Rugrats Search For Reptar | PS1 | Review
Platform: PS1
Developer: n-space
Publisher: THQ
In a list of games I played over and over again as a kid, Rugrats: Search For Reptar would be up there near the top. Let’s see if this PS1 game from 1998 stands the test of time. Surprisingly this was the first game based on Nickelodeon’s Rugrats cartoon that started in 1991, featuring Tommy Pickles, Chucky, Phil, Lil and Angelica as playable characters across a series of surprisingly varied levels. When you start the game the opening of the show is lovingly recreated in the Playstation’s polygonal graphics, stuff like this used to be so impressive at the time. After this, you start the game proper. Tommy’s Reptar jigsaw puzzle is missing some pieces which he’s none too happy about so the main objective of the game is to obtain these pieces by finishing the levels. After playing the optional tutorial that gets you used to the controls, you’re left to roam the Pickles’ residence at your leisure. You can pick up and throw Tommy’s toys, bash a few keys on a toy piano and even go outside to see Spike in his dog house and throw a ball or stick for him that he’ll fetch back to you. You’re free to do all this as even more time to get used to controlling Tommy and, as this is really a kids game, it makes sense that there’s no pressure to begin the main story levels. Once you are ready, you can find sparkling objects around the house that will begin a short cutscene introducing you to each level. These are all handily labelled by difficulty too, meaning if you’d like to take them on in a certain order, that’s something to go by. We’re gonna take a look at each of the levels individually and get to the finer points of Rugrats: Search for Reptar as we go along.
I hope you’ve familiarised yourself with the movement controls because one of the first levels you’re likely to play is Chucky’s Glasses. Here you play as Chucky, trying to find each of the other babies who are playing hide-and-seek. Each time you play the level they will hide in different places, adding a splash of replayability. Once you’ve tagged one of the other hiding babies, the real challenge begins, racing them back to the playpen. It’s usually pretty close, with the main obstacle being the strict 8 directional movement which is quite archaic by today’s standards. The camera can also suddenly jerk away wildly, throwing you off course. Something I used to do as a kid which I can’t for the life of me figure out now is jump down this entire flight of stairs with one button press, cutting out a huge chunk of time and pretty much guaranteeing you’ll get the playpen first before any baby hiding upstairs. I’m sure it can be done with very specific timing but who knows, maybe I just misremembered.
This is based on the episode Chucky Loses His Glasses but lucky for the player, it does not affect your vision, Chucky merely complains in his usual hypochondriac fashion about what a horrible situation he’s in. The excellent voice acting from each character has been perfectly brought over from the TV show, with all the original voice actors contributing, but unfortunately this level in particular suffers from the age-old problem of dialogue repetition ad nauseum.
There are three fairly similar levels, the first is cookie race, a one time race against Angelica from Grandpa’s room to the kitchen. Here you might notice some variety in the layout of the house, forcing you to take an alternate route, many levels set in the house do this and it’s both welcome variety and nice attention to detail on the developer’s part. Egg Hunt is another race against Angelica in the house, this time to collect more easter eggs than her within a time limit. Then, as Phil, beat Angelica again, this time at the park, collecting 62 nickels.
By now you may have found some Reptar bars around the levels, these serve as an extra collectable for completionists and for every 15 you collect, you get another puzzle piece. A lot are incredibly easy to find, but a fair few require you to go off the beaten track or even be quick, hitting some with throwable objects in certain sequences. A level with every instance of these Reptar bars is the excellent level ‘Grandpa’s Teeth’ based on the episode of the same name. Tommy and Chucky are at the park, Grandpa puts his teeth down to try some potato salad and Spike decides human teeth are more his style and runs off with them. Chucky, of course, doesn’t want to chase after Spike and would prefer to stay in the playground going on the swings and see-saw, which you can actually do. It plays a little cutscene which seems quite silly now but at the time was another exciting dose of PS1 FMV. It reminds me of when you can go on the rides in the original Theme Park so these scenes are very nostalgic for me. When you’re done messing around you go into a maze infested with geese who are a prominent part of the TV episode. Take a wrong turn and you’ll face some avian wrath, but amazingly there’s a feature of this level I never noticed in all the times I played it as a kid. I had this maze memorised and was very proud of that fact but there are arrows simply telling you which way to go at every fork! How did I not see these? Well, if you fancy some extra Reptar bars, you can quickly go the other way and try to circumvent the geese. Enemies can damage you quicker than you might think for this kind of game but there are also cookies scattered around these kinds of levels that restore your health.
