Homestyle Flashback: Gilligan’s Island

Woke up this morning, brushed my teeth, ate a little breakfast, turned on the TV, and what did I see? You think I’m going to say Gilligan’s Island, but no, it was the remake of the Honeymooners, starring Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps. I hadn’t watched it before, so I decided to give it a shot. Throughout the entire movie, I yearned for the days when a fat smart guy and a dumb skinny guy were actually entertaining. Comedy usually comes in fat and skinny - Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Fred and Barney, and Gilligan and the Skipper. Thinking about that last pair reminded me that they were the toast of the town back in their days, even past their day, what with the release of The Adventures of Gilligan’s Island for the NES as recently as 1990. Figured this was a good opportunity to share with you guys what the game was like, since because there were no sequels, I’m assuming few people played it.

So the first thing you notice when you start the game is the jazzy remix of the classic theme. It’s got a nice little rhythm to it, which was unexpected. Accompanying the music is a roll call of the cast with an 8-bit render of each: Gilligan, Skipper, Mr. Howell, Mrs. Howell, Professor, Mary Ann, and….umm….no one? That’s it? Where’s Ginger? No where, that’s where. And in case you think that’s just a mistake in the intro, the actual game denies Ginger an appearance:

This game just proves that the only thing Ginger was good for was adding drama to the show and would have provided absolutely no play either on the island or in this game - zing!

One thing I also want to mention about the above picture is this: look at Mr. Howell. That dude knew pink polos were going to be a big deal decades before anyone else. The lesson here? Money buys you clairvoyance.

So the first episode (yes, episodes, because it was a TV show, remember?) has the gang standing around talking about a storm that’s heading to the island for which everyone has to prepare. What I really like about this bit is that the game writer’s tried to keep everyone in character: Skipper is organizing everyone, the Howells want to hire a contractor to build a hut, Mary Ann’s only role is to make food, and Gilligan’s an idiot. It rings true to the original series which is a nice touch.

Once the game starts, however, you start to see some flaws. First, there’s a time limit. Time limits aren’t bad, per se, but when you’ve got Roger Rabbit…err….Gilligan following you and falling into holes and generally making the game harder on you than it should be, it gets really frustrating. Next, you have some minor inventory management, which makes this game a little more complex than it deserves to be, but we’ll give it that. What does bug me a little about this inventory screen was that it also serves as the defacto pause screen. Now, maybe I’m just being picky here, but most games I played as a kid made Start the pause button and Select became the useless button on the controller face, like a 6th toe - just kinda there. Technically this game has no pause, just an inventory screen that you get to by hitting Select, which…wait for it…pauses the game. Start now starts feeling like the extreme left side of your left foot after riding high for the NES’s lifespan. Take that, Start Button!

So you and the Hamburglar go around talking to the other castaways and helping them with menial tasks while trying to get the hut built. While you’re walking, there’s more of that dialog which adds a bit more character to the game. It was a pleasant surprise to read Skipper telling Waldo that his opinion of the island would be better if they weren’t stuck there. The game has this really annoying music that plays that sounds like old Scooby Doo music and for the third time, Gilligan has fallen into a hole. It took me three falls to realize that the rope in my inventory brings Gilligan back, which makes you wonder why they’d allow him to be so stupid that they necessitated an inventory item to fix that. Sure, Gilligan was stupid on the show, but there’s a certain degree of ridiculousness that can absolutely break a game. This borders on that degree.

At this point, I’m just about frustrated with the game, but am still willing to help the Howells find their wedding ring. They decided to hang out in some weird section of the forest and wait to ask you there. Perhaps their ring is like that decoder ring from “A Christmas Story” with a hidden message on it, but, now that I think about it, that ring proved ultimately useless, and unless the message on the Howells ring somehow helps to build the hut, it’s going to be just as useless…thanks a lot, Lovey.

I stopped playing at this point (which, admittedly, is pretty early in the game) because Rocky Raccoon kept falling into holes and getting beat up and left on the prior screen. It’s an interesting game, I suppose, but not a good one. It tries to emulate the source material, which is more than most licensed games do, but sometimes developers just need to know that not everything is gameworthy. Especially not shows that were cancelled 23 years before the game is released. However, in closing, you do get to punch a gorilla in the face, so you might want to think about it:

Technorati Tags: abbott and costello, barney, cedric the entertainer, gilligan and the skipper, gilligan's island, honeymooners, laurel and hardy, nintendo

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