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The New Adventures of Mary Kate and Ashley is a Gameboy Color tie-in to a straight-to-video series I've never heard of, called The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley, starring the once ubiquitous Olsen twins. Wikipedia tells me its a musical detective show starring little moppets, which sounds absolutely adorable. The tie-in game is apparently not known enough to make it to the Wikipedia page, but there was also a tie-in novel series, because the Olsen twins are in themselves a franchise.
Turns out this game is a puzzle-platformer, which causes me great anxiety. This is not, dear friends, my genre. I got stuck about ten minutes into Portal.
But the girls look about five at most in this show, so hard can it be?
I brave the controls, move to the left, and a spider falls on me and kills me.
Right. Next life. I won't—
Oh. I wasn't supposed to go to the left, was I? Nor on the third time.
I finally resit the impulse to go to the left discover a really cool thing I can do, which is pick up and throw the dog. I make about a billion attempts to throw him at the rat opposite, watching it ricochet cruelly off the platform and bounce of the side of the screen. I persist because I hate rats. Really, really hate them. Even typing the word makes me shudder. I want it dead.
Twenty minutes later I succeed, the rat vanishes, and...
Nope, still no idea. I got stuck at the bottom of the screen and had to give up and reset, because I couldn't get up again.
Turns out each twin has different powers and need to work together to win. Ashley can flick levers and throw the dog. Mary-Kate is apparently not smart enough to figure out switches, but she can jump a long way and boost her sister or the dog, Clue, to a higher level. Brains and brawn, eh? Both girls can stand on Clue and apparently he can swim. All this cooperation is so wholesome, horrible deaths aside.
It takes me an embarrassingly long time and too many game overs, but eventually Ashley flicks the switch and I manage to change to Clue long enough to grab the puzzle piece. Success! Just don't talk to me about spiders.
Next level.
In this one, I actually manage to grab all the bits of paper and get a clue!
But it's not enough. The girls keep dying from falling from heights, hitting spikes, or being eaten by huge creatures. Like, what is this, some kind of horror game? Even slasher films usually don't kill the kids like this!
I rage quit.
Eventually I remembered I was a mature grownup mother trying to set a good example for my little boy, came back, went to the left, and was killed by the spider. Against the odds, I eventually got through all the way to the third level.
In which the dog was murdered by a cat.
What kind of dog gets killed by a cat? Back to... oh, no, level one. Hello, Mr Spider.
Apparently there are several "mysteries" with multiple levels matching each video movie, which is pretty nice as tie-ins go. The cooperation puzzles are fun, although it's never explained adequately why Mary-Kate is incapable of flicking a switch. The character designs are precious.
Will Solve Any Crime by Dinner Time. I mean, how freaking cute is that?
There were times I really got into the groove of switching between characters and bouncing on heads. But the massive frustration of just missing a jump or brushing a cat's tail and dying was incredibly frustrating. I just didn't like being sent back to the first puzzle over and over.
I'm aware I am very very bad at this genre. But the show and the game seem to be aimed at very small kids, and this is absolutely unforgiving. Surely the market for punishingly difficult, child snuff platformers for preschoolers is is awfully niche?
Or maybe I really am just that bad and any self-respecting five-year-old would trounce me, or at least not go to the left and get killed by a spider nine times out of ten. It's entirely possible.
I saw this a lot.
Score
5/10
It's cute, but it really seems too demanding for its market. And me.