After you get out of the maze, things take a turn for the worst and it leads to one of my favourite parts of the game, playing as Spike as Tommy rides on his back. It’s a simple setup, you’re chasing after a goose that has Chucky caught on its back and you jump over obstacles, collecting cookies on the way if you make too many mistakes. More enjoyable for the hilarity of Chucky shouting “heeellllp” than any complex game design, and seeing the interesting take on the episode. Unfortunately, the part about Grandpa performing with a brass band was missed out but the developers had attention to detail in other ways as the shuffle-board court plays more of a role in the final part of the level as you have to hit disks at the goose to get it to spit out those teeth in a kind of mini-boss fight.
The level that was probably my favourite as a kid is ‘Ice Cream Mountain’ which is a series of mini-golf courses. Playing it now, the courses are pretty basic to be honest, not much interesting to cover but the cool thing about these courses is the fact that you can walk around between shots to look for Reptar bars. Walking around mini-golf courses in real life has always been an interesting experience for me so this level ticks those boxes and on one course in particular there’s a fun secret to be found. There’s a pyramid which has an entrance leading to a maze with a boatload of Reptar bars all around, but be careful because you could run into something scary and wish you’d have memorised the way back out for a quick escape! A funny bit of trivia, Stu says that to win the ice cream you have to get a hole in one on the last course, but regardless of this, the same cutscene plays out at the end of the level
The only easy level left to cover is ‘The Mysterious Mr Friend’ and strangely enough, this is the only level I died in on this playthrough. Stu’s Mr Friend machine has broken and keeps pumping out these hideously scary toys and Tommy isn’t too keen on being friends. You need to find objects around the basement you can pick up and throw at the buggers but the main obstacle to that is of course the clunky controls. Again! Often you will find yourself having to slightly adjust Tommy’s position just to pick something up. Meanwhile, the Mr Friend’s swarm around you, leaving you little option but to mash circle to try to push them out of the way. If you constantly run from one end of the basement to the other and patiently wait for opportune shots against the enemy, then yeah I guess this level is easy….but I can’t say doing that is particularly fun.
After you complete certain levels you will sometimes be thrust into a bonus level which are some of the more fun levels of the game. Two are almost identical, Touchdown Tommy and No More Cookies. In the former, while the adults are watching a soccer game, they give the babies a bottle of chocolate milk to keep them quiet and of course, Angelica wants it. You control each of the babies, passing the bottle of milk between them at the push of a button and frantically pushing circle to drink it. If Angelica catches you, it’s game over. No More Cookies is the same deal but with a box of cookies.
The last bonus level is perhaps the most interesting one: ‘Mirrorland.’ Tommy gets sucked into the mirror in his parents’ room and now everything is downside up. Very clever use of level design here as this is the house, only you’re now walking on the ceiling. Tommy gets back to his own orientation by finding boxes of balloons around the house and breaking them open, this spills a load of balloons of a certain colour around the house and you must collect them all within a time limit. This can be pretty hard if you accidentally run past one and have to go back but if you have the layout of the house burned into your memory like I do it’s a piece of cake.
Next up, ‘Toy Palace,’ another great level, though not quite as great and much shorter than I remember. You start as Chucky who has got himself lost in a big toy shop, it’s dark, it’s spooky and all the motion-sensing toys have apparently been lined up to block Chucky’s way. Getting near these will damage you and perhaps give you a jump scare depending on how low your tolerance is for such things. In the next section, a giant king-kong-like ape starts rampaging and it’s up to Tommy to activate a big Reptar toy to save them. You have to explore a more open area looking for boxes to pile up so you can reach a switch high up on the wall. It’s one of the more engaging puzzle sections of the game. however, due to the poorly programmed AI of the giant ape, you may solve this puzzle without even coming under any threat from him, as he chooses to simply stand stationary in the room that he spawned in. That, as well as the fact this level should have been much longer and had a tonne of potential for different game scenarios, make this level ultimately disappointing. For an excellent example of another PS1 level set in a toy shop look at Toy Story 2. Judging by this game, I think what is missing from a lot of Rugrat’s levels is verticality rather than just being meandering mazes.
‘Incident In Isle Seven’ does go some way to remedy this and is definitely a standout. A lot is going on: spillages on the floors that can hurt Tommy or make him unable to walk at his normal speed, an abundance of enemies and obstacles. A lot of these are the lobsters that have escaped from their tanks, and they can be dispatched by throwing things at them but it’s just as easy to skirt round them. You need to find your way up to store shelves and jump between them to progress and you can find yourself going round in a bit of a loop until you figure this out because it’s not that clear which way you should be going here. This level has two short boss fights too. The first against Larry and Steve who work at the store, you throw pies at them similar to how the goose fight worked only two targets this time. The next is a ridiculously huge lobster, once you’ve thrown something at it you can climb up to a switch and boom, instant win, another pretty easy kill.
