Title: Home Alone
Release Date: December 1991 (NA), January 12th, 1992 (JP)
Developer: Imagineering, Inc.
Publisher: Toy Headquarters
This is the start of the December 1991 block of US games. These blocks get more prevalent as time goes on, and they are usually sports titles, shoddy fighting games or beat-em-ups, or, worst of all, licensed games. Here we have a licensed game based off of a popular movie at the time.
Background
Home Alone, for the uninitiated, is the story of Kevin McAllister, a bratty, but precocious pre-adolescent boy who is accidentally left home alone (Oh! I get it now) while his family is on vacation in Florida. Little does Kevin know that his house and neighborhood is being targeted by the career criminals, the Wet Bandits (named Harry and Marv). The movie, which was written and produced by the great John Hughes, was a huge hit for 1990, and launched the careers of MaCauley Culkin, and proved that Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern had some real comedic chops. It was natural that if a movie was halfway decent in the 1990s, then some video game company was going to try to make a tie-in game, and that is the case here. The game was actually ported to many different systems: the Genesis/Master System, the Game Boy, the NES, and the AMIGA.
The developer for this game is good old Imagineering, who is most well known for the Boy and his Blob series, but more well known for many, many different movie tie in games and licensed titles. The publisher is actually the precursor for THQ (Toy HeadQuarters= THQ).
Gameplay
The game itself fits into the "Trap-Em Up" genre, a very under utilized (and probably for good reason) genre, with the only well-known/cherished title from this genre, around this era, being Lode Runner. This genre has made a resurgence, somewhat, in recent years with the Spelunky, 1001 Spikes, La Mulana, and the Deception series.
The goal of this genre, and subsequently this game, is to usually puzzle, platform, and navigate your way through a map while trying to avoid enemies and solve certain tasks. Kevin's house is somehow bigger than the movie, and is under siege by not only Harry and Marv, but a group of Prohibition-era gangsters as well. Random household objects, as well, seem to be possessed and attack you. Weird. Kevin must navigate his way through the house while snatching up valuables before the bandits/gangsters can claim them for themselves. . The player then has to put the valuables into the laundry chutes so that they land in the "safe room." If Kevin loses all his life, it is an immediate GAME OVER, and you are greeted with one of two equally traumatizing game over screens.
The game is very short, being only four levels. In the first and third level, you are hiding valuables, and in the second and fourth level, you are hiding toys. The game balances this shortness out, though, by being pretty bullshit in its difficulty, and sadly this difficulty comes from shoddy design.The game is really hard to control. Kevin's jump is really imbalanced, and sometimes it feels like he slides a bit on the ground. As well his hit-box is rather large, meaning that it is very easy to take damage quickly in this game.
The game is just unpolished. It is sometimes hard to tell what is the background and what is the foreground, meaning that you will try jumping on random objects that you really can't jump on. It feels like the staff just had a hard time deciding how to translate this film into a game. The goals and such feel really half-baked, such as "hiding all the valuables," which was never really a goal in the movie. In the movie, Kevin just wants to distract the bandits as much as possible so that the cops can catch them in the act. It is clear that they really didn't know how to turn this premise into a game.
Then there are other small things that just bother me; when Kevin drops an object down the laundry chute into the "safe room" (another thing not in the movie), it always turns into a candelabra. It is just weird.
The game also doesn't really convey things well either. Enemies seem impervious to damage, and even when you catch them in a classic Home Alone trap, they just get right back up again and continue their pursuit. Also, the goal of protecting your valuables isn't well stated.
Possibly weirdest of all are the boss fights at the end of each stage. Each stage will end with Kevin going to his basement to hide in the safe room, but before he can he fights a critter of some kind. In the first level it is his brother's tarantula, the second it is a g-g-g-ghost, and in the third stage it is a rat. For each of these fights, you dodge the creature as it moves back and forth, and headbutt loose stones so that they fall on the creature's noggin. Just...such weird choices. Why not fight the Wet Bandits? Why...any of this?
Music?
The music, of course, is bad...really bad.
Final Verdict
Skip this game! Even fans of the movie will be greatly disappointed. It is so poorly thought out, designed, and amateurish on every level. Sadly, there is a game for the movie sequel as well, so we aren't quite free of this game series.
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