See, this is why I love playing and replaying these licensed games. There's a deceptive amount of stuff to analyze if you know what to ask about or look into.

Like, so, this game. Pretty basic 3D platformer. Three worlds, four levels per world, three medals per level, each medal requires spooping robot childrens or collecting coins. Some racing stages to break things up. Movie clips as a reward. Simple-simple, no great levels but some fun enough biomes and the occasional annoying-as-hell gimmick (that one dumb Nerve in "The Oasis" suuuuuuuuucks). GREAT animation - easily the highlight of the whole thing - and some decent vocal impersonators. I swear Mike Wazowski's "Not bad for a guy with ONE EYE!!!!" is a line I always forget wasn't delivered by Billy Crystal. Weirdly Mike Wazowski is way more fun to control due to getting a bounce, a roll, and a hover on top of Sulley's moveset. Otherwise pretty disposable title.

...this would be all I'd have to say if I wasn't curious about this game. But I am. Part of that's because I got the game new (for PC), and I've been thinking about the game for over 20 years. Part of that's how much I loved Monster's Inc., easily a runaway early favorite Pixar movie for me. But there are things that you think about, as a consequence of all that.

The premise, to begin with. The setup is decidedly not a direct adaptation, instead showing Sulley and Mike Wazowski training to become Scarers as a pseudo-prequel. Fine enough; contradicted by Monsters University, of course, but that was years later. However! If you've seen the movie, you'll remember that Mike Wazowski was not a Scarer, so logically, he shouldn't be out on the field scaring.

Then you start to think about other stuff. Like how the receptionist is the teacher character from the movie's opening rather than the expected Celia. Or how the worlds don't have much of anything to do with the movie's theming (why is there a Waternoose Sphinx???). Or how, in a game where you constantly unlock video clips, the game opens by showing the movie's teaser trailer, released a year before the movie came out...

So we don't get as many of these movie tie-in games any more, but for this era, it was common for these games to be developed in concert with the source material. So goes for all tie-in media, naturally; part of marketing a big release is getting in that multimedia marketing blitz. Part of THAT is coordinating different individuals and teams to work on different cross-media content, which means sharing details ahead of time to people.

In something like a movie with multimedia tie-ins, it comes down to the movie's production team on how and when they inform the other creative teams on what they need to know. This is why we sometimes see discrepancies with tie-in media. My go-to example for this is the novelization for the movie Alien. When Alan Dean Foster was hired to pen the novelization, he was given a working film script, three weeks, and no description of the Xenomorph's appearance. Foster did a great job working with what he was given, but this is why the novelization includes the deleted scene of Dallas being cocooned as well as a reference to the alien's "tentacle". Things Foster couldn't anticipate wouldn't exist in the final product, simply because he did not have access to the same information/creative direction that the film team had.

I mention all this because this appears to be transparently the case with Scream Team/Scare Island. The game came out before the movie, so Behaviour Interactive had to be working with prerelease info. The game's setup doesn't make sense with the tone of the movie, but it is in-line with the teaser trailer, which presents a proof-of-concept scenario where Mike and Sulley are in the human world. Part of the movie would need to be known, to explain the presence of Waternoose, the teacher character, Roz, and Randall - so it's likely the team had access to a press kit and that prologue scene from the final movie, involving a monster training in a simulation with a robot child. Completely obvious when you think about it.

But remember that there are film clips you unlock as you play the game. These jump around the movie, mostly focusing on the opening. But it gets into the plot beats of the movie, with Boo showing up in the monster world; the chase to put that thing back where it came from, or so help me; and... oh yes, Waternoose's reveal as the twist villain. Immediately contrasted by Waternoose being a non-ironic support character throughout the game, congratulating and rewarding you for your hard work.

