Spanky's Quest is inspired by classic action arcade titles like Lode Runner and Bubble Bobble. Following a simple level progression, Spanky the monkey must collect a number of keys to unlock the door to the next stage, there are many enemies with different movements styles - learning their patterns is important.

The quirky part of Spanky is how he damages enemies, Spanky volleyballs bubbles that you can pop in mid air to send a projectiles - ranging from a meagre baseball to several soccer balls, a volleyball that rotates in place when striking a foe and a wide spread of basketballs down on an enemy.

The challenging part of this is predicting enemy movement, the downward projection arc of the bubble you plan on bursting while simultaneously avoiding getting hit. I found volleyballs could paralyse bosses, while basketballs were great screen clearers. The bubbles can also uncover hidden stages in walls - much like Milon's Castle or Castlevania as well as collect keys and money granted they're not held by an enemy.

There is also some hats for Spanky to wear, a sunhat has a glide if the jump button is held, spiky hats destroy enemies when jumped under (like Mario Bros.) and the top hat raises a Baseball bubble to a fully fledge Basketball bubble in one volley.

There's some nuance in the actions, however the game just feels dated given the old school arcade pedigree they're aiming for. Visually the game is charming and the many fruit and vegetable enemies look cute and appealing alongside the backgrounds of each world.

The game has a password system for each world, but getting through all 10 levels in a world and a Boss with 3 lives can be a chore, sometimes it is beneficial to start from an earlier world to accrue lives before slogging through. I of course just used save states and rewind but I can see how this would be a slog on original hardware.

This style of gameplay seems more at home on the Game Boy (which also received a version). On SNES it is a little out of place, yet here I am saying it's a competent and sometimes enjoyable action arcade game to sink half an hour or maybe more if you're a fan of classic arcade titles.

Here's a puzzle platformer (or at least something like one) by Natsume from the early years of the SNES. I dunno how else to describe it, but Gare compared it to Rainbow Islands so we'll go with that.

It's kinda cute at first, but it's a bit overlong and gets rather tedious. You could probably cut down the amount of levels by 10 or so total and just remove the final boss rush entirely and it'd be beneficial in the long run. Not necessarily a bad game per se, but Natsume would go on to do much better during the console's run.

I don't normally write public reviews since I feel like I'm not critical enough, but it's a special occasion, as this is apparently the 300th game I've beaten in my life. And because this is a) an obscure enough game that b) a ton of people actually have easy access to (via it being on Nintendo Switch Online) but are likely to write off because it sounds goofy, I'm going to try and encourage you to give Spanky's Quest a look.

The easiest praise I can give this game is its music. There aren't that many tracks in total but some of them are REALLY good, especially around the midgame. The sprites are also cute and colorful, and the general aesthetic is super charming.

But what really captivated me about this game is its unique gameplay. You throw a bubble and bounce it off of your head, and the more you bounce it, the bigger the bubble grows and changes in color. You then choose when to pop the bubble, and depending on how big you've grown it, it will turn into a sports ball with different effects: the first stage is a weak baseball with a basic arc, the next is several soccer balls that fall downwards in a line, the next is a volleyball which has a small range on its own but will multiply and explode outwards if it hits something, and the last is a line of big basketballs that cover a large range. Hitting an enemy with your bubble will stun them, but you have to use one of the popped bubbles (aka the sports balls) to actually defeat them.

The game is divided into a series of worlds which themselves are made of ten levels (including a boss). In each level, you must find enough keys to advance through the locked door, and the number of keys required varies by level. Sometimes the keys are just sitting around, but they can be picked up and carried by enemies which you must then defeat.

Now, the big point of frustration in this game: you have a very small amount of lives, and EACH HIT takes away a life. Spanky is not a very agile creature; there's a delay to his floaty jump, and it's often very hard to avoid the enemies- especially because they have a tendency to fall out of the sky onto you. Your first time in a level, you'll have no idea what you're dealing with and are likely to get hit as you're figuring it out. When you lose all your lives/hits, you get sent back to the beginning of the entire ten-level set. This essentially means that you'll be replaying the same early levels again and again and again just for the chance to make it to later levels and figure out what to expect, how to avoid the enemies and where you need to go.

That is, of course, if you're stubborn like me and insist on playing classic games without using save states or the rewind feature. If you're less scrupulous, you'll have a much easier time. But I tried to get the experience as if I was really playing it on the SNES, and... whew. The last regular set of levels in particular was mind-numbingly frustrating, as there are a couple levels in that set with enemies bouncing all around and falling from the sky and it's basically sheer luck to make it to the door without getting hit. (Note: there is a password system for going between worlds, although there is no saving otherwise.)

As for the bosses, once you figure out a pattern that works for you, they're pretty easy to do damageless. However they have way too much health and take too long, turning them into a test of patience. And of course the trial and error nature of this game applies here, so you can easily get punished and sent back to the beginning of the world when you're figuring them out.

