I would like to shine a spotlight on the villain of this game, a Nintendo villain that has escaped the public eye for far too long, Jinbei the Farmer. Moles are devouring the cabbages in his garden so what does this bastard do? He kidnaps the wife and children of the lead mole, has various random monsters like a kangaroo and a sentient snowman hold them hostage, and then constructs a giant amusement park filled with spike pits and dinosaurs, all while writing a bunch of signposts that taunt the mole.
Buddy. Just go to the local Home Depot and buy yourself some Gopher Gassers. Save yourself the trouble.

Those little burrowing hedgehogs can all go straight to hell, by the way.

"Welcome to the Salty Spitoon. How tough are you?"
"How tough am I!? I beat Rayman 1!"
"Yeah, so?"
"Four times. On four different consoles including the weird Game Boy Advance port with the small screen and that one Game Boy Color version no one remembers that actually has a Mr. Dark boss battle."
"R-Right this way!"

This tower defense game sure is a tower defense game, but the true reason I rank this game so low is because of this game's utterly pathetic single player and writing. Everyone rightfully makes fun of the Hashtag Gadgetron in the PS4 game but that's nowhere near as painful as playing this game in the 2020's and being subjected to the stereotypical nerd villain character playing the Trololo song over your spaceship's intercoms while calling you a noob after Qwark talks about his fanfiction. Real "how do you do fellow kids" vibes from this game.

I played this game while I was at home suffering from a mental cocktail of anxiety and depression because I was furloughed from my job and forced to quarantine because of the 2020 global pandemic, and co-oping with a friendly stranger who helped me no matter how many times I fell down that tower with the lights moved me so much that it made me ugly cry during the credits.

Part of me wants to be cynical and say that the game wouldn't have been as impactful to me if I played it at a different time when I wasn't so emotionally vulnerable, but that part of me also realizes that bringing cynicism to the table when talking about Journey feels like missing the overall message of the game. A big thanks to the developers of this game for giving me just a tiniest drop of hope in an otherwise bleak time. I'd apologize for not playing this game sooner but I realize now that I played it at the perfect time.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this game has one of the best soundtracks in the entire Game Boy library. Some of the tracks like the ones for Marvin's Space Station and Taz's Zoo have a real "indie game song composer going way too hard on a game meant to be 8-bit" feel to them only they're songs on the actual hardware written for a licensed Looney Tunes game from 1998. This game even has an 8-bit rendition of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and it kicks ass!

As for the actual game, it's alright. It's a decent little platformer and you can do far worse on this system. What's notable is that this game has a funny little quirk with the gameplay where Lola, with her ability to slowly descend in a game that does kill you if you fall from too far of a height, ends up being the way more useful character to use while Bugs Bunny - the most well-known Warner Bros character - just becomes that character you only switch back to in order to do situational puzzles. Bit of an odd choice to have Bugs Bunny be the "only use to push a block" guy but hey, it's certainly unique.

While I do love this childhood game of mine and I think the mysterious "you figure it out" nature of recruiting Digimon and progressing through this game gives it a unique charm, it also took me 20 goddamn years to get to the final boss. Any kid that was able to beat this game in the 90's was either a gifted being born with divine will and patience or sprung for the strategy guide because good lord some of the game's puzzles and evolution requirements are disgustingly obtuse.

Also I love that one of the things that you unlock is a jukebox that will crash the game if you try to use it. A+ localization there.

This game feels absolutely gutted now that the servers are down and you can't access other players' created tracks. Sure, you still have the single player mode - and once you get used to the floaty physics in this game, it's fun enough - but it's nothing compared to how it felt playing this game in its heyday.

Now, playing this game gives off the same impression as visiting the abandoned remains of an amusement park from your childhood. It doesn't help that the collectibles in this game are all materials for the Create Mode but now the Create Mode is offline only and there's just something fundamentally sad about spending hours building a creation that you're unable to share with the outside world.

This game legit feels like someone made a ROM hack of the PS1 Spyro games, only it's a licensed Muppet title and you play as Robin, the frog Muppet whose most notable role was Tiny Tim in The Muppet Christmas Carol. The levels look like Spyro, the enemies look like Spyro, collecting all the Monster Energy feels like the gems in Spyro, and you even get a glide that feels like Spyro with the platforming based around gliding from higher spots in the level since you lack a double jump. It's utterly shameless in how much of it is cribbed from the Insomniac Spyro games.

However! While it is, indeed, a shameless Spyro clone with a Muppet-themed coat of paint, it playing and looking almost exactly like the PS1 Spyro games actually made me love this game. It helps that the soundtrack kicks ass and they actually got the Muppet performers to voice their characters.