I have a conspiracy theory about Scream Team that goes like this. Behaviour developed their game, based on the teaser and what limited press kit they had access to. They developed a scenario that made sense: a prequel to the movie, where Waternoose guides Mike and Sulley into becoming top scarers. They got this on lock, leaving space for movie clips when Pixar finally had it developed far enough along to share with them. They finally got access to the movie, watched it, and went, "Oh no. Oh no." In a huff, they decided to sequence in the film clips in the most vitriolic way they could. They front-loaded it with clips from early in the movie. When they ran out of material, they sequenced out-of-context bits from the tail end of the movie, culminating in the very end of the climax. They deliberately chose NOT to show a scene wrapping up the movie out of spite.

Yeah, maybe that's a little far-fetched. But how else do you explain the game's 100% completion reward? There's a cutscene award ceremony featuring Waternoose giving Mike and Sulley their Gold Medals. Then we get the movie scene where Waternoose gets caught and arrested, ending with him telling Sulley that he's just doomed Monstropolis. Then there's a hard cut to the game's credits, and the game's over.

Like I said - this is why I love to analyze this stuff. Not a great game, but fun to think about.

Ya know, I was gonna start this review with my usual personal story opener. I was gonna talk about how I was interested in this game because of Chuggaaconroy's Let's Play that had just come out. I was gonna talk about how I bought a copy at TooManyGames 2019 and saw Thrown Controllers live. I was gonna talk about how I was going to have Chugga sign my copy and I was disappointed in the end that I missed my chance while I was there. So, for this to be my first mention of the guy in any of my reviews, and I'm putting this review out after all the stuff that's come out in the past week and a half? Probably the worst timing imaginable since I had planned this opener from the start lol. (Edit: with the recent statement Emile put out, I have decided to delete the part saying I'm done with him.)

Sorry to start this on a negative note. I figured it needed to be said since I've had this on my mind for the past week and a half. Either way, on to the actual game. I did play like a half hour of this game back in 2019 but dropped it for whatever reason. It was one of my most hyped games in my backlog and while I don't absolutely love it like some people, I did think it was pretty great overall!

Let's start with the story of Chrono Trigger. It's a typical time travel story but it's executed very well! Throughout the game, you're traveling through various different time periods, meeting various different characters along the way. It's light hearted and really picks up in the last third of the game when shit goes down. While the story overall is executed well, flawless in pacing too, I can't say I loved it as really nothing about it blew my mind. Future square games, while maybe more imperfect in their execution of their stories (like FF7 or FFX) I enjoy way more just because they're way more impactful to me. That's not to say the story is bad in Chrono Trigger, it definitely is not, it's just not mind-blowing like I was expecting from such a well regarded JRPG.

Onto the cast, I really liked most of the characters! They all have little arcs that come to play in the story and those are my favorite bits of the story, just seeing the characters interact and grow. My favorites were Frog, Robo and Lucca..they just felt the most impactful of them all. My only issue and it's another bigger one sadly, I really wish there were more scenes of the entire party interacting and more specific character scenes in general. Once you go through a characters arc, you don't really see much from then again unless you have them in your party during a big story moment. There are little scenes here and there that do involve specific characters but I really wanted more of that. The best parts of the character development and worldbuilding and honestly they were maybe my favorite parts of the game as a whole, were the endgame optional side quests. Most of them were super great in fleshing out the characters more, I just wish that happened more in the actual story. The one where you have Robo help Fiona for 400 years, and you learn about something that happened in Lucca's past and Robo comforting her...god it was so good. But I wanted more of that! So while I did really enjoy the cast as a whole, I just wish they were more prominent in the story and not just tied down to who's in your party. Because sadly someone like Marle I completely forgot about for a while cuz I didn't find her fun to use so she wasn't really involved in the story. Also in regards to the main "villian", Lavos. They're alright..it's just a big towering obstacle in your way but I never loved it as it obviously doesn't have any dialogue and thus I never felt any type of connection to them compared to other JRPG's I've played. Everyone kept talking about Lavos but the being itself didn't do much for me besides having a cool design.