The real fun of this game comes from learning the level sets - for instance, there are some levels with extra keys you can get that will make later levels easier, since you can carry extra keys from level to level. You'll also benefit from finding hidden bonus rooms or other places where you can get extra lives, which will help you a lot in the long run (especially since bonus rooms help you conserve your keys). I had put so many attempts into a certain level set before I learned that throwing the bubble onto a cannon can sometimes make an extra life shoot out. But I'll leave other methods of obtaining hidden bonuses for you to figure out. All of this still doesn't make up for how absurdly punishing and random the last world is, though.

I would say this for most anything, but: if you approach this game without save states/rewinds, you're going to get more out of the challenge aspect and finally getting through a world will feel super rewarding and satsifying. However, it WILL be frustrating, you WILL die to things that are unfair or that you had no way of knowing were coming, you WILL grow to absolutely hate Spanky's flailing around hit-animation and the sound that goes with it, and all of this WILL be a turnoff. It's why I stopped playing this game a year and a half ago, and just recently picked it back up and beat it. So it's up to you how you want to approach this if you check it out.

But I love unique gameplay systems and I became weirdly passionate about this strange little game, despite its many flaws. It's better than yet another caveman-based platformer, probably.

Honestly fun central mechanic as well as good sprite animation and design severely held back by how punishing the game is. No lives system, just 3 hits and it's over, and it feels like your hitbox is slightly bigger than the sprite. When you die, you go back to the start of the 10-level world your on. As neat as the way attacking enemies in this game works, I don't think it's neat enough to justify making it through the rest of the game. Could see this being like, a good single-screen arcade game rather than what it actually is.

Spanky's Quest is oddly an incredibly unoffensive game both design wise and otherwise. The monkey is cute, the puzzles are simple, and the game doesn't drag on. Really the hard part about Spanky's Quest is just figuring out what exactly to talk about. Like it's certainly a weird game, but not too weird, its not challenging, but its also not boring. Everything is just alright.

The main objective for each level of Spanky's Quest is simple, find the keys to move on to the next level. In order to get each key you explore a continuous or sealed off room with various enemies trying to get in your way or take the key from you. Once you're done with each level in a world, you face the boss, and then repeat as needed. The main way Spanky has to defend himself is with a rubber ball that when bounced various times can turn into a baseball, basketball, volleyball, or football. These balls make for interacting with enemies slightly harder than usual as they are not a straight line or direct attack, and must be timed properly. None of the levels are particularly hard nor do you ever need to engage a level with the various balls you use as they act more like bigger hit boxes than tools to solve puzzles. Most of the time you are simply navigating each level like a labyrinth, but sometimes enemy placement can make it feel more like a puzzle feature.

For the most part, that's really all there is to Spanky's Quest. Sure, it does have a soundtrack, but it blends way too much into each other song in the game that really makes it seem there is only one continuous song, that may fly for Bubble Bobble, but that one was also a banger.The bosses are just kinda bigger versions of the regular enemies or at the least fruit related in some way. There isn't much to talk about each boss either as they all have fairly standard attack patterns, and we don't get much story behind them. Heck, I don't think there is much story for this game to began with. That's pretty much the main problem with this game, it's all functional. I understand how people can like this game, but when you get down to it, it's really just a passable game with not much to remember it by. It's not hard, interesting, or blatantly bad; just alright.

So, here, lemme ask a question real quick… how exactly does a fever dream of a game like this exactly come into existence? I got a couple theories, like one where the people at Natsume just put a bunch of words on pieces of paper, hung them up on a rotating wheel, and then just threw darts and knives at them, until they landed on “monkey”, “fruits”, “bubbles”, and “sports balls”. After that, the employees were then forced to try to make a game around it, while trying to make it all fit together to make it seem like it makes any kind of sense. That, or the most likely scenario for how this game came into existence… the employees at Natsume were just extremely fucked up on drugs. But nonetheless, from one of these experiments, we got Spanky’s Quest.

Somehow, I have known about this game for quite a long time, back when I watched the Completionist episode on this game way back in the day, back before it was yeeted into a void to never be seen again by Greg. Not only that, but I remember playing through this game once before, and I remember somewhat liking it, but I must’ve also been high as well when playing it, because when I decided to replay it to review it, I found it to be one of the most average SNES games that I have ever played. Sure, the game is appropriately goofy and dumb, like a good ol’ generic SNES game should be, but in terms of the actual gameplay, there really isn’t that much here holding it up in the end.

The story is kinda like a role reversal of the usual damsel in distress scenario, except it now involves a monkey and a witch, the graphics are cartoony and goofy like they should be, and all of the enemies and bosses have some alright animations, but nothing more, the music is good, but nothing too noteworthy, and a number of the tracks blend in together, the control is pretty standard, doing the bare minimum, and nothing more (see a pattern here?), while feeling as good as it should, and the gameplay is inventive, I’ll give it that, but aside from the initial concept, it doesn’t carry itself too much further to create a fun, worthwhile experience.

