They say it ain’t easy being cheesy, and I certainly felt what they meant when I decided at random to take a look at the first game to feature the mascot of Cheetos as its main star, Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool. It was pretty much exactly what you would expect from a cheap 90s licensed game based on a brand of snack foods, being incredibly generic, having terrible control/movement speed, some of the lamest excuses of boss fights I have ever seen, no inclusion of continues or passwords whatsoever, and just having that feel of a cheap product smeared everywhere you look. It wasn’t completely terrible, but it was just bad enough to where I would swear off Cheetos for the rest of my life, sticking with Doritos from now on in case I needed some cheesy snacky goodness. Although… it has been quite a while since we did play that game, and I have had a hankering for some cheese-covered corn chips that aren’t shaped like a triangle……… ah fuck it, why not, I’ll have some more again. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? I would have to play Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest? Yeah right, like that would happen…………………… wait, oh shit, I’m typing a review right now… which means………. NOOOOOO-

So yes, for some reason, I guess Too Cool to Fool was successful in its attempt to swindle money out of all the poor kids from the 90s in exchange for cheesy garbage, so as a result, it managed to get a sequel just one year later, and naturally, I wasn’t looking forward to playing it at all. Sure, the original game wasn’t terrible, so I didn’t immediately think this game was gonna be terrible, but there was still a good 99.9% chance it could’ve ended up being god awful. Finally though, after putting it off for long enough, I decided to give it a shot, and it was bad… but thankfully not doomsday levels of bad. For what it is worth, it is an improvement over the original game, and it does have an approach to gameplay that I prefer way more than what that game gave me, but it still manages to be cheap, licensed garbage that is just about as appealing as taking another bite of those god-forsaken chips.

The story picks up right from where the last game left off (I think), where while on his way to Hip City, Chester Cheetah loses his map due to Mean Eugene, the villain from the last game, chasing him down and ripping it up into ten pieces, scattering it all over the country, so it is up to Chester to get the pieces back to reach Hip City, which, much like the plot of the original game, is clearly perfect in any way, and if you question it or dislike it whatsoever, you simply aren’t wild enough to go on this quest. The graphics are… admittedly better then the previous game, with there being a lot more consistency in what you see and new environments to run through, but it is still mostly just a bunch of random colors thrown on the screen, the music is… actually not too bad, with there being several tracks that I ended up liking as I listened to them, but maybe I just have garbage taste, and the gameplay/control is, also admittedly, better than that of the original game, but not only does it still have some hiccups to be seen, but it doesn’t do anything to… you know, get creative.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of the raddest cheetah you have clearly ever seen, Chester Cheetah, go through a set of 9 and a half levels that take place in various locations around the United States, run and jump your way through these levels while bouncing on enemies to take them out, gather plenty of items that can either give you extra lives, a means of progressing, or an extra chance just in case you get hit, and fight several bosses that are about as complex and fun to fight as me counting the fingers I have on one hand. It is as creatively devoid as any shovelware game from this era can be, offering nothing new or exciting from many other games of the era, but again, it could’ve been a whole lot worse.

First of all, you can now choose to go through any of the levels in any order you want, which is pretty nice, even if none of the levels are that exciting or different from each other, and speaking of which, the levels themselves are pretty short, with you being able to run through them very quickly, so that helps out a lot when you want to get through the game as fast as possible. Not to mention, it isn’t simply just about reaching the end of the stage, as you will also need to find a piece of the map along the way, which is pretty neat… or at least, it would be if most of the map pieces weren’t just lying around in broad daylight, just waiting for you to grab them. Seriously, you could’ve at least hidden them a little better this time around.

And finally, like I mentioned earlier, this game actually has boss fights! No more awkward, dumbass endurance tests like from Too Cool to Fool, for instead, we have full on fights with various lovable characters from the Cheetos franchise, like Mean Eugene and… uh… Mean Eugene! As for the boss fights themselves, they are… ok. They are pretty simple, just your typical “bop them on the head three-four times to win” bosses, but hey, they are at least more fun to deal with then the shit from the last game. Not to mention, some of them can be pretty tricky if you don’t take advantage of some of the moves that Chester has at his disposal.

But now, it is time to get into the issues that ruin the game, with the first one being, of course, the controls. You all ever seen that Family Guy cutaway gag that involves Chester Cheetah snorting Cheeto dust like it’s cocaine? Well, I feel like I’d have to do the same thing to be able to play this game properly, because not only does Chester once again have inconsistent running speeds (even if it is improved from last time), but there were many different moments where it just felt straight up unresponsive. Moving felt incredibly stiff, and a lot of the time, whenever I would hit the jump or run buttons, the game wouldn’t register it at all, and I would end up dying in some scenario because apparently I wasn’t allowed to hit a button then. Not to mention, you die in one hit if you don’t have a bag of Cheetos, meaning it is most likely you will die to a lot of things that you can’t see coming or properly avoid.

And finally, there is slowdown EVERYWHERE in this game. When it comes to the SNES version of this game, it feels like this game can’t just go five seconds without some kind of slowdown issue occurring, and it’s not as if there are that many enemies on the screen when it happens either. I don’t inherently have a problem with slowdown too much in video games, as sometimes it can actually be helpful, but I do get bothered by it when it either effects my gameplay negatively, or it is constant. This, my friends, is the latter. Aside from all that though, a lot of it is your generic licensed game affair, being a pretty unpolished platformer that can be beaten very quickly, if you can get a handle on the shitty controls.

Overall, despite the improved gameplay, the inclusion of boss fights, and not being long enough to get mad about, Wild Wild Quest is yet another pointless piece of shovelware for a product that really didn’t need any kind of advertising like this, being as basic as it gets, having flawed fundamentals, and is about as slow as a slug that is being burned alive from having salt poured onto it. I would only recommend this for those who liked the previous Chester Cheetah game, but for everyone else, there are plenty of better platformers from this era, licensed or otherwise, that you can play over this. But anyway, with all that out of the way, I think I am now done with Cheetos for good, for real this time! Don’t need anymore shitty food-related games to ruin my day. Although, I am getting kinda thirsty… ooh, hey, when did this can of 7UP get here?

Game #526