Retro Roulette #112: Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day (SNES, 1994)

At long last, a game that truly reflects modern life.

Nickelodeon did a wonderful job of providing bevy of weird cartoons that turned people born in the early 1980s into total weirdos (including yours truly). One of those was Rocko’s Modern Life, easily one of my favorite 1990s animated series about a timid wallaby. Like most of the other shows of the era, it got a video game adaptation. This one is centered largely around Rocko’s impossibly stupid dog, Spunky:

You do play as Rocko in the game, but your goal has little to do with him – instead, your job is to guide Spunky to the end of the level and make sure he doesn’t die. Spunky has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, and will walk straight forward no matter what hazards are in front of him, so you have to use the environment around you to keep him safe. A common item for this what appears to be a small beach chair, which essentially acts as a catapult:

In other situations, you’ll need to use moving platforms, pulleys, waterspouts, and so on to make sure Spunky doesn’t go and get himself killed like a big dumb idiot. In general, this means doing a bit of platforming and puzzle solving to figure out exactly how to keep him safe. That much, at least, is a welcome change from the typical random 90s platformer.

In practice, however, this plays out in a way that’s similar to having an actual dog who can’t stop doing stupid things – it’s tedious, and not very much fun. There are a few big issues to blame for this, and one is our old friend “iffy controls.” There are some fairly precise jumps that Rocko has to make with some regularity, and they can be a serious pain to get right. The other issue is in the game’s level designs – some of the things you need to do also leave very little room for error, and many levels punish you severely for messing something up. In many cases, Spunky can walk off a ledge or whatever in such a way that you lose minutes worth of progress. Ugh, what a dumb dog.

The game does give you a couple of handy tools to make things a little bit easier – you can pick Spunky up and turn him around (but you can’t otherwise move while holding him), which is nice for setting up a particular solution. You can also look around the current level while the game is paused, to see what horrible fate awaits Spunky after you get him past the previous one.

There is definitely some satisfaction to be had when you make it to a new area or make a couple of good decisions in a row, but when a single, tiny mistake can undo all of that progress (or worse, in some cases), it’s hard to say that it’s worth the trouble. I really like the idea behind Spunky’s Dangerous Day, and appreciate that it strives to be more than just another dull, based-on-a-TV-show platformer, but the execution just leaves too much to be desired.

Despite being a fan of Rocko’s Modern Life when it aired, I’d never actually played this game before now. While it’s not without its charms, I can’t say it’s a must-play, even for big fans of the show. If you have an exceptional amount of patience and love for the source material, though, I suppose it’s interesting enough to warrant a look.

Our next game is what appears to be a bland NES game that won’t be much fun. Stop by and watch me (probably) dump all over it next week.