The game is a 2D puzzle platformer, where you control a monkey named Spanky (gross), you go through plenty of different rooms, take on a bunch of living fruits that came out of your backpack, which you do so by throwing bubbles that when popped, turn into different kinds of sports balls, you collect keys, you go through doors, find hidden bonus stages, and you of course fight several bosses along the way… yeah, like I mentioned before, this game is pretty fucking weird. Although, with that being said, the weirdness does somewhat add to the charm of the overall package. I mean really, how many other games out there can you say has you playing as monkeys that kill fruits with sport ball bubbles? Yeah, practically no other.

Although, with all that being said, despite the weirdness factor at play here… it is still painfully average. Throughout all of the levels, you are doing the same thing: killing fruits, getting keys, and going through doors, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing on paper, but the enemies pretty much never change throughout the whole game, the level layouts are all extremely similar and repetitive, and there is no real challenge to getting the keys other then to just, you know, get them. Sure, the theme of the worlds change, but they don’t add too much to make you remember them all that well, and there are powerups in the form of hats that help you out, like giving you the biggest bubble immediately or allowing you to hover, but you only get them for one stage at a time, so none of them really make that much of an impact.

And of course, mixed in with this array of mediocrity comes the rottenness of this apple, and while there isn’t much rot to be found, it still doesn’t make me wanna look at that apple for too much longer before throwing it away. As you could’ve probably gathered from what I mentioned earlier, this game is EXTREMELY repetitive, and while this factor is negated by several aspects, such as the game and the levels themselves being pretty short, but you do still feel the experience drag on for a good bit before the end. And speaking of the end, the final “world” of the game is literally just a boss rush, and we all know how much I LOVE boss rushes that add nothing to the game other than extending game time. Yes, there is a new boss to find in this boss rush, but even still, an unnecessary boss rush is still an unnecessary boss rush, no matter how ya slice it.

Overall, despite the unique premise and elements this game has going for it, if you were to play through the first world of the game, or hell, even the first LEVEL of the game, you pretty much know everything you are gonna get from it. It provides nothing more than what you are initially presented with, and as a result, it becomes way too average to the point where I don’t know if I could even recommend it to anyone. Unless, you know, you like monkeys throwing sports balls at sentient fruit. Then this game is right up your alley.

Game #261

Not the worst game I’ve watched someone else play (that would be either Snatcher, Ultima II, or Thimbleweed Park), but maybe somewhere in the top 10?

This game would be chockablock full of things I would question if I were in an episode of Buffy: okay, so there’s an evil witch who turned all the fruits in the magic world into monsters, but to what end? And now you’re telling me I’m a monkey from that world, and my super power is that I can volleyball-bump set bubbles that turn into other sports balls that can kill those fruits? And there’s a freaking time limit? What in the hell does this bird care that you’re taking too long finding keys by bouncing nonsense bubble balls on evil fruits? What, does the bird have other things to do?

But I’ll be honest with myself for once and say this isn’t even close to the weirdest puzzle platformer I’ve ever seen. Fantasy Zone for sure makes way less sense, and as I told Jenny during the playthrough, same goes for rainbow islands. It’s very similar to that game, in which you’re a cute character with a nonsense superpower that turns generic blob monsters into goodies that you need to relentlessly consume for dubious reasons before the end of a time limit, which is also there for dubious reasons. The major differences between those and Spanky are 1). the awful title, which was chosen by English-speaking localizers who should have known better and therefore inexcusable, 2). backgrounds that look like the wallpaper for a circa-2010 iPhone poker app (with my favorite one still being what looks like the San Francisco Bay bridge with a huge landfill of I guess Natusme merch in the Pacific Ocean), and 3). one can tell just from watching it how slow and awkward it controls. By all means, play spanky’s quest if you liked rainbow islands, bubble bobble, or fantasy zone, but HATED being able to fluidly control your character.

Oh, and I would be remiss not to mention that, for a game that already takes way too long, there’s a boss rush at the end! Remember all these guys? Remember vaguely gender-neutral pineapple? Remember the peach that anticipates emoji by actually looking like a big ass? There’s even a background showing all the bosses rendered in Lite-Brite, gnashing their teeth and menacing you for the rematch to come. The best thing I can say about this game is that I never expected it to remind me of Actraiser.

This game fucks sucks. It's got everything about this type of game that I hate. Floaty controls, an "attack" that you have "control" of in the loosest sense of the word, shitty level designs that require no skill only luck. Sometimes your hand turns to Scooby Doo, there's a level where you get chased by a Gucci shoe (if you don't look at it while it's behind you it just explodes), there's a level where you're bothered by a gang of tiny He-Men, there's a level where you have to pray to Morgan Freeman, sometimes you just randomly start glowing and it starts snowing.

It fucking sucks.

Spanky's Quest is one of those games on Switch Online that's just there. It doesn't have much to make it standout and the game is average. The hero is charming which adds to the gameplay and the enemies are pretty fun. The whole world this takes place in is nice, although the levels look very similar. The platforming is average and doesn't really have any memorable levels. The final boss is fun and will stick, but the rest of the game is repetitive and the same. It doesn't really feel like you're progressing because it feels all too similar throughout, and the way it moves forward is unimaginative. The game supplies some fun and as I said before, has a refreshing sense of charm, but the game doesn't have enough to keep it up there with other platformers of it's era.