Rugrats Time Travellers

Hang on to your nappies boys and girls, those Rugrats babies are going back in time! Those ever popular Nickelodeon babies continue their successful console outings with this Time Travelling adventure for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. The curious kiddies have found a magical Time Machine in a toy store, which sends them back in time to different eras. You have to locate the babies and help them find their home as you collect the tokens and make your way through strange new (or old) worlds.

There are 10 levels to complete as well as a few bonus rounds to be found in this side scrolling platform adventure game. In each level the Rugrats baby you play has to collect a certain number of items (shown on the item meter), and search for a special toy or another Rugrat baby. Once all the necessary items have been collected, you have to find the time travel portal that lets you access to the next level.

There is no denying that the game looks good, the Rugrats are as brash and as bold as they can be and the backgrounds are colorful and full of detail. However, the basic nature of the game, namely leaping around inanely as you try to find tokens, makes the title look slow and clunky, as there is no real action to get things going. Apart from one section when Chuckie gets stuck in an underground mine cart and goes tearing down the tracks, there is really nothing spectacular to challenge the scrolling graphics.

There is the option to change the setting to suit ability, however, playing on easy can be quite difficult in places, medium gets worse and on hard it is nigh on impossible to collect the number of tokens needed. Couple this with a very unforgiving clock counting down the time allowed for each level, add some passwords that are quite unmemorable and you get a very basic scrolling adventure game that is just too difficult for the audience it's aimed at. The Rugrats have already made their mark on the Game Boy market with some of their previously released titles and there are no doubt many more in the pipeline, so avoiding this one won't cause your own Rugrats too much lost sleep.