. Sometimes I want to pack it in. Sometimes I want to write more. Sometimes I feel proud of what I've written, and sometimes I feel deeply embarrassed about it. And sometimes I feel all of these things, at once.

I thought about all of this as I tried to play Taz-Mania. Why was I here? Why was I pushing myself forward through a game that was hurting my eyes and was actively miserable to play? For the sake of a joke? For the sake of a meme?

But I kept going. For a good bit, anyway. Sadly, Taz-Mania defeated me because it just became too frustrating to master. But still, for a good while, I persevered. Partly because I went to the trouble to find a Master System/Game Gear emulator, something I was sure I would never use again, but also because, well, someone wanted to know what I thought about this game, and no matter how much of a joke that was, no matter how serious or why they did that, they still did it. And others did the same and wrote reviews I got great enjoyment out of reading. In this barren wasteland of thought, these people found meaning. They made something out of nothing.

Taz-Mania is not just backloggdcore, Taz-Mania is video games. It is amateurish, barely functioning, and devoid of the qualities that prescriptivists about "quality of art" extol in other mediums. And yet it lives, lives in the words and in the minds of others, breathing life into a collection of pixels held together by tape and code and hope. More repulsive than Kane & Lynch, and providing a truer test of the meaning and worth of video games than Ending E of Nier: Automata could ever muster.

To a certain extent, I do agree with many of those why say that video games struggle to reach the narrative heights of other mediums, but I also acknowledge that those heights are there because we put them there: regardless of the theory and thought behind it, sound as they may be, ultimately things are considered good because we like them, and great literature and great filmmaking and great game design is considered such because we've, consciously or unconsciously, come to some kind of a general agreement over factors that are desirable in a work of art. And to be sure, Taz-Mania doesn't meet any of those factors. But I like it anyway. Because I choose to. Because that's really all it comes down to, isn't it?

Why do I write? Because I want to. Why do we like and care about video games? Because we do. Why do we find profound meaning in Kane & Lynch, in Paper Mario, in Ocarina of Time, in Persona 4 or Kingdom Hearts? Because in play, in investing in these dumb things wholeheartedly and earnestly, we create that meaning. And Taz-Mania is here - will always be here - to remind us that that deep down, no matter what else we might say, this is the truth at the heart of it. Video games are stupid, broken, vacuous, often ugly and repellant. But we love them anyway, and because we love them, they come to life.

Now and forever, we're gaming.

Thanks for the recommendation, LetsHugBro!

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Life does not have inherent meaning; to say that our lives are pointless and our achievements meaningless is to state the obvious. No matter how grand our achievements or how broad their scope, time turns all to dust and death destroys all memory. But that does not mean we cannot ascribe our own meaning to what we do. It is because nothing has meaning unto itself that we are free to create meaning, to make metaphor, and in doing so reflect on ourselves and our world.

Leveling to 99 in the first reactor is pointless and meaningless. So why do I do it? I do it to express my hatred, and more importantly my disdain, for Dick Tree. I do it to express the camaraderie I feel for those of us who have followed this topic for years only to be disappointed by Dick Tree. I do it to prove to myself that I can persevere. The act is meaningless; I give it meaning.”

- CirclMstr

I didn't like my previous review so I'm going to rewrite it with a more serious tone.

Taz-Mania made for the Game Gear in 1992 is easily one of the best character studies in all of fiction. The game places you in the role of Taz the Tazmanian Devil, a being who knows no more than the fury of his spins and the constant agony that is his existence. The game shows you how rough life for Taz is by the very first second of the very first level when from the moment Taz is finally controllable, he is immediately chased by a giant fucking boulder and is required to spin to escape, all while making good timing to eat the various pieces of food in order to restore his stamina. To summarize, the instant you have control of Taz you are immediately put in a sink or swim situation. You will die, that's not a possibility that's just a fact. The only other game I've played that I can compare its opening to is Drakengard, a game that throws you in medias res with no coherent understanding of what's happening or really how to play it.

If you somehow manage to not get filtered by the first garbage level of this game, you will definitely get filtered by the second level which takes control away from the player as Taz is forced to drive through a mineshaft. This entire part of the game is trial and error. If it weren't for my friend giving me exact instructions on which route to take, I would never have gotten past this point.