A level that takes a completely different approach to most others is ‘Circus Angelicus’ which tasks each of the babies to perform different circus feats for Angelica’s circus. As spike, you run around this circle, jumping over obstacles to collect bones. As Phil and Lil you ride a tricycle around the garden, then up a ramp to land on a target. This target can be an utter nightmare to hit and you have to try again and again until you land on it, definitely the most frustrating part of the game. Finally, a very quick third act, as Angelica you need to gauge a jump onto a plank to launch Chucky into a pile of leaves. Again, lose this 3 times and you’ll have to do the whole level again, so whilst this was cool subversion of the standard level structure, Circus Angelicus turns out to be a formality on most playthroughs.
The next two levels are quite similar, though the second is vastly more complex than the first which takes place in the house again. In both you have access to a ranged weapon….oh, don’t worry, it’s not a gun or anything! Both take batteries which are found around the level. Tommy’s torch takes batteries which he needs on his way down to the fridge and you’ll encounter ghosts along the way which can hurt you if they touch you. There’s been a power cut so Tommy needs to get to the fridge because all the light is trapped in there, but he’ll need Spike to open it who is found in a random spot each time you play. A pretty short yet fun level.
Then there’s ‘Visitors From Outer Space’ something completely different. As Angelica, you have to navigate your way around an alien spaceship to try to free the babies that have been abducted. Angelica steals an alien weapon that also runs on batteries. You use it to shoot robot guards scattered around these mazelike corridors. So mazelike in fact, and this is the biggest and most convoluted level, that it otherwise would have been a very frustrating stage to navigate. The addition of combat in this instance is something that keeps the pace and allows you a bigger sense of satisfaction at discovering the right path. The level ends with another completely different section that I again remember being much longer. Angelica turns off the gravity in the ship and can float through air vents to reach a new area. Pretty fiddly controls but fun nonetheless.
The final level to cover is fittingly the one that I always play last and is probably the hardest to complete too for better or worse. The Seven Voyages of Cynthia gives you control of Spike as he attempts to track down Angelica’s lost doll in the sewers. This area is full of things that can damage you. Not only do you have to contend with rats but there are several pools of sewage that you can only cross with some serious precision platforming. I often find myself getting so frustrated at having to land on these moving wooden planks that I simply jump in the sewage and jump out at the other side, hoping I can just restore my health with a bone or two later. It’s another one where getting lost is pretty much guaranteed as well, especially as the second part of the level is timed and has Cynthia once again placed in a random location around this open area of the dump.
When you finally collect all the pieces of the Reptar puzzle, your reward is a final bonus level where you play as Reptar, rampaging through the streets like it was...well, Rampage. You can destroy buildings and vehicles and your goal is to get to the town hall. It’s pretty mindless but it’s just a silly little extra at this point. Tommy has his jigsaw back and like with a lot of retro games, the journey is more the point than seeing the end credits.
There’s one more thing to talk about in this review and that’s Mark Mothersbaaugh’s excellent music for the game. This isn’t just a repurposing of the TV show’s music, Mothersbaugh composed a slew of tracks, one for each of the levels with some extras on top of that too. For anyone who hasn’t heard music from Rugrats, it consists of a quirky combination of toy pianos, xylophones, and people going “bom bom bom.” It is instantly recognisable, really iconic and is a standout in the PS1’s library.
Perhaps for once, nostalgia has clouded my vision with Rugrats: Search for Reptar because despite its many flaws and its obvious simplicity I can still enjoy it today. I have considered that this is a good game for kids on the PS1, but to today's standard simply moving around takes a bit of getting used to and may put some people off. What the game does have in spades, is charm. The TV programme translated excellently to the video game format and it could have been possible to create double, perhaps triple the number of levels seen here in Playstation sequels in the same vein. Unfortunately from this point on, later Rugrats games such as Studio Tour focussed more heavily on simple mini-games and had nowhere near the variety and creativity of Rugrats: Search For Reptar.
Pros:
Captures the adventure of being a child.
Highly varied levels keep things interesting.
Unique soundtrack instrumentation.
Cons:
Controls are finicky and awkward.
Repetitious voice lines.
Levels are far too short.
