Toonstruck - ADG Episode 274

[@TheGreatCodeholio]

3:38 Incredibly, SVGA 640x400 (256-color mode) mode was always present in VESA BIOSes even if nobody used it very often. It was often mode 0x100. Everybody wanted to use mode 0x101 (640x480 256-color mode)

[@Lachlant1984]

I got this game on GOG, and I think the version they distribute doesn't use DOSBox, rather it uses SCUMMVM.

[@Ikrananka]

Yes, you're right. I assume GOG used SCUMMVM to avoid issues with DOSBox such as those that Pixelmusement encountered. Toonstruck compatibility under SCUMMVM is classified as "excellent".

[@rayceeya8659]

My version is from Steam and uses DosBox. I wish I'd bought the GOG version. GOG>any other virtual store front.

[@Ikrananka]

@@rayceeya8659 You should be able to extract the relevant folders from your installed Steam version and use them with SCUMMVM. That aside, GOG at least do make an effort to try and improve the compatibility of games they sell to work on modern operating systems.

[@rayceeya8659]

@@Ikrananka I probably don't even have to go that far. I'll bet I can run the game from the Steam folder through SCUMMVM directly. I've done it before. Mostly I lament my money going to Steam instead of GOG, because I love GOG.

[@Ikrananka]

@@rayceeya8659 I hear you - I don't buy games on Steam (with one exception) and stick with GOG.

[@AlexNovakim]

Hi, just found your channel and loving it, what a great archive channel for old games You are doing lord Gaben's work here, keep it up!

[@CopiousDoinksLLC]

The weird thing about Christopher Lloyd is that he's an amazing comedic actor but he takes every single role that he does super-seriously. So you end up with this really weird paradox of a guy who will tell you in a completely humorless manner the best way to pull off a joke. It's pretty amazing to watch in interviews, honestly.

[@interlace84]

Played this game no-walkthrough at age 11! Still remember the huge green carboard box with messed up clownface like it was yesterday =D loved Back To The Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and point&click adventures as a kid so guess who got completely *STUNNED* to see the Doc on our pc in an animation adventure hybrid!!

[@RolloTonéBrownTown]

I recognise some of those drum fill samples....also love the mix of the motion capture work with the cartoon graphics. Very neat. Christopher Lloyd hams it up in this role. Weird how the process of greasing palms allowed this to be created at all. About the naysayers.... A lot of these games can be frustratingly obtuse. I've found myself trying to find the right spot to click in even Cluefinders.

[@mrcyberpunk]

This game is brilliant. One of the best Adventure games. I was one of the people that bought a boxed copy when it came out. I bought it on a whim because it had a creepy clown on the front but I thought "eh the screenshots look cool". Definitely worth a go. RIP Toonstruck 2 :(

[@Alianger]

People played these games for weeks and shared tips between them at the time, I wouldn't worry about that too much. On a side note I wish they had made a Roget Rabbit game like this.

[@SeekerLancer]

You're definitely right about this being a common game. I used to find copies of this laying around flea markets and consignment shops all the time, usually mixed in with music CDs.

[@Lawnie10]

"What's that? You dropped a key? Let me just look you directly in the eyes as you dance and steal it." - Christopher Lloyd, Master of Stealth

[@AndrewTJackson]

One of my favourite "unplayable" games as a kid - mainly because we couldn't afford to buy the full game. I played the demo dozens and dozens of times. When I finally purchased this game from GOG a year or two ago, I tooooookkkk myyyyyy tiiiiiiime and savoured every single second of it. GLORIOUS!! It was *totally* worth the wait! Thanks for the review!! Shout out to Pushing Up Roses' video on this as well, I loved that one too! :-)

[@spliceoncharlie]

Thanks for posting and sharing. I appreciate these "adventure" game titles since it gives me a chance to check out some games I may have missed and a pretty good idea on whether or not to make a purchase.

[@RoboticMagus]

Never really knew about this game. Seems like something I would enjoy!

[@ProBreakers]

Great review as always!