The presentation is honestly mind blowing for a Super Nintendo game. I did play the DS version so idk if the visuals were totally the same or not but what I played here was goddamn impressive. The little animations each characters have are crazy, especially if you compare it to something like Final Fantasy VI which came out a year prior to this. The areas are very rich in detail and the world as whole, while being relatively small in scope, felt alive because of the amazing visuals. Along with the presentation is the great OST. Now I won't lie and say I'm in love with the OST as a whole as of now, but each time I listen to it I'm liking it more and more and it truly is great. The standout themes for me were Frog's Theme, Schala's Theme,and Secret of the Forest among several others.

The combat is another thing I think was super well done. It's ATB like the Final Fantasy games from 4 onwards but in Chrono Trigger's case, positioning of the party plays a part. Instead of the characters being lined up all in a row, depending on encounters they can be in different postions on the screen. The character's moves can then take a part in this as some only hit enemies when they're close to you or some multitarget enemies when they're bunched up. I thought this was really fun and added something new to the combat system we all know. That plus tech moves which are specific moves that involve two more more characters when their ATB gauge is full, it adds a lot of variety to the combat. There is a ton of tech moves btw, with it being between every single character and I don't think I even unlocked them all, I doubt I even performed half of them. Gives the game a bit of replayabiliity I'd say.

Something else that makes the game replayable in my eyes is the addition of NG+ and the different endings this game has. I got the Beyond Time ending but I believe there's around 10 endings to get. You get these by defeating Lavos at different points in the game. The fact you can technically beat the game at any time, is not only awesome but with the addition of ng+, makes it feel worth it to get every ending. That plus the game is like 20 hours on a first playthrough so it's a short JRPG overall. This was also one of the first instances of NG+ in a game too which is so cool. Like I said, I got one ending but that's it. I plan on going back to get all the other endings eventually and do that NG+ only extra dungeon and final boss added in the DS version.

Speaking of something else added in the DS version, along with doing all the normal side quests which were great, I also did the Lost Sanctum. This, in my opinion is a pretty crappy addition to the game. It gives you good items but the whole thing is just meaningless fetch quests, going up the same mountain like 20 times and fighting some mediocre bosses. It's not worth the hassle and story-wise I just don't care at all. There was also this arena the DS version added too and I didn't mess with it much, didn't seem like my thing.

So yeah, overall the game is pretty great! I feel like this is a prime example of a jack of all trades but master of none game. Everything is really solid and well polished but nothing is super exceptional except for the music. Personally, I prefer more ambitious games that may be messier in execution..tho I also love Xenoblade 1 and relecting on that game, it's also pretty safe. Maybe chalk it up to when I played it then, I probably would have absolutely adored this game if I played it as a kid..but as of now, I just think it's a great classic game that does deserve the praise it gets! Anyways, now I'm wondering how I'll feel about Chrono Cross as that one seems more split. Ah well, guess we'll see!

A great little collectathon you can beat in one sitting. The launch of Celeste 64 caught me entirely by surprise and the fact that this game was made in just a week is astonishing. Not much to say about it except that it's a lot of fun (despite the janky camera) and translates the gameplay elements of Celeste into 3D fairly well. Wish it was a bit longer, but I'm not really complaining since it was made in such a short time - maybe this concept will be fully realized one day if the reception is positive? Only time will tell.

Final stats (taken from the results screen):
🍓x25
💀x089
⏱47:55:455

And to think, I thought I was done with Celeste this month. I heard this got released yesterday, and it's free, so I had to go and play it. For only being made in a week, this is very impressive. Celeste transitions surprisingly well into 3D. You lose your upward dash in this game but everything else is here. Yes even your grab which I stupidly didn't realize was a thing until 2/3rds into my playthrough. Once I did, it definitely clicked way more since I was infinitely wall-jumping to do stuff before I learned grabbing was part of her moveset. I really like the implementation of the camera and it having a big part with the various puzzles. The early 3D atmosphere was also really nice. It never got crazy difficult like Celeste but what was here was fun. It's only like an hour long so there really isn't much content, but this could be a good stepping stone into something greater. Either way, fun game..just wish it was longer.

Also, I got all 30 strawberries, that last cassette tape under Badeline was definitely the hardest part of the game but it was very cool.