Totally Rad review - Nintendo Entertainment System

Zebediah the Great isn't a magician in the mould of Paul Daniels or the Great Soprendo. Despite his side show appearance, Zebediah's magic centres more on raining rocks down onto people's heads and giving himself wings. In the interests of aiding humanity, Zebediah has taken on an apprentice, Jake, a typical Bill and Ted clone who can't talk properly. All is not well in Zeb's camp however, as the great wizard has some powerful enemies who reckon the time is ripe for revenge. So one day, whilst Zeb and Jake are out jogging, Jake's girlfriend Allison is kidnapped and taken to the Headquarters of the dastardly villains.

Jake sets out across the platform wilderness leading to the evil doers hideout, using his newly-learned magical powers and amazing athletic abilities to overpower his enemies. If all else fails, there's always his corny surf-speak to fall back on...

What the Mean Machines staff thought

Totally Rad's one of those games that looks great on paper, but in reality isn't actually a great deal of fun to play. The lack of challenge on the early levels makes things initially rather dull, and the uninteresting screen layout and rather repetitive nature of the action means that by the time any sort of challenge arises late in the game, you're already pretty bored of it. Totally Rad could have been just that, but it's not and I can't really recommend it to anyone other than platform beginners with a low boredom threshold.

For the first couple of plays Totally Rad is a shambling mockery of a parodic travesty (Like your English - Jaz). Although the graphics aren't bad and the animation is pretty skill, the gameplay has all been done before, and been done better in many cases. The magic also makes the first few levels ridiculously easy. All you need to do is select flight and scoot over all dangers! Stupid, really. Still, once you get past the first two or three levels, the game picks up a bit. The number of powers add a fair bit of strategy to the proceedings, although once you know which magic to use where, things get a bit simplistic again. Totally Rad certainly has some good ideas, but it's just too simplistic in its implementation. Given a lot more challenge and a little more thought it could have been great, but as it stands, it's just a reasonable quality game only really of interest to anyone who's Totally Bored of standard platform games.