Taz Wanted | Red Review

[@TheRedGuy]

Heh I know this is a bit of a weird one, but I wanted to do something simpler after that last one lol. And hey I don't have to apologize for taking forever for it to come out for once.

[@TransPandaArt]

As someone who avidly played this game as a child, I always had an admiration for this game for being simple, straightforward, bright, and fun. A lot of Taz Wanted isn't technically or mechanically impressive. It's short, it's a little repetitive, bosses are passable, and like you said stages hardly establish themselves from one another mechanically. But perhaps... all of that only highlights what you're mainly getting the fun in out of this game: charm. Despite nearing 20 years old at this point I still look at Taz Wanted at being a wonderfully pretty and artistically pleasing game to look at. I've outright looked at some of the set pieces' vibrant colors and iconography to help me design characters or other elements I work on. Taz Wanted has a life to it, and I think it's just so gleefully happy to be alive that it's hard not to be sucked into the tazmanian's tornado as well. I think it knows what it is, accepts it, and sets out to have the best time it can with you. And I have to commend that effort, honestly! It's a solid transition of the heightened reality of silly, slapstick cartoons, and it always has a place in my heart.

[@TheRedGuy]

Well put!

[@nickgastronomos1211]

I believe its simplicity works in a charming way. Sure, it could be more complex like other platformers, but it's a game about Taz, one of the simplest and most straightforward characters of looney tunes.

[@Etsa]

I find it a crime that your channel hasn't blown up, but I'm sure the algorithm will find you eventually.

[@BoredLori]

Probably the most underrated platformer of the era. Its not like amazing but its weird how little people talk about it considering there is quite some fun to be had. I remember as a kid just going to looney lagoon for the slides and playing around.

[@WERicana]

The discarding of costume is akin to the cartoons where they truck their foes.

[@onparalelkenarag]

met this game when i was 7 and continue to beat it every few years on hard difficulty (or DAFFY-CULTY called by the game). hard difficulty removes filler sandwiches from the levels so only 100 of them are scattered throughout and makes destruction goal 100% compared to 50% of normal. bonus games unlocked by collecting all sandwiches as well as boss fights (bar last 2) can be accessible as 2-player mode from main menu which can be quite fun compared to their single player counterparts. 35:15 you can reach secret item in tazland by charging your spin on top of crane and just flying to island but there are multiple ways to get there. game seems short at first glance but for a blind playthrough it can easily take about 8 hours.

[@TheRedGuy]

Oh I didn't know harder difficulties removed sandwiches, interesting. Also using the crane does make a lot more sense.

[@CycloneFN]

Taz: Wanted is pretty good, if I do say so myself. Great review, nothing important was left out, and very reasonable opinions and critiques all throughout. Well done.

[@TheRedGuy]

Thanks!

[@M1lkGames]

Hello from Taz: Wanted speedrunning community :))

[@TheRedGuy]

Hi!

[@Neo-uy1te]

Came into this not expecting much from this game, but was decently suprised. Neat having more collectathon platformers with immortality systems to the protagonist like Wario Land/World, personally makes enemy/level design and level progression somewhat interesting(if executed right ofcourse). Not much I can add to this, but looking foward to your other mini reviews you have planned out!

[@lordgreeb6349]

Never thought I'd see this game be talked about. But than again, Loonkey Tunes games from 1990's and 2000's were not known to disapoint.

[@rzone317]

There is a lot of game that have a special charm to them... U love Luigi Mansion because u like the dark story and characters.. it's like that, my dear red dude.. *I smile*

[@TililioChaosLord]

To be fair, most Looney Tunes games tend to be quite good. Some are dreadful, but I remember really loving the ps2 Space race, the Gameboy Martians duology (character recruiting Zelda likes) and the excellent Gameboy plate-former.

[@TheRedGuy]

The only Looney Tunes games I've played are this and Daffy Duck the Marvin Missions on SNES, so I wouldn't know.

[@spochysrandomnetwork]

Fun fact: on the gamecube version there is a difficulty mode and in the very hard option you have to destroy EVERY item in every level

[@TheRedGuy]

Yeah someone else mentioned that. I think it's also on Xbox I just never messed with it.

