Disney needs to be making games like Rugrats Adventures in Gameland…

Few things retain their charm like the games of the 8 and 16-bit days. Granted, many of those games, especially the licensed ones, were absolute garbage but the nostalgia is still incredibly powerful, and often the simple graphics age far better than most games trying to look the best at whatever era they came out.

Rugrats Adventures in Gameland seems like a game that must’ve come out for the original NES back in the day, how could a property as popular as Rugrats not have such a game (and the answer is there are many games based on Rugrats but even though the show started in 1991 the games didn’t start coming out until 1998 for some reason)? But it is a completely original game that is a throwback to that style of game you might remember and while it can be played in modern HD the real charm is going back to a look more fitting of the early 90s.

Granted, lots of games, particularly indie titles, try to recapture what games of the late 80s and early ‘90s’ were like but few truly succeed. It’s a little early to judge as all we have now is a brief demo available on Steam but Rugrats Adventures in Gameland really seems to nail both the look and feel it’s going for in evoking those old games. So, where’s the Disney equivalent?

Disney has a myriad of properties both old and new that you could totally make in the mold of a game like Rugrats Adventures in Gameland and it would be great. You could make new NES or even SNES/Genesis-type games of properties that already have classic games based on them like DuckTales or Rescue Rangers but you could even base it on newer properties like say Owl House or Amphibia or even new DuckTales! The possibilities are many. And while it could certainly be a platformer there are many genres that could be tackled depending on the property, the important thing would be to really nail that feeling of playing an 8 or 16-bit game that feels like it should’ve existed 30 years ago.

Disney has said in the past they are committed to making both big and small games. We’ve obviously seen many of the big games, they are starring Jedi and superheroes. The smaller ones…. well there’s been a couple (Disney Illusion Island and Tron: Identity) but for the much smaller budget and risk and great potential payoff those smaller games represent we haven’t been seeing nearly as many as we should. Disney could be releasing one of these pretty much every six months or so and I’d be willing to bet they’d always get a solid return on the investment. So hopefully, Disney is taking a really good look at Rugrats Adventures in Gameland and thinking about what they can do in that vein.

That’s all for today, not completely sure when exactly my next post will be as I’ve got a kind of packed schedule this week but certainly get something out in the next week and a half so see ya real soon!