Nickelodeon Splat Pack is a compilation of four 16-bit era games. You have both the Super Nintendo and Genesis versions of Aaah!!! Real Monsters, Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day for SNES, and Nickelodeon GUTS for the SNES. These are all accurate translations of the shows turned to video games. That signature art style that animation house Klasky Csupo was famous for is there along with the humor and that signature Nickelodeon feel of slime and surrