Clunk Click Every Trip (Incredible Crash Test Dummies (PC))

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Incredible Crash Test Dummies (PC)
Date:	09/06/07 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's enjoyable to see those limbs go flying off everywhere.

Disadvantages: Repetitive and incredibly tedious.

If you grew up in the early nineties, you may remember repetitive advertisements for ‘The Incredible Crash Dummies,’ a line of action figures that combined child car safety awareness with a limited, sub-Transformers range of toys. The inevitable video game concept was produced in 1993 by the disconcertingly obscure Gray Matter Productions, noted as ‘a division of Chris Gray Enterprises,’ that world-renowned tycoon. Despite lacking a reputable producer, the game works reasonably well and was successfully ported to the Amiga 1200 and Sega MegaDrive among other systems, but a game based on a mediocre and short-lived toy franchise was never really going to take off.

As always, there’s a ridiculous plot tagged on that really does nothing but attempt to provide a purpose to a game that the player was going to play anyway, without dwelling too much on the larger consequences of moving a dismantleable man across various terrains, picking up tools and jumping on peoples’ heads. The story is explained in a very basic storyboard animation that follows the title screen, in which Dr. Zub, presumably creator of the Crash Dummies and a Crash Dummy himself, reveals that your arch nemesis Junkman intends to learn the secrets of his powerful Torso-9000 body known only to the doctor, and produce an army of evil Crash Dummies. As he is explaining this to our red and black heroes, he is predictably kidnapped and the dismantled protagonists interchange an extremely long list of weak gags in jovial ignorance to the serious consequences of the events around them, featuring such highlights as ‘going to pieces,’ ‘pull yourself together,’ ‘I lost my head there for a second’ and ‘need a hand?’

Of course, the best thing about novelty games like these is how they bring something original to the over-saturated platform game genre, and in the case of ‘Incredible Crash Dummies,’ this a memorable and really enjoyable attempt to authentically fuse the toys with the game. Primarily, this means that Slick, the playable Crash Dummy with a red star on his torso, has detachable limbs that become lost when he incurs damage. Getting hit once will cause him to lose his foremost leg and getting hit twice will lose the other leg, reducing him to a legless (in the literal sense) crawler. After the legs comes the arms, and two hits later on his final health point, Slick is nothing more than a wiggling torso with a head and holes where his limbs should be. It’s a lot of fun, and subject to a weird error also, as the arm or leg that is destroyed first will always be the one in the foreground, no matter which direction Slick is facing. Presumably through laziness of the artist simply flipping the image, the missing arm or leg will always swap on every turn.

Thankfully, collecting an orange screwdriver will fix the last limb that became damaged, while grey spanners can be thrown at enemies as missiles. Other power-ups are less exciting and more run-of-the-mill, such as the nuclear symbols which can be collected simply for points (and who cares about that?), or the yellow lightning strike symbols which increase Slick’s speed for a limited duration. Stealing an idea from ‘Super Mario World,’ the character can be inflated like a balloon from collecting an ‘A’ token, allowing him to reach areas that were previously too high. As well as the abundance of evil Crash Dummies and mechanical menaces such as mini aeroplanes, the game is replete with danger in the form of spikes and pits, usually presented as electricity, and an incredibly tedious set of moving platforms that prove more frustrating than in any other game using the idea.

The game is for one player only, without any options whatsoever, and uses the Sega MegaDrive joypad. Left and right predictably move Slick in those directions, the up button doesn’t do an awful lot, and the down allows him to duck – or rather, dismantle temporarily into a heap on the ground. The joypad B button throws spanners if the player has them, and C is the all-important jump action that can clear and avoid obstacles, and also assault hostile Crash Dummies and things. As with most games, the enemies repeat endlessly but still fail to be completely predictable in their deployment, either standing stationary or bouncing on the spot and thus being easy to mark and avoid, or otherwise zooming on from the left or right of the screen on ground level or in the air. It’s fast moving, and in the earliest stages it’s possible to pretty much bounce your way through from left to right of the course without too much of a problem, but all subsequent levels are multi-staged, requiring Slick to climb and be patient in many instances, also featuring a less generous smattering of screwdrivers. The yellow and black hazard symbol marks the end of each stage, and merely has to be stepped (or rolled) on for Slick to be launched.

The most generous comment I can make about this game is that its unique system for character disintegration keeps it memorable fourteen years later, but beyond that there’s little to keep players hooked on this game after the first four or so levels, when the novelty starts to wear off, everything new has been done, and the frustration of those moving platforms overtakes the simple enjoyment that would previously be had each time Slick falls into the electricity and becomes shorter. It’s a little strange that a spin-off like this wouldn’t, in fact, include cars of any kind, but at least it’s better than unrecognisable adaptations such as the video game version of ‘Baby’s Day Out.’

This game will potentially induce children to become masochists, as I have to admit charging ahead in a more reckless manner than I would on other games just to get to the dangerous yet amusing position of a wriggling bean shaped Crash Dummy with no limbs, forcing himself along the metal floor by thrusting his head forwards. Come to think of it, isn’t the whole idea of a line of action figures that encourages kids to crash them apart violently somewhat risqué? I guess that’s part of the reason you don’t hear too much about ‘The Incredible Crash Dummies’ these days.

Summary: Produced for Sega by Gray Matter (1993).