Spirou (videogame)
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 You'd be better off watching the 2006 cartoon than playing this piece of squirrel dung!
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Spirou is a platform game based on the Spirou et Fantasio comic book series - with some elements from its TV animated adaptation - developed and published by Infogrames Entertainment during 1995 and 1996 for the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in North America), SNES and Game Boy video game consoles, and for Windows and DOS. A Sega Game Gear version was planned, but scrapped, though a prototype version with the full completed game was leaked online. The game was only released in Europe.
Plot
Spirou and his friend Fantasio visit New York for an international conference of scientific research. When the pair arrives at the conference, Count Champignac, their long-time friend and one of the inventors at the conference, has disappeared. It turns out that Cyanure, a female robot and one of Spirou's greatest enemies, has kidnapped the count. Cyanure intends to create a robot army with Count Champignac's inventions to conquer the world and enslave humanity. While Spirou sets out to rescue Champignac and stop Cyanure, Fantasio gathers intel in order to help Spirou.
Bad Qualities
- Overly high and unfair difficulty which heavily relies on trial and error gameplay. That would probably frustrate even the most hardcore fans of the comic book series.
- For instance, in the catacombs level, certain parts of the floor may collapse and drop the player down to his death. These collapsing floors have no visual difference from the regular floor and collapse the moment the player walks over them giving no time to react.
- Like in other comic book based platformers developed by Infogrames, some of the actions performed by the protagonist are outright illogical and stupid. For example, in level 3 where Fantasio informs Spirou that Cyanure is hidden in a factory across town, Spirou decides to take the subway, but for some reason, he decides to ride ON TOP of the subway.
- In the first level, when Spirou begins to chase down Cyanure on the streets of New York, he decides to go Parkouring on the buildings while he could have simply hired a taxi which is parked right next to the sidewalk.
- While the animations of the game are very fluid, they take time to play and causes delays and inconsistencies in some of the controls. For example, when releasing the crouch button, Spirou's hitbox changes directly from "crouching" to "standing", therefore sometimes you may strike obstacles even when it seems that your character seems to clearly miss it just because you released the crouching button a bit too early.
- When shooting with the Micropulser, it takes nearly half a second for Spirou to pull the gun out of his pocket and fire. Also, why does he have to keep the gun holstered all the time?
- The SNES version features foreground decorations not found in the Mega Drive version in certain levels. These decorations, unfortunately, obstructs traps from sight which can lead to a lot of cheap deaths.
- Lots of leaps of faith in some of the levels thanks to high drops and poor visibility.
- All of the 14 levels suffer from checkpoint starvation, so even if you're right next to the level's exit, you get sent back to the beginning of the level if you die.
- The game has no continues, just 3 lives, and only ONE password which you obtain halfway through the game. While it's possible to regain lost lives by collecting Spirou hats, it takes 50 hats in exchange for one life.
- The forest level is particularly frustrating; not only do walnuts bounce all over the place, but also the level has a very confusing layout as well as several obscure moments.
- In level 6, the game doesn't even follow its own rules, there are windowsills which some Spirou can grab on whilst other visually identical ones he can't, there are also building edges that block him and others that don't, as well as kits which at times can and can't be used as platforms.
- The final boss, Cyanure, is surprisingly easy. However, it could be a bit confusing at times since while the player needs to defeat her by shooting at her with the Micropulser, you get no reaction from Cyanure when your shots land. So some players may come to the conclusion that shooting doesn't work.
Good Qualities
- The graphics are excellent and remained loyal to the comic books' art style.
- The game remained faithful to its source material.
- The animations are played very fluently.
- The controls are responsive and easy to pick up