Year Released: 1992

Platform: Sega Megadrive/Genesis

Developer: Interactive Designs (Their first and last game)

How does one make a mediocre platform game interesting? By adding a bit of Tiki flavor into it! Made by Interactive Designs from Sega, this little ditty had to compete with the likes of Sonic 3, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country and Earthworm Jim.

Needless to say, the fight was, for lack of a better term, one-sided.

Greendog (praise the loving parents who bestowed such a name onto our protagonist), out on a sunny day surfing, happened to have accidentally worn a medal around his neck when he wiped out on the waves. According to his Baywatch-inspired girlfriend, she told him about the curse of the medallion (it makes things around him berserk) and the only way to take it off (find the 6 pieces of Incan treasures on 6 islands), conveniently enough. At least you’re not in some glory-laced rescue mission.

Everything in this game has a conglomeration of Surfer, Mayan, and Tiki motive. The graphics are colorful for its time and the music is upbeat. Enemy designs range from the assorted wildlife of pelicans, starfishes and Inca statues. At times, Greendog’s hair resembles a hat; I know it’s a rather offbeat thing to say, but just look at the pictures.

Lady to Greendog: “Jamaican me crazy! “…….I am aware that is not a good joke.

You traverse your surfer self onto beaches, the forests, the subway and Mayan temples, armed with a Frisbee to toss at your foes. That’s right, a Frisbee. Along the way, you collect foodstuff of all shapes & sizes littered and stored into statues, chests, pelicans(?) and garbage bins (?!) for points, and the occasional soda can (at least that’s what I assumed it was) for life. You also get powerups like an umbrella on the head and a floating Frisbee option.

That’s what the world needs: more Frisbees capable of causing humanly harm to animals.

After grabbing one of the six treasure on that island, Greendog takes his Para-Copter, equipped with an extendable boxer glove straight out of Wile E. Coyote’s closet of reject inventions, and flies off to the next island, grabbing hotdogs and fries suspended in mid-air and fending off birds on the way. Yes, these were the days before realism & 3D set in to improve/ruin imagination in gaming. Then again, no one would want to see a bullet clip suspended in mid-air during an intense match of Counterstrike.

Any chance Tony Hawk would change his locale of his games to an Incan temple? It could do wonders to his washed-up franchise

Needless to say, the game needs a HELL of a lot of work from the QA side. The collision detection is atrocious; when you crouch down, Greendog does a weird-ass hand-extending pose and, as a result, expands his hit area. Swinging onto vines also is a hit-or-miss affair, and the skateboarding segments can be a nightmare control-wise, especially with the inclusion of the stone bird which may have taken lessons in annoyance from Ninja Gaiden’s Eagle. The third level, set inside an aquarium, in this game has suction pipes which send you back all the way to the beginning. Add to the fact that your movement speed is halved and with enemies dealing heavy damage to you, and you’ve got your recipe for terrible level design.

This goes to show that not every game back in the day was quality-stamped. Not to say that Greendog was an abomination of its time, but a game with this much flavor, it had so much potential to be so much more than average. Nonetheless, it was a one-hit wonder (?) that brought back a tiny trace of nostalgia from me, just like “gems” like Ghostbusters, Uniracers and Toki Goes Ape Spit. Of course, if you happen to come across a cartridge of this game in a flea market, get it just so you can experience the weirdness of this wasted potential of a game.

The payoff? A friggin’ ancient Aztec surfboard. And you don’t even get to use the damn thing!

Next Week: Something completely different. And it’s not on the Genesis (shock)!

Technorati : a look back, greendog, platformer, skateboard game