The Where’s Waldo books were a big part of my childhood when I was in kindergarten. These were a series of picture books where you would look for Waldo in a series of very creative drawings. I only had the first three books, but there were more in the series, as well as more video games than the one on the NES.
In Canada and the US, the character’s name was changed to Waldo. The character’s original name is Walley. Being from the US, I had no idea about this, and I find it interesting that it was changed when the books were published here. It doesn’t play a big part in the story of this game, but it is something I wanted to mention.
The NES game wasn’t well received, and the reviews have only gotten worse over time. To call this a game isn’t exactly accurate. To be fair, it can be considered a Hidden Object game, but that is being generous.
If you got this game as a birthday gift or a Christmas present, then you might’ve been a little disappointed. Even as a weekend rental, I don’t think anyone would’ve been happy about this. If anything, someone might’ve learned about the books because of this game, but I doubt it very much.
TLDR: An early example of a hidden object game on the NES.
Narrative
This game follows the story from the first book, which I’m just realizing had a story in it. Waldo is wandering around as he tries to make his way to the Moon. I vaguely remember that happening in the book, but I really just remember looking at the artwork and not reading the brief paragraphs of the story in the book. If you want to read the story, it is in the manual (Link).
Gameplay
There are a series of stages that you’ll need to navigate to beat the game. Most of the stages are simple, and three of them are mini games, which are rather dumb. If you don’t have the manual, then you’ll get confused quite fast and not really know what is going on.
The game is on a time limit. It doesn’t do much to make things fun, and most of the time, you’re going to be wondering what you need to do, especially in the mini game sections.
In most of the stages, you’ll have to find Waldo. It isn’t all that hard to find him, and it makes the game rather boring. You can increase the difficulty at the beginning of the game, but it does little to make things fun.
The mini games are strange to say the least. They take place on the Cave, Subway, and Launch Pad levels. If you run out of time, then you’ll need to start over. Don’t worry because the game is only about 10-20 minutes long, so you’ll be able to get back to where you were in no time.
I don’t like the gameplay at all. I’m not sure why this is the direction the developers took this game. It could’ve been a side scroller, and that would’ve been much better than what we got.
Visuals
The visuals from this game are taken from the book. Unfortunately, the NES couldn’t handle all of the colors and detail that the source material had. This meant that the graphics in the game were butchered as they were brought to the home console.
The graphics aren’t that good. It is fairly easy to find Waldo because of the low resolution of the images. All you have to do is look for the stripped shirt, and you’ll be right most of the time. The rest of the game looks okay for an NES game, but overall, it doesn’t look very good.
If you were a fan of the artwork in the books, then this would be even more disappointing. With how crazy the pages were, there was never going to be a way to bring everything to the NES with the console’s limitations. There isn’t really much the developers could do with this, and I can only hope that the sequel looks better, especially with the move to the Genesis and SNES.
Reviews at the Time
This is such a strange game to review. The initial reviews were below average, and they only got worse as the years went by. It is exactly what I was expecting because this is more of a program than it is a game.
Nintendo Power lists this game as being Educational. They didn’t give the game a final score, but it looks like they didn’t like it all that much. I hadn’t thought of saying that this game was in the educational section of games, but that actually makes sense.
There is a positive review for this game, but it just happens to be in Portuguese. VideoGame, a Brazilian publication, gave it an above average review. I wish I could read the review, but it is in one of the many languages I don’t know.
There really wasn’t anything surprising about the reviews for this game. They followed a predictable trend of being lower as time went on, but with this game, they didn’t have far to fall. It had mixed to negative reviews when released, and in the 2000s, it cratered out as retro games tended to do during that period.
N/A. I’m not going to give this game a score. It doesn’t feel right to do that because this isn’t so much a game as it is a program that happens to be on a video game cartridge. It is like a bad piece of educational software that was turned into an NES game to try to capitalize on the success of a children’s book.
Pros
You can play it
Cons
- Boring
- Confusing Mini Games
- Way too short
Conclusion
I went into this game with an idea of what was going on. I remember seeing in an AVGN episode, which didn’t do much to explain the game. Playing it for this review, I can see that it isn’t all that good.
When I went over the reviews for this game, I wasn’t all that surprised. The hardest part of this game was the dumb slot machine where you need to line up three of Waldo’s faces. It is one of the more frustrating parts of a game that I’ve played. I wish you didn’t have to play these mini games, and if there were more stages where you had to find Waldo, or if the game had been totally different.
There is a sequel to this game. It is based on the third book in the series, and since it is on the Sega Genesis and SNES, I’m hoping it is better. I’m going to be optimistic, but I’m not going to hold my breath. It is so strange that this is the direction that they went with this game.
If you liked this post, please check out my other posts about NES games, such as Friday the 13th and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
One thought on “Where’s Waldo: A Terrible and Weird NES Game”