[@nickmalcom6360]

i should mention that the animation was dun by 2 well known animation studeos of the era. those being the canadian Nylvana (babar, the donkey kong country cartoon, and the first US version of roopert among others) and the taiwanees rainbow Animation (contract animaters for DiC entertainment, of AOSTH, captain and madilin fame).

[@interlace84]

PS for anyone wanting to play this again-- skip dosbox, use ScummVM!

[@Fender178]

Yeah this game is easy to find. I own an original retail version that I bought off of ebay years prior to it being released on GOG. I also got the GOG version for free when GOG had it for free during one of their major sales. I had a hell of a time trying to get this game working properly under DosBox properly. I would recommend using SCUMMVM to by pass any technical issues and it also supports aspect correction as well.

[@JomasterTheSecond]

Aw hell yeah, I can finally play as Christopher Lloyd, famous star of 'Foodfight!' and 'Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure'!!

[@Pixelmusement]

The mark of a "balanced" acting career I guess. ;)

[@oz_jones]

And Suburban Commando

[@CopiousDoinksLLC]

@@oz_jones CHRIST, HE WAS FROZEN TODAY

[@lilwyvern4]

Never heard of this one, but sounds pretty spiffy. And hey, if Doc Brown's the player character, it's got to be good, right?

[@Pixelmusement]

Christopher Lloyd's had quite the "balanced" career I would say, including some really excellent movies and also some absolutely abysmal ones, so his presence alone doesn't immediately make something good... though it does raise the odds a bit because even if whatever he's in is dumb, his performance will still be fun! ;)

[@TheMoogleMaster]

It also didn't help that this game came at the end of era when adventure games were popular. Think I saw this a Blockbuster once (Remember those?!) and being curious at it. Never got to pick it up till it was on GOG, should play it at some point.

[@Pixelmusement]

I still have my Blockbuster membership card. ;)

[@officernarc]

Your Blockbuster used to rent PC games??

[@Pixelmusement]

@@officernarc No idea. I got my membership card in 2005 the year after I moved into a townhouse that was near one and all I rented were Gamecube and PS2 games. :P

[@adamvancleave9200]

I take photos of everything with one of six flat colors. That usually is enough for the phone bit. ... Didn't the safe with the sliding puzzle just have a means of fast travel in it?

[@Pixelmusement]

Yup, the fast travel hole is all you get out of that, so yes, it's optional, but still present and likely to torment people who are stuck. :P

[@EdmondDantes224]

Watching this video, the game's visuals impress me, because of how smooth and clear they are. I mean, any time you get an animated dealie for MS-DOS, there's a certain way it always looks... its hard to put into words, but like, compare the old Readysoft CD-ROMs of Dragon's Lair to any modern remastered version and you'll see what I mean. Or for that matter, watch Toonstruck here, then go back and look at Braindead 13... the latter is a lot less smooth and more "video gamey" while Toonstruck looks more along the lines of what I would expect from a remastered DVD version. I do wonder how much is the game and how much is KZbin doing that tho.

[@lkotro21]

Yeah, I faced the speed problem when I tried replaying this game years later on a more powerful machine. It's such a shame too since I was so far into the game before that was a problem.

[@zirkoni42]

Opengl output can be blurry because it applies bilinear filtering. Use *openglnb* for more pixelated look.

[@Pixelmusement]

The trouble with openglnb is that you'll get aliasing if your resolution is not set to a perfect multiple of the game's resolution. Using the normal2x / normal3x scalers essentially pre-scales the result, which will then be stretched with filtering using the normal opengl mode, resulting in a much cleaner image without aliasing artifacts. :B

[@Christopher-N]

(3:03) "Of course it's an arcade, ya meathead," almost sounds like Muddy Mudskipper. (10:07) The aroma of ammonia, a.k.a. smelling salts. Makes sense, but I would have missed it.

[@jlcdavenport6268]

I don't know about the other ones you've reviewed, generally I stay away from Adventure games because of the nature of the puzzles being some real obscure nonsense (I played a bunch as a kid, and have gotten over that stuff) but after your review of Day of the Tentacle, where you said it wasn't that difficult and had a statue for each character to get hints from I tried it out, and absolutely loved it. One improvement you may appreciate from the DOS game to the Remastered version though is that you can just drag and drop items directly from character to character, without having to use the Chron-O-John, stops a huge amount of needless backtracking.

