Get Thrilla's Surfari from eBay

There are certain games which lend themselves very well to speed runs, and videos thereof.  For some of them, it’s because the game’s a non-linear game like Metroid, where the player has multiple ways in which they can jump ahead of the path and find various hidden items in the game. For other games, because of their visual style and speed of the game, they just fit in perfectly with this type of video–the classic example being Sonic the Hedgehog. When I saw the maps of Town & Country 2: Thrilla’s Surfari, this seemed like a perfect fit for the latter category, which is why I picked it.

Maybe I should have picked something else.

The Premise

You play as the mascot for the Town & Country Surf Shop, Thrilla the Gorilla, as you skateboard and surf through various jungle environments.

The Good

If you manage to get up to speed, and if you’ve got the course memorized, and if you hit everything just right, this could look really cool. As you may notice, that’s a lot of ifs.

The Bad

The health power-ups in the game are pretty well hidden, which is a problem because you’ve only got 3 spots on your health bar, which leads into.

The Ugly

Here comes the problems. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it in the future, and I’ll say it again right now – trial and error gameplay is not good game design. It makes the game artificially difficult by requiring you to memorize each level. The “difficulty” for this game depends on the use of trial and error. If you don’t memorize the stage, you’ll never beat the game. Period.

The Verdict

This is a terrible, terrible game. If you really, really want to buy this game and try to beat it, feel free. However, I don’t recommend playing this game for any reason.

Also, to give you an idea about what the game looks like, I’m going to embed a you-tube video of some gameplay footage so you can see what it looks like.

Filed under: Quality Control, Video games Tagged: NES, Nintendo Power, Quality Control, Video games

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