I don't mind Trial and Error when its done well, take the Classic Sonic games for example. When you're first playing through a game, you won't know what obstacles lie ahead of you. However, because those games have good movement capabilities and give you a variety of routes and freedom of choice, that trial and error gameplay only helps to accentuate the experience and provides the joy of exploration.

Not in Taz-Mania though, it is an absolute do or die, and all you can do is press up on the D-pad while pressing the A button at the right time. And if that wasn't bad enough, this level is just one of many levels that flat out refuses to give the player control of Taz outside of jumps. If there is anything I hate in video games, it is a lack of control. In a sense though, this goes back to this game being the perfect example of its titular character, Taz lacks control, and so it makes sense that a game starring him would also seize control away from the player. Unfortunately, good game design this does not make.

I could go on and on about the levels, like the one where Taz is frozen in ice and blown by a comically large standup fan and you have to perfectly time your jumps on other blocks of ice or risk an immediate game over, or the second to last level that just has you jumping through a complete nothing level which gave me Knuckles' Chaotix flashbacks while I learned that Taz can just fly if you time the spin jump right, but it would just be redundant.

The one thing that confirms this games quality (or rather lack thereof) is the fact that it was developed and produced by the same man, Mac Senour. He was a producer at Sega, and was the game designer for Taz-Mania. His history of credited games starts with this game, and ends within only a year in regards to his Sega related work. The games he produced were all Game Gear exclusive, meaning that this version of Taz-Mania was his baby. I don't know if there were time constraints, I don't really care honestly, the only thing I'm curious about is if Mr. Senour's vision for Taz was achieved in this game. If nothing else, it left me in a raving, foamed at the mouth state just like the character, which is why I decided to rewrite the review in the first place.

The game is bad, but it's in that range of terrible games where it needs to be seen to be believed and that's why I'm glad this website exists. If it weren't for people reviewing this game on here, and my friends playing the game because of those reviews, I would never have played it myself. Sometimes playing a bad game can give you a further appreciation of the medium in general, as good games clearly have passion and a vision placed into them, while games like Taz-Mania don't.

(this specifically reflects the game gear version. also, first of many to come on this list) something about taz's hunched-over, careless gait, the screen shaking with every step taken, and the extremely discordant soundtrack is deeply funny to me. taz's whole life is beastly misery, he outruns a boulder, ends up careening through a damp mineshaft in a minecart, accidentally skiis on a tree branch as soon as he steps outside, all while looking the most miserable and terrified ive ever seen a sprite look. a lot of platforming mascots look like they enjoy their line of work. not taz, he didn't sign up for this. taz is being cosmically punished by the soundtrack to some bastard child of that one sonic rpg's soundtrack and 100 gecs, he knows it, you know it, youre basically firing multiple gun rounds at his feet telling him to dance, poor wretched creature

uhhhhh, can i get a 'backloggdcore'?

Joguei pouco porém joguei o suficiente pra perceber que esse jogo não iria ser interessante, a trilha sonora não me pegou nenhum pouco e a arte é bem da ruinzinha.

Simple but pleasing platformer. Nice graphics, a little difficult to control, but it has its charms. Jump about the place, eating everything in sight. Remember the Taz cartoon show from the 90s? Yeah, that one.

In 1992, some gaming company managed to squeeze an actual garbage fire onto a Game Gear cartridge. The framerate of a first grader's flip book meets the sound of tying catnip to a cat's face and throwing it at a piano to present 9 painful levels (mostly auto-scrollers) featuring everyone's 10th favorite Looney Tunes character. Taz-Mania is a game with zero redeeming qualities, and is best left forgotten, much like how the developers forgot to add "fun" to their video game for children.

You have the power of Vore of all things

I tried to beat this game as like a six year old over and over again and just gave up.

Years later when I discovered the power of emulation in a college dorm, I also discovered why I couldn't beat Taz-Mania - it's absolute bullshit.