[@AllOfTheRestWillFlow]

Just use a walkthrough

[@StephanS]

That game is a pure masterpiece. Even the german translation and voice acting is just plain SUPERB. The atmosphere (especially in the 2nd Part of the game, the castle) is stunning and still giving me goosebumps. I completed the game around 10 times and i will go back to it soon...but the "gift-o-matic" puzzle is very hard or almost impossible on real hardware (i used a 450 mhz P2) because it runs too fast. Oh, and the clown face puzzle is just evil, rubbish and NOT funny!

[@Pixelmusement]

The clown face puzzle is just a memory game. If you're REALLY bad at that kind of stuff you can just write down the sequence as it's revealed. :P

[@StephanS]

@@Pixelmusement Yes, its a "Simon"-like game... but i dont like those kind of games. The clown puzzle is also very long and boring...

[@DavidXNewton]

I think that the decision to make this a game rather than a film was more calculated than you give it credit for... I remember this era when games desperately wanted to “grow up” and be seen as a mainstream instead of niche form of entertainment, and they made a false start doing that by trying to make them more like films and get real actors to take part in them - like you said, the cast is unbelievable for a game from this era, where most others would have brief cameos from a star like William Shatner or John Rhys-Davies that were billed as much bigger appearances than they actually were. The weird hybrid of childish and absolutely wrong humour reminds me a lot of Animaniacs. I always felt somehow uncomfortable watching it when growing up, like I wasn’t supposed to be or something - and now I’m able to understand it as an adult I can confirm that it is positively filthy :) Thanks for the thing about combining the data from the two CDs - I love when games had the “foresight” to be written in such a way that they’d work when bigger capacity media was invented, without even meaning to :)

[@bryguy9021]

i love your review videos...dont care to much about shovelware *save the capture the flag episode i played the shit out of that back in the day* these videos rock. thank you. massive nostalgia vibes and to my knowledge you do not have to much competition in this area like old consoles do, i grew up on dos and i cant find a lot of content like this on youtube.

[@bluekewne]

I get the innuendos can be extreme for kids, but also remember that many mainstream 90s cartoons (I'm looking at you Nickelodeon) did muuuuch worse. Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life - hecc even Rugrats had quite a few jokes that only adults would get. As I was a kid at this time, I would've thought nothing of it thanks to that.

[@Pixelmusement]

I mean, innuendos are one thing, but there's a moment in this game where a character has their brain punched clean out of their head and splattered against a wall as it profusely bleeds everywhere. That's crossing the line from "innuendo" to "blatant". :P

[@aaronmarko]

Damn. 8 million dollars. I mean, the quality is there but that budget says it all about how doomed it was.

[@AntiPseudo]

Unfortunately this came out riiiiiiiiight as I reached that age where I was swearing off anything that looked even remotely 'kiddy', even though I absolutely loved adventure games back in the day.

[@TheGreatCodeholio]

If I understand correctly from the comments, GOG is using ScummVM and Stream is using DOSBox? Just asking, I would prefer to use the DOSBox version for obvious reasons related to testing.

[@Pixelmusement]

I don't actually know which is which, I just know from looking at screenshots from the purchase pages of these games that they're not using aspect correction. :|

[@trevorc4413]

I installed the GOG release, and don't see an obvious way to run it in DOSBOX; it appears to be missing any files that are not needed for running in ScummVM. I checked the Steam forums, and the Steam version apparently uses ScummVM as well. I think you're stuck with physical.

[@jasonblalock4429]

As far as its market failure goes, I think as much as anything, it just got caught up in the adventure game crash of the late 90s. PC gamers were getting burned out on the Sierra\Lucasarts formula, and this one brought nothing new to the table aside from its production value. I distinctly remember skipping it for just that reason. Coming after games like Myst and Under A Killing Moon, it felt outdated.

