I loved Rugrats as a kid. To be fair, I liked most of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nicktoons that were on when I was growing up in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s — shows like Doug, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:SpongeBob SquarePants, Rocket Power, and Hey Arnold — but Rugrats was nearest and dearest to my heart. As a kid, there was something special about seeing kids even younger than ꦿI was getting up to all sorts of mischief. It was inspirational — these babies can have cool adventures, so wh🎐y can’t I?
And, it turns out, the adventures aren’t over. That’s because , an all-new platformer starring the iconic babies, is coming to PC and consoles next year. And, when I say consoles, it should be noted that that includes a system you might not expect: the NES. That retro release is fitting because Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland looks indistinguishable from an NES game. Or, maybe more fittingly, a TurboGrafx-16 game —🌠 Tommy’s big, bald, round head and stocky body make him a dead ringer for Bonk the caveman.
Well, half of the time. At the press of a button, you can swap between 8-bit pixel art and gorgeous hand-drawn animation that looks almost identical to an episode of the show. You can also tackle the campaign in co-op, with Phil, Lil, and Chuckie as playable characters. The gameplay looks pretty simple. You toddle around, jump, and climb෴. But there are some fun touches. In the trailer, Tommy does a ground pound to cause Grandpa Lou’s chair to recline, and one screen echoes the iconic shot of Didi and Stu coming home at the end of the theme song.
This isn't my dream Rugrats game, but its merging of millennial nostalgia for both the cartoons and game genres of the '90s gives me hope that we could see that dream game in the future. That would be a spiritual successor to Rugrats Adventure Game, the PC point-and-click I sunk tons of hours into, despite a full YouTube walkthrough lasting only two-and-a-half hours. Like the HD mode in Adventures in Gameland, Rugrats Adventure Game impressively replicated the style of the show. There are points where it fudges it to translate the Pickles' house from animation into a fully explorable environment, but it generally looks quite good for a game from 1998. It would be cool to see a modern take on a point-and-click starring the '90s very best babies.
For now, I'm happy to hang out with the Rugrats in whatever form they take. Unlike other staples of my childhood, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars, my nostalgia for the Rugrats hasn't been tapped out by endless reboots. This may just be because the reboots aren’t at the center of culture like Star Wars. They’re siloed off on Paramount Plus — where a comeback series began airing in 2021 and got new episodes this year — which makes the Rugrats easier to ignore. I didn’t watch it because I was barely aware it was happening. So, I guess the truth is, I’m happy to hang out with the Rugrats in whatever form they take… as long as they look how I remember. Adventures in Gameland is knocking that out of the park.