Developer: Kaneko Publisher: Kaneko Release: 03/94 Genre: Platformer
Once upon a time Chester Cheetah was one of the most ubiquitous food mascots around. They whored the poor bastard out left and right and I will freely admit it worked on me. Today you do not hear from the cool kitty as much but he is still around. Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool was your typical licensed garbage that no one remembers. Yet it must have sold well enough to warrant a sequel. Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest aims to fix the flaws of the first game and does to an extent. The problem is it fails at everything else.
Chester Cheetah has finally succeeded in escaping from the zoo. With his newfound freedom he decides to go on a cross country trip around the United States on his hog. Unfortunately Mean Eugene is determined to bring him back and chases him at every turn. The Bastard rips his map in to pieces and scatters it across the US. Now Chester has to find and complete his map to find his way to Hip City USA.
Too Cool to Fool was a simple game mechanically but the bad controls made it a chore to play. Wild Wild Quest is much better in that regard. Chester can dash without the use of shoes this time which does wonders for the pace of game, such as it is. Whereas before his jumping control felt sloppy and unwieldy it has been normalized and expanded. After jumping Chester can actually swim in midair and continue to rise. It looks silly but is effective at making the already simple platforming easier. Speaking of jumping you can super jump to gain massive height, break blocks with your noggin or to stomp on bricks to break them. It is a solid set of mechanics to work with. The problem is many of the flaws from the first game return and ruin it.
Wild Wild Quest has the same collision and hit detection problems as its predecessor and they are frustrating. I have fallen through many platforms and missed jumps because of this. The game’s plodding pace does not help either. The hit detection is the most frustrating. You have to nail your target near perfectly lest you take a hit. Unfortunately you do not have a life bar in this one outside of the bag of Cheetos that let you absorb one hit. The saving grace is that each level is incredibly short. The goal is to find the map and reach the goal at the end. In almost every stage the map is practically right underneath the exit which defeats the point. That leaves little reason for exploration unless you want to find the many, many extra lives laying around. But the game is so easy you do not need them.
Too Cool to Fool was frustrating rather than challenging due to its myriad number of problems. Wild Wild Quest trends in the opposite direction. Despite the single hit deaths the game is exceedingly easy. You can find items that grant three and five extra lives easily in most stages. I suppose the excess of extra lives is to make up for the single hit deaths but feels wholly unnecessary. You can easily run through most levels in thirty seconds if you so choose. The suspect hit detection makes some of the boss battles annoying but not too bad. You can get extra continues as well but I guarantee you will not even need to use a single one. I can appreciate that the attempt to rectify the problem with the original but they might have went too far in this case.
The sole bright spot in Wild Wild Quest is the graphics and even that has a caveat. Wild Wild Quest is a more vibrant game than its predecessor and the cross country premise has a lot of variety. The art is better and evocative of each setting and even though the levels are short at least the game is easy on the eyes. The animation is better too. The problem is the atrocious performance. Whenever a few sprites are on screen the game slows to an embarrassing crawl. Stomp on an enemy and when a few Cheetos pop it the game chugs worse than Super Ghouls & Ghosts. I wish I could say it gets better as you progress but no it does not. There is absolutely no reason a game like this that has so little going on should have framerate issues. All parties involved should be ashamed of themselves.
In Closing
What is left to say? Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest is a bad game. Despite its best efforts it falls flat on its face in most categories and is not worth your time. I went in to this hoping for the best after seeing the impressive screenshots in the magazines of the day. However they could not hide the shoddy game underneath. Add this one to the pile of games that give licenses a bad reputation.
