Game Review - Adventures of Yogi Bear (SNES)

Adventures of Yogi Bear is a game developed by Empire Interactive for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Having been released by the company Cybersoft in 1994, it received fairly mixed reviews, and did not experience a lot of sales upon launch.

Adventures of Yogi Bear contains a plot which is pretty basic and has the ingenuity of a five-year-old. However, this doesn't have much of an impact on the gameplay of the game, so we won't sweat it. At any rate, the basic idea is that someone is building a plant that will be putting a ton of pollution into Yellowstone every year, and it's Yogi's goal to protect his homeland all the while eating people's picnic food.

Adventures of Yogi Bear's graphics are intended to have a classic feel and look; while they are on a low-bit system, they are meant to appear smooth and pastel-ish, similarly to that of the cartoons of the time period. Its basic platformer genre combined with its art style make it delightful to look at.

The audio in Adventures of Yogi Bear is actually quite good, and takes after that on the cartoon. The sound tracks in the introduction and conclusion of the show are replayed in the game, which is surprising given the capabilities of the SNES cartridges at the time of this game's release. I enjoy the sound tracks from the show, so your mileage may vary when it comes to that; however, the sound effects are pleasant as well; they're appropriate and never overplayed or annoying. Additionally, this game does not pull audio from the public domain, which is nice for a change. "Heeeey booboo!"

Adventures of Yogi Bear is actually a difficult game, which was surprising to me. The overall learning curve for the title was that of other games in the genre, which is pretty basic; it's just a platformer. It also has elements of a side-scrolling RPG, due to the collecting nature of many of the levels, as well as its slow pace in some areas. Controls are simple, consisting of the standard up-down-left-right-jump scheme.

Overall, Adventures of Yogi Bear is a good game, but I don't care for the theme. Despite having a background with this cartoon, and liking the music and basic theme from it, the game doesn't pull it off as well as I'd like, especially with the generic factory pollution story. Adventures of Yogi Bear gets a stolen two and a half picnic baskets out of five.