This review contains spoilers

Taz Mania for the game gear has given me much to think about. It has given me more to chew on than a thanksgiving feast, or even 3 packs of bubble gum.
There are many a gamer out there who believe that video games should be nothing more than just that, games. Simple level to level gameplay is all that matters, after all, right? However, this line of thinking, while not wrong in its own right, doesn't acknowledge how video games can be unique from other story telling mediums. It has been said all too many times by various deep thinking people of play, but the thing that sets video games apart from something like a novel or movie is the interactivity.
While it is full of potential for unique, interesting stories, most games are either not interested in pursuing such heights, or try, but ultimately fail at doing so. Many modern games attempt at taking advantage of the medium usually ends at "walk forward while a character talks to you" (examples include any playstation exlcusive released in the past 5 years), or when it comes to interactivity, you can make your own choices to experience a wholly mediocre narrative differently than your buddies (example: any david cage game).
When not using those techniques, story based games often use methods such as dumping so much text that I can tell my mom that I actually haven't stopped reading because I played a visual novel, or the meta narrative. Meta narratives are often a bit shallow, however, as their ideas usually go only as far as "killing people is wrong and gamers are bad???" (which is wrong, killing people that disagree with you is awesome and correct).

With that tangent aside, what does this have to do with Taz-Mania? How does it serve this review for me to shit on a bunch of unnamed games using unspecific examples? What is the point of it all???
I believe it was important to highlight the shortcomings of modern games in order to appreciate how Taz-Mania nigh perfected blending gameplay and story all the way back in the distant age of 1992.

On the surface, the story is very basic, almost non existent. The premise is that Taz' father Hugh recounts to him a tale of the giant seabirds, whos eggs could feed the Tasmanian devils for a whole year. Consumed by gluttony, Taz embarks on a quest to locate the seabird, and feed on his unborn. taz is a lib confirmed?

At just a glance, yes, it is nothing of note. Hell, playing the game without the manual nowadays, you probably won't even know the story (this actually enhances the game, but let's put a pin in that for now). Once you look deeper inside, however, you will find one of the greatest studies on psychological warfare out there (which I know a lot about btw, I had to do a report on the chocolate war in 8th grade).

Within moments of booting the game, the player will be met with a Taz in a frenzy. What does he feel? Confusion? Anger? Sadness? Is this whole journey a coping mechanism, and to what does he direct these emotions towards? Unfortunately for the wild devil and the player, there is naught the time to reflect on such things, because without immediate action, a boulder will tumble over Taz, and kill him instantly. Confusion. What the fuck just happened? Why is B the jump button? Why is he so slow? I hope Taz dies (he did).

The player is once again thrust into a second chance at life, where they will probably realize that A is to spin, and that is the method to outrun the boulder.
Like a shot of some drug (idk), the feeling of spinning makes Taz and the player feel invincible. Despite the nature of the action, there is control. Yet, just like the high of a substance, it cannot last. Spinning drains your health, it is painful to move forward. Without knowing that you can hit down to eat rocks and tanks (for some fucking reason), the boulder will catch you and fell Taz once more. Anger. Who makes this game? I hope they are locked up forever. I wish to see the developers sealed within the earth.

After many failed attempts, I (and I suspect many others playing this ultra popular game gear hit) found myself facing a large gap. For some reason, I thought I had to just fall into it to clear the level, because my previous attempts of jumping had been nothing short of pathetic. Predictably, Taz sunk to the bottom of the earth, as did my heart. Sadness. I had to do the whole level all over again. I want to quit. I want to cry. This game sucks. This game is not fun. This is one of the worst games I've ever played. You have surely heard the various critiques. The music can hardly be counted as such. The visuals are painful to look at. The game is bullshit and the average person would probably take eating a buffalo's shit pissed on by a giraffe and covered in some other unpleasant animal substance over playing Taz-Mania to completion.
And yet, despite what we say, we persevere. Our mind tells us to stop. Our senses are being assaulted. We're not having fun. Yet we feel in urge to continue. Our body and mind are at odds. But we must have the inherit urge to conquer Taz-Mania. To what end?

The reason Taz-Mania is so compelling is because it reflects the human existence. It is not the first, and was certainly not the last, but I believe it pulls it off with the most aplomb.
Think of "good acting compilations". What are the emotions you see displayed most often in them? Confusion, anger, and sadness. It is how Taz feels, and by extension, how the player feels. He is the perfect player vessel. You and Taz work together to push through the pain and frustration together, and I did. We reached the end of the line, just like last time. I press and hold the jump button. The follows events had me in awe and nearly brought me to tears. Despite previously not being able to clear small springs of water moments before, the Tasmanian Devil makes a miraculous leap that would make Michael Jordan in space jam blush, escaping the boulder, and by extension, clearing the level.

