The N64 didn’t get a lot of movie tie-in games, so it’s quite bizarre that this exists. The film (which you probably haven’t heard of) was directed by Deane Taylor, the art director for A Nightmare Before Christmas. It was about a group of children that end up in a mysterious haunted fairground, and get warned by a mysterious girl (played by Helena Bonham Carter) that if they don’t leave, they’ll be trapped and stuck as children for ever.

It got a limited release in Europe where it performed poorly, and the North American release was cancelled. The film has had extremely limited video releases, and the director isn’t bothered by it being mostly erased from existence. I did manage to find an English version (with a cropped image) and watched a few snippets, the characters sounded annoying.

The film tanking was, of course, bad news for the developers of the game (who were also making a Scooby Doo game for N64), as it meant the game getting cancelled. The game focused on one of the main kids – Cenzo (voiced by Hugh Laurie in the film), who is at least more of an interesting design than the other characters. You walk around the theme park (where the tents just look randomly placed) in order to collect coins to pay for attractions, getting a few weapons, and getting access to new areas. There’s not much platforming, though, it’s just walking around.

The main bulk of the game seems to be a kart racer. The controls are floaty and imprecise, and the weapons feel ineffective. The tracks are quite long, and largely flat and boring, even the more complicated ones. They are themed around different attractions – dodgems, a boat ride, a plane ride, a haunted house, and crocodiles. While your “kart” changes based on this, they don’t feel any different.

After you’ve beaten the three CPU racers, you then take on a single boss CPU. Beat them, and you can progress through the game. The hub world area is certainly a nice idea (Diddy Kong Racing used one really nicely), but the gameplay of it is just quite boring, and the enemies are more annoying than tough. Still, a kart racer probably would have been enough for the publishers, so they were trying to do something different.

The thing that does seem to be a tad more worrying regarding the game’s development, is that this really does seem to be most of what was planned. The five in this prototype were all of the ones that were going to be in the final game, and it seems the only thing missing was one or two more simple minigames. So while a nice idea, it would still have been extremely bare-bones. This looks and plays like a very early prototype, but seems to be close to being finished.

Worst

Carnivalés rides seem to play like Mario Kart – with weapons to pick up and employ against your CPU rivals – but the correndous 90° turns on some of the tracks would make for some truly frustrating racing. Hopefully, all will be clear by next month.

N64 Magazine #48

Should it be finished?

From the sounds of it, this prototype almost is finished, even though there isn’t a lot to show for it.