[@Bowielicius]

The Shrek game was really fun. I’ll die on this hill any day.

[@TheRedGuy]

Lol, I never got very far in it.

[@Bowielicius]

@@TheRedGuy it’s was fun lol. By the way, any chance of reviewing Banjo Kazooie ? One of my favorite game franchises out there.

[@TheRedGuy]

@@Bowielicius Yeah I'll definitely review Banjo at some point, don't know when though.

[@tadaokou4919]

00:28 That Robots game is fun. I stand by that claim. It's not one of the best 3D platformers on the gamecube and not really great to experience the movie story, but the gameplay is just fun and the music is fun as well.

[@TheRedGuy]

I'll take your word for it, haven't even touched that game is a very long time so I don't remember anything about it.

[@tadaokou4919]

@@TheRedGuy Well, it's not one of the best ones, but all I'm looking for in a game like this is a fun time, even if flawed. ^^'

[@rzone317]

I know that it is late but happy Halloween to u... I wish that I could watch it when it first come out but my thing don't tell me

[@gingervhs7398]

I've never played this game and that's one of my life's biggest regrets.

[@TheRedGuy]

Ha, I mean I like the game but it's not like amazing. This game has never been re released so you should have no qualms about emulating it if you want to play it.

[@gingervhs7398]

@@TheRedGuy Funny thing is, I don't think I've ever played on an emulator before. I'm too stupid to understand how it works, and the game is pretty inexpensive so I could probably just buy it on original hardware anyway. The only time I've ever "attempted" to emulate a game was with Thousand Year Door due to its price, but I eventually coughed up the $100 because I still couldn't get the emulation to work.

[@TheRedGuy]

@@gingervhs7398 Getting into emulation can be a bit intimidating, but it's not that complicated.

[@ZakaZ1996]

You need to review Sheep Raider as well

[@mumumaaaah]

Sora is in smash are you going to make a video on it I’m new to your channel

[@TheRedGuy]

I'm thinking of making a video going over all of the DLC characters, I don't have enough to say about just Sora to make a video. Though if you want my quick thoughts I made a twitter thread about it.

[@TransPandaArt]

@@TheRedGuy Hi, also completely new viewer here (literally looked up Taz Wanted just cause I wanted to see if anyone looked at it lately), and happened to spot this comment. I... don't know if I'm overstepping my bounds, or it's 3 am delusion of anxiety, but would you be fine with me sharing a thought on it? I can't reply to (or really read) any twitter threads at the moment is why. You can ignore, this is only if you care for my thoughts. I thought this would be a shorter thought and I... just kept typing. I had more thoughts than I anticipated and I apologize if this is too long. I alluded to this in the first comment I left on this video of yours, but I have a habit of designing for characters because I am college trained to work in the animation industry. I put a lot of thought into this craft, a LOT. And something about Smash's last dlc pack really highlighted to me my biggest problem with Smash's character choices. Mechanics over Diversity. Always choosing the main character over any other choice. I think what's especially been damning on Smash for me has been the new platformer on the block, Nick All Star Brawl. While, yes, they aren't drawing from video games, the makers of that game have a noticeably different, and I would argue better, character pool philosophy than smash. Characters added feel like a genuinely different flavor to choose from. Something I feel falls more in line with traditional fighting game rosters, where you're meant to love bombastic and wildly contrasting characters first before getting good. To put this in a very blunt manner: I think Smash's diversity is horrendous. Both character function wise and... well actual diversity wise too. Why should I be excited for Minecraft Steve when there's been over 5 blank slate barely talking protagonists for these dlcs? Part of what makes me excited for a fighter is who they are as a character, and it's hard to be excited when we're dealing with a lot of... frankly redundant entries. Sephiroth only made sense to me as a pity Square Enix gift for not getting Sora, but now why is he even here? I actually went out of my way and watched your Byleth video, you know how you mentioned how Smash has blatantly ignored LOZ for 20 years? Well, ah, I think that's taken a toll on a lot of things. I mentioned lack of actual diversity and... well the DLC pack also feels like it didn't address a problem I've seen people talking about since Smash 4: A lack of good characters with brown skin. I mean I guess you could count Minecraft Steve (who my black friends have outright told me is so ambigiously designed they don't relate to him), but is that really gonna be it? Almost every major LOZ game since Majora's Mask has introduced a solid, plot important, capable woman with darker skin to choose from. Tetra from WW, Midna (Wiki confirms she's inspired by middle eastern culture) from TP, Impa from SS, and Urbosa in BOTW? Wouldn't these be perfect candidates not just to address an underrepresented group AND give LOZ more rep? Rep people have been asking for years to the point they were desperate enough to root for *Shantae* extensively during Smash 4? I'm saying this as a fan of both animation, video games, and fighting games in particular: a rich, diverse roster is key to making every character feeling unique. Street Fighter II is a good early example of this! I'm a white person at the end of the day, but I just can't help but feel even a bit can drastically not only help the "welcoming" feeling of media, but also dissuade hateful people from feeling more comfortable in fandom space around it. I have experience with animation communities, and this tends to come up in discussions. ...Last week I made a comment commenting how Korra was added to nick all stars, and that it's a little depressing that Smash has yet to add a woman that looks like her into the roster after 20 years. After all, I was one of those people desperate enough to root for Shantae during Smash 4's ballot, I wanted something for my friends around me that I cared about. I suppose, considering the ballot, that I've been hoping for 6 straight years for a bare minimum of even one to really talk about. I wonder how long other people have been waiting. I wonder how long they'll keep waiting. ...The very first response I got to that comment was "wdym we already got Donkey Kong" Kingdom Hearts was the very first console video game I ever owned. Since my parents were Disney heads they were happy to get it for me. I liked it so much it partially helped teach me how to read. I should be overjoyed with Sora's inclusion. Again, you don't have to respond to this message, agree with it, or even vaguely acknowledge it's existence. I suppose... I just wanted to share my perspective and the complicated relationship I hold with Smash Bros. And if that was something worth considering. I know how fun the game is to play. I've played it since I was in grade school. I drew characters in sharpie and thought of being Roy. I suppose I want to make sure everyone get that same amount of joy out of it I did as a child.

