The Wizard of Oz (video game)
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| The Wizard of Oz (video game) | ||||||||||
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 "There's no shitty game like this!"
— The Angry Video Game Nerd
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The Wizard of Oz was a video game made for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993 and was based off the highly successful and beloved 1939 film of the same name. It was developed by Manley and Associates (renamed to EA Seattle after being acquired by Electronic Arts in 1996) and published by SETA Corporation.
Plot
Dorothy must get to the Emerald City and get home to Kansas and avoid the Wicked Witch of the West.
Why It Can't Follow the Yellow Brick Road
- The game is almost unplayable because the collision detection for platforms is deceptive in a way that you will fall right through them, even if it looks like you should've landed. This may have to do with the sprites' positions not being centered to make sense. In addition, if you're in hitstun, you always fall through platforms.
- Ammunition for Dorothy's wand is limited and low and only certain stages carry this ammo. The game doesn't display the numeric values for how much ammo you have, nor how many times Dorothy can use her flying slippers before it runs out.
- Kicking is the more conservative approach to combat, but enemies don't remain stunned long enough to step back, which means that players will be injured about as much as their sparring partner.
- The tickets necessary to advance to the final section of the game are sometimes found in mini-games. One of these games is a random dice-roll challenge whereupon the player has to roll specific numbers to eliminate tiles, but rolls that do not produce any removable numbers cause a failure state. Therefore, it takes many attempts to secure this particular ticket.
- The brick collectables that create the bridges between major sections of the game must be scavenged for aggressively. Otherwise, the player may not be able to advance. While the developers were nice enough to make the bricks space themselves out fairly logically, players usually have to backtrack through levels for extra bricks.
- The demo shows Dorothy falling down a hole and dying in a matter of seconds. James Rolfe (AVGN) stated that the play-testers didn't even try to make it look good and that it's the worst demo he's ever seen, stating it to be the perfect foreshadowing for one of the worst games ever.
- Lame, generic enemies that almost have nothing to do with the movie.
- Enemies can hit the player even though they don't appear to be, from a 3D perspective, on the same plane.
- The developers placed some enemy spawn points in front of doors/entrances. Therefore, players may enter a building/interior section, but, upon leaving, they'll automatically be injured.
- Similar to Medusa heads in Castlevania, frequently-spawning flying enemies (usually birds moving in a sine wave pattern) cause injury. The stiff mechanics paired with the unfortunate spawning rate makes them difficult/impossible to dodge. For levels with trampoline-like objects, like the mushrooms in Scarlet Marsh, it's possible to be injured while simply rising and/or falling.
- Speaking of Scarlet Marsh, it may be one of the few video game environments whereupon the "red liquid" flowing through the bottom of the stage isn't harmful. This is a valid concern because attempts to avoid the marsh may result in injury as well as unnecessary use of sparse items.
- Lame hazards such as the hands of a clock or a mouse in a fence in the background being able to damage you.
- The playable characters cannot perform melee attacks while jumping, which gives airborne enemies an unfair advantage if you are low on or out of yellow bricks.
- Tin Man is unable to jump or duck and his attack only hits enemies his height making him a liability. However, the only time he's useful is when facing the Wicked Witch for the axe having great reach.
- Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion each start with only one life. All the characters have their own 1-up items that must be collected for them, if you want them to have lives in reserve. Once a character runs out of lives, they're gone from the game for good. But if Dorothy loses all of her lives, then the game is over.
- Passwords are 24 characters long. When you get a game over or reset the game, it doesn't keep the password like in Punch-Out!!, meaning that you have to manually re-enter the whole password again.
- You can't jump down from platforms, being forced to walk off them from the sides or hit by hazardous objects.
- Out-of-reach platforms and some platforms are difficult to notice because of the terrible perspective.
- Poor layout of levels, with the platforms placed at complete random.
Redeeming Qualities
- The title screen looks just like it does in the movie.
- The music is quite decent, specially the main theme, which can be relaxing for some people.
- Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man & Cowardly Lion each have their own individual health meters, and it is possible to switch between them to conserve health.
- It's visually pleasing.
- The original environments and enemies designed for the game are very imaginative.
- Technically, being able to backtrack through levels allows players to search for missed tickets as well as stock up on items, such as the blocks, ruby slippers, and area-specific bricks. Relatively speaking, that was nice of them.
Reception
 "What were they thinking?"
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The Angry Video Game Nerd called it one of the hardest games he ever played, but for all the wrong reasons and "Almost half as bad as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Even (as seen in the episode "Darkwing Duck"), put this game (along with the Tiger handheld games, Dark Castle, and Action 52) in the category "The Severe Zone" of his "The Shit Scale", proved that this game is one of the worst he has ever tried.
Videos
MyTwoDogs' Wizard of Oz Playthrough playlist
Comments
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Categories:
- AVGN Shit Scale The Severe Zone
- Bad games
- Bad media
- Action games
- Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
- The Angry Video Game Nerd episodes
- Movie-based games
- North America-only games
- 1990s games
- Platform games
- Games made in the United States
- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible
- Unfinished games
- 2D platform games
- Unplayable games