Taz-Mania ultimately represents the indomitable human spirit in the face of the indifferent cruelty of the universe. Nature does not care for our suffering. There are more levels in the game, each somehow more painful than the last. Yet despite it all, the player and Taz push on, before inevitably reaching the Sea Bird's treasure.

Life will always be messy. There will be ups, but there will also be many, many downs. Playing this game could be considered a big down honestly. Even if you conquer one obstacle in life, another could be waiting right around the corner. The cruelty of the universe becomes almost comical at a point. But what do we as a species have in common? We push on. No matter the odds, be it the Ice Age, the Black Plague, or Taz-Mania for the game gear, humanity always finds a way.
Today may be hard. Tomorrow may be worse. But if one thing is certain, it's that there is always a way. And like how Taz is probably savoring his year long feast with his loved ones as a reward for his efforts, we enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that we were able to overcome it, despite it all.



still giving it one star tho lol

I saw the Game Gear version of this on a video once like 6 or 7 years ago and was utterly fascinated by how awful the music was, so I decided to play it and then I was utterly fascinated by how awful everything else is. For years I would show it to friends just to see their reactions to the music and such, and it never fails to get a laugh out of me even now. Around last year I showed it to a group chat with another user here, XenonNV, who then spread it further and I guess it became an inside joke on the site?? And then somebody ran it at AGDQ as well. Those were both really fucking funny to see, it's crazy when you indirectly cause something like that.

The original version of this game, however, is on the Genesis. For a while I was curious if it was any better, and really it only bumps up from like a 1 to a 2 or 3. It's still awful, and would you believe the music is just as bad? It's not ear piercingly loud or anything like the Game Gear version, but it's really flaccid and sad and often just sounds like you gave a four year old a Casio keyboard and left them with it for 20 minutes. The sound effects are basically the same as well, and early on you'll hardly be able to discern them from the music. Each time he lands for example, a tone of random pitch is played, something that sounds like a sad trumpet. Every, single, time. Have fun with that.

The quizzical level design is also of note. Take a look at either of the levels in the mines, or the log riding levels, and you'll see what I mean. But even in its more subdued moments, it's weird and mazelike and full of death pits. It's a weird feeling to have what feels like screen crunch on a game designed for a fucking CRT, no? What's up with that? Is it just another product of putting large sprites as top priority and then forgetting to make anything else good, like Sword of Sodan? Are you really doing anything right at all if your game can be compared to that?

So no, the Genesis version is not good either. I would change the rating by a point or two to accomodate but it seems on here it's actually the less popular version now lmfao. Really absurd game. I hope Taz runs for president in 2024

Some of the worst sound effects in gaming history.

this is harder than my sl1 run of dark souls 1.

Cbt stands for cock and ball Taz-Mania.


O antecessor espiritual de Flappy Bird.

The one thing I love about this website is how its community spreads word of mouth very niche games I've overlooked that ended up becoming some personal favorites of mine. I discovered The Silver Case trilogy, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, ZeroRanger, Yume Nikki, God Hand among other games all because people here share their passion for these games. Got a very good track record of games that were indirectly recommended to me, so I decided it'd be fun to hop on a trend going around by making a recommendation list to help get some more ideas. What was one of those games I got? Fuckin' Taz-Mania baby! LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOooOooOoOoOoOoOoO!!!!!!!

Recommended by user @letshugbro I immediately skimmed through the Backloggd page to see an abundance of negative reviews, but more specifically towards the Sega Game Gear version, I knew I was in for the sewer dive of a lifetime. I couldn't turn this one down. I just had to see why this game specifically is a "meme" and I had to join in. So I downloaded not just the ROM for the Game Gear version, but the ROMs for every other version. So here are my bite-sized reviews for every version of this nightmare shovelware franchise. Thanks @letshugbro and I hope you enjoy, because I sure didn't!