[@TheRedGuy]

@@TransPandaArt Hey, thanks for the comment, I don't mind at all people sharing detailed thoughts like this, in fact I love it when I get bigger comments like this. My only concern is dragging the other commenter into this lol. If you have access to discord, my server is the best way to just talk to me. But I'll respond here anyway. On the note of always choosing the main character of a series or game, that's kind of a thing that would need to be done in most cases. Like it would be weird if Banjo-Kazooie was repped by Mumbo and not Banjo himself. The main character is the most representative thing of the game most of the time, and they are the ones you connect to the most because you are controlling them. Now there are times when not picking the main character would make more sense, like say picking Hornet from Hollow Knight instead of the Knight. In that case Hornet actually has a personality while the Knight is quite intentionally a hollow character, and she had more interesting moveset potential (there's also the fact Hornet is the protagonist of the sequel but that's not the point). Fire Emblem is another where it would make sense to not use the player character because the lords tend to be sword users, and picking other characters with different weapons would be better. But again, most of the time the best representation of a game or series is the main character, it would be very weird if we got a Rayman character and it was anyone but Rayman himself. Now about diversity, you say that Smash's diversity is horrendous, but it actually is quite diverse. I know you're talking about racial diversity amongst the human/human looking characters, but that's ignoring the giant amount of non human characters, which is very diverse. The only angle in which you can say Smash lacks diversity is racial diversity, which I'm not saying is invalid to want to be better. It's just when saying Smash has bad diversity, you have to ignore a big chunk of the roster to do it. Diversity also comes with movesets, and Smash has quite a diverse set of movesets that got really crazy with the DLC. Now speaking of racial diversity, one thing you have to keep in mind is that the vast majority of the characters in Smash were created by Japanese people. Diddy Kong, King K Rool, Dark Samus, Banjo, and Steve are the only exceptions. So a lot of the characters that look white, are likely Asian. Now there are plenty of characters that are just white, like Mario is Italian, I'm pretty sure Ken and Terry are both from America so it's safe to say they're probably white, and Zelda is based more on western fantasy so even though they are fantasy races, it's safe to say they're more white than anything. But characters like Ryu, Cloud, Sephiroth, Joker, Kazuya, and probably all the Fire Emblem characters (I don't know enough about Fire Emblem to definitively say what they are) are mostly likely, if not outright confirmed to be Asian. This isn't an excuse for the lack of other races, it's just it kind of annoys me when people say or imply all these characters are white, when it's a mix of white and Asian. Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the avatar characters like Villager and Inkling do have darker skin variants, they are just alts and not the default, nor are they their own characters, but it is a step for more racial diversity. Not to mention the Miis can be whatever you want. But for the greater point of lacking representation for other races, this isn't really my area of expertise, but I don't think this is something that can entirely be blamed on Smash. Smash's priority isn't representing races, but representing video games in general. Ultimate's mission statement was to please as many fans as possible, which is why they relied a lot on the Smash ballet for picks. Smash fans aren't thinking of racial representation, they're thinking of the games they played and loved, so they request characters based on the games they loved. You ask why should you be excited for Steve, well, the reason other people were excited for Steve is because they love Minecraft. It's about the game they love being represented. I voted for King K Rool in the ballet because I love Donkey Kong, DK was lacking in representation, and K Rool is one of my favorite villains. My priority was to expand the roster for my favorite series. It's just kind of an unfortunate thing that video games, especially older ones, don't have the best track record when it comes to racial diversity, it's very Japanese and American focused. So a lot of the games people played and loved, aren't the most diverse racially. You mention Korra in Nick all Star Brawl, but isn't she the only character with darker skin? Everyone else is lighter skinned, or non human, kinda similar to Smash but with one brown character. Is one enough to satisfy? If so then surely Ganondorf or the darker skinned variants of Villager and Inkling, plus the Miis being whatever you want would be enough wouldn't it? I wouldn't think a single brown character would suddenly make it diverse. I don't really think Nick really should get a substantial amount of credit for a single brown character, especially when that character was a no brainer anyways. Like of course Korra was going to be there, Avatar is a popular franchise and she's the main character of the sequel series. It's good that she's there, but it's not like a big step or anything. Nick's roster is similar to Smash in that they prioritized representing Nick shows, it just so happened there was an obvious choice for a brown character. Idk I guess I understand having a character like that, in a game like this being a big deal for some people. But I don't think Nick really should get high praise for it. You may say it's a problem that people don't prioritize racial diversity, but again they're sticking with what they know and love. I think what should be done is to advocate for characters like Shantae. Shantae would be a good pick for a number of reasons, one of which would be more racial representation, and also having an indie rep would be nice. Smash is about video games, it wants to make people happy by including characters people want, so we should show Smash what characters we want. People have made various campaigns advocating for certain characters to get in Smash, some of which I have no doubt had a hand in helping to actually get the character in like K Rool and Banjo. Even ones that didn't get in like Rayman have gotten a lot of exposure because of people campaigning for him, which makes him more likely to be chosen for the next game (assuming they keep doing 3rd party characters). Sora got in because fans requested him. Could Smash be better? Should Smash be better? Of course, but we accomplish this by letting them know what characters we want. Again speaking about racial representation isn't my area of expertise, but I figured I could try to add something, thanks for the comment again.

[@TransPandaArt]

@@TheRedGuy I'll definitely think about that. I might be anxious adding into a server (You're one of the calmest responses in disagreement to this I've ever gotten) I wrote a stupid long comment at first, but I think it could be summarized into "While Smash is technically diverse character wise, meaningful diversity is to help a game feel more welcoming to all groups of people who feel interested in playing the game. Hence more for newcomers, young or old, than veterans." Actually I played a game that kind of demonstrates this really well you might be interested in. Nuclear Throne is a game of almost exclusively mutated monsters and the like, but it only has a single playable human looking character: A dark brown skinned woman named Rogue. I haven't looked up dev discussion on her but I feel it highlights how even in a super diverse game, having meaningful rep available can be super important! ...Probably should have just mentioned how Slap City had less than 10 characters and made sure to include one too, huh.

[@TheRedGuy]

@@TransPandaArt No worries, I also can be anxious going into new servers, and I just can't handle bigger and more active ones lol. I try to be as respectful as I can when having discussions, unless they start arguing in bad faith. I don't even necessarily disagree with you, there should be better representation, it's just less of a Smash problem, and more of an industry problem.