Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland Nintendo Switch Review 6.5/10 "The Rugrats Ride Again" 👶 @WallrideGames

I must admit that I wasn’t expecting a Rugrats game in 2024. I remember the cartoon back in the early-mid ‘90s, but I was far more preoccupied with X-Men and Spider-Man at the time, a lot of the quirkier shows of that era kind of passed me by, although some of my peers remember them very fondly.

That said, the show must have been on a hell of a lot, as the moment I booted up the game and heard that theme, even I was surprised how much of the show I remembered, from the voices, character names and family members, it all came flooding back. Heck, maybe I did watch it more than I can recall! Or perhaps it was such a cornerstone of culture at the time that it just permeated my very being.

The game begins with the various Rugrats watching a TV show starring Reptar that advertises a Reptar video game– I fancy eating a Reptar bar, now, I always imagined them tasting like Taz bars – and them deciding to change their house and surrounding areas into a game world of their own, with the six stages taking the shape of a melding of reality and imagination that you have to make your way through, ranging from the kitchen and attic through to the outside sandbox and garden. 

A 2D platformer that allows you to switch between modern and 8-bit modes (although I would have thought this was more of a 16-bit era show), you can flick between each character for certain areas – or if their health is getting a tad low, a la the Turtles game on the NES – for instance, Chucky can jump the highest, but is a bit weaker at lifting, that’s Phil’s domain!

The different levels of difficulty allow you to have everything from an instant respawn upon failing through to a hardcore arcade experience, should you so wish. The stages themselves are a mixed bag, and I couldn’t quite work out what the target demographic was. On one hand, the gameplay is very simple and short (the six stages only take a couple of hours to complete) but the enemy placement and stage layout can quite often be irritating and well…let’s call it ‘retro’, in that you’ll find yourself trying to make pixel-perfect jumps as you avoid flying enemies with teeth-grinding waves of attacks, including some that instantly respawn, causing knockback on your character.

This kind of worked out well for my playthrough, as I was playing with my three-year old son, and whilst he adored the characters, music, and idle animations – especially Phil’s nose picking – he’d get stuck and pass the controller to me, so that I could help out on the tougher sections. That said, after the initial burst of nostalgia, I couldn’t help but feel the game was a bit humdrum once the fun intros were out of the way.

The ability to freely switch between the styles (modern and retro) is a fun touch, but the actual meat and potatoes of the game feels flat and becomes perfunctory once the fun of seeing the characters and hearing the theme again wear off. It’s understandable that the voice cast aren’t available, but the decision to have purely text-based dialogue instead of archival recordings or even sound-alikes again makes the game feel a bit flat.

SUMMARY

If you are a fan of the series, this is a fun way to spend some time with the characters and locations you’ll be familiar with from so many years ago, and it can be fun to play along with a younger player.

That said, there’s a definite sense of this not being as fully realised as it could have been after a level or two.

Right, I’m off to grab a Reptar bar!