[@Pixelmusement]

Which is a big part of why I feel it would've been more successful as a movie instead of as a game. :B

[@cleverlyblonde]

Awwe, I liked that formula personally, and I'm frustrated with the state of adventure games now. Though Daedalus has some good ones.

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@cleverlyblonde Well, there was nothing wrong with the formula per se, people just got sick of it due mostly to market over-saturation. Seriously, look up Sierra Online's gameography between, like, 1985 and 1995. The number of titles they pumped out was absolutely absurd; they were basically a content farm. They even started buying up other companies, like Dynamix and Coktel Vision, just so they could put even more products on shelves. And that was ONE company, not to speak of the dozen or so other major devs who frequently published adventures in the same basic style. People got burned out on the formula, and as PCs in the mid-90s became more capable, players started looking for new experiences.

[@cleverlyblonde]

@@jasonblalock4429 But a lot of those titles are classics. Lucas put out a fair number of titles too.

[@TheJamieRamone]

Soooooooo...Did'ya make up ur mind about DOSBox-X?

[@Pixelmusement]

TBH: I forgot to test it and ECE this time around. I routinely forget I have them set up and ready in case vanilla DOSBox isn't perfect. :P

[@TheJamieRamone]

@@Pixelmusement I just checked out the latest release. It includes support for config.sys (inside dosbox.conf, like autoexec.bat) and 4DOS! And the PC speaker is no longer stuttery! :D

[@Imgema]

I don't see anything kiddy here. It looks like it has the same tone as something like Roger Rabbit. That means it's a game for adults that kids could also enjoy because of the wackiness.

[@Pixelmusement]

I didn't show the more extreme moments in the video, such as the BDSM torture dungeon or the brain splattering. (Yes, these things are in the game!)

[@RatelHBadger]

More people need to use insults like meathead.

[@PlayStationPaul]

A lot of people will have this as it was a GOG freebie a while back.

[@tasospodcast8832]

This game appeared JUST before the downfall of the genre!

[@negirno]

I Remember watching the teaser of Warcraft Adventures that too had the hand-drawn animated aesthetic. And then 3D became popular both in gaming and in animation, so that was it...

[@pelimies1818]

He looks like Fasier! So, it should be funny! - very funny!

[@pelimies1818]

Uups.. On close up, it”s not Frasier.. It’s Steve Bannon.

[@thefuzzbuzz23butler12]

TH'...

[@johnlewisbrooks]

You should do a review of Beavis & Butthead Virtual Stupidity! Its even better than this!

[@Pixelmusement]

Alas, that game is for Windows, not DOS, but it could always be good for a filler at some point. :B

[@andrewheather4970]

Pixelmusement why are you saying toonstruck is a nearly flawless game what are the flaws with this game

[@Pixelmusement]

I mean, you "saw" the glitched mouse when I was talking about it, right? ;)

[@andrewheather4970]

Pixelmusement yes i saw the glitched mouse in this game what other flaws are there in toonstruck

[@Pixelmusement]

There's a few more glitches similar to that I didn't go into, none of which affect the gameplay too extremely. There was also a moment where my mouse cursor started behaving very weirdly, though restarting the emulation fixed it so I'm not sure if that was the game or the emulation. Skipping dialogue with spacebar can sometimes end up skipping two pieces of dialogue because of the weird way it cancels it out, a couple of the timing puzzles are VERY tight, and again, the phone quiz puzzle can just suck it. :P

[@JFD62780]

. . . Is it a bad thing to feel lucky I got this for free as a GOG Giveaway...? XD Anyways, nice review, I might wanna actually play it soonish! :D

[@XanthinZarda]

I'll be honest, I'm of the mind that this game aged like milk. A lot of the humor has aged _poorly,_ the game design often comes down to _what zany item do you need to combine today,_ and the partner is a little on the obnoxious side. It's a good concept, but I feel the execution needed more Sam & Max and less Rodney Dangerfield meets 90s Grossout.

[@TheMoogleMaster]

Yeah, I do get a 90s Ren And Stimpy feel to it.