Game Gear: "Holy fuck" was the first sentence I murmured to myself upon booting this version up. I was immediately assaulted by ear-piercing sounds regurgitated by the Texas Instruments SN76489 sound chip packaged in the Game Gear to create this title screen """music""". I'm sure parents upon hearing these screeching sounds coming from their Looney Toon-loving little kid's device was the memo that they got ripped off, but this, unfortunately, is not the exception. You as the Tazmanian Devil will hear a variety of these awful sounds for the whole 15 minute 1CC and the gameplay matches with the pain of your ears. You get thrown in and immediately have to run away from a boulder as you pick up items to keep your stamina up because apparently every time Taz does his little spin tornado maneuver he loses years off his miserable life span. Then after that, you realize you don't even get to move Taz for like half the game. He's always in a minecart, snowboarding without his consent, slipping on ice, attempting to fly, etc. The only thing the player really does in this game is press A to avoid an oncoming obstacle as you watch the game try to process your input in a glorious 10 frames per second because this is the cutting edge hardware of the Game Gear, baby! We need all the processing power we can get for those beautiful 4096 colors! All so we can display Taz's miserable existence for the player to experience! It's absolutely fascinating just how much sheer wrath this software produced in me that I was about to go feral just hearing the high-pitched morse codes of the developers call for help while attempting to slog myself through tar-feeling lag. I think the funniest thing this playthrough produced was discovering that Retroarch's Game Gear emulator on stage 8 crashes attempting to load the thing, and the save-state that I created proved the crash was consistent too. I have a gaming PC I bought like 5 years ago, The Game Gear was such a useless footnote in Sega's long history of useless hardware nobody bothered to optimize a half-decent emulator for it to preserve rancid works like this, but I also took it as a message from God telling me to stop and move on with my life because I was hurting myself. So this was my first (and probably last) Game Gear experience. Great start!

Master System: This was the only version of the game that I actually stomached to finish. Don't get me wrong, it's still a boring Sonic the Hedgehog Master System clone where Taz's acceleration and deceleration is so inconsistent from one leap of faith to the next you're bound to suffer a cheap death or two, but everything else is kinda inoffensive. You barely get scratched by the enemies because of your Taz Spin, so the only trouble you will face are the bombs littered about the place that Taz will eat upon contact like a dog attempting to eat whatever non-edible thing you dropped on the floor mistaking it for food. The secret speedrunning gamer trick here is to Taz Spin from one hill to the next and pray you don't fall off and within 10 minutes you will beat Taz-Mania for the Master System and your Dominos pizza will be delivered at your doorstep. Much like the Game Gear version, this was my first Master System game. A boring platformer made by like 5 people to mimic the success of another game made for more successful hardware but with a fucking one-off Looney Toon character. Cool!

Genesis: Unironically as bad as the Game Gear version. This game has the worst collision detection and camera I've ever played in a 2D platformer. Taz's sprite is a large lad meaning the camera is zoomed up into his ugly mug at all times meaning every jump gives you about 5 pixels to react to whatever is next on the screen, and somehow every platform's hitbox is just off in every way. The only novel thing about this game is hearing the little cartoony sound effects everything makes in this game whenever Taz or an enemy interacts with something, but what starts off as slightly endearing became annoying real fast hearing the game mock you with wiggling tongue sounds and other nonsense as you fail another jump with no fault of your own. I turned this one off real fast. Awesome!

SNES: After three failed attempts at making a half-decent platformer for the Tazmanian Devil, the devs at Sunsoft gave up and decided to make this one OutRun but instead of racing, you as the Tazmanian Devil chase birds on the side of the road while dodging incoming traffic like a deer. Actually attempting to grab birds in a camera perspective made for race cars sounds just as janky as you'd think it is, and it's the only gameplay loop Sunsoft offers here. Just a worthless, ill-considered game probably made out of a mixture of obligation and spite. Fuck yeah!!!

After finishing all of these games in a discord call with my friends I realized something. Despite all of these games having different gameplay styles, level design, and even developers, they all shared one common thing: they brought out some kind of anger, malice, or rage within me. If you know the Tazmanian Devil, he is the embodiment of the chaos that ensues with overwhelming anger, so much so that his very well-being is reduced to being nothing more than a feral creature. Any pain he ensues to himself causes him to create one dusty whirlwind to inflict that same pain to others, not by accident, but out of sheer will from the wrath within him. Playing Taz-Mania was like being caught within Taz's pain, and what was left was 4 ROM files I will never touch again and 2 hours of my life wasted. If that isn't conveying the emotions of a character through game design, I dunno what is! Yeah, that's right, fuck you Drakengard! Taz-Mania was made miserable on purpose years before you, where's its 3-hour analysis videos on YouTube!?

I don't even like Looney Toons all that much lol.

Certified ablublublé blublublé moment

infinitely painful. the minecart. The minecart. Misery in the form of Funny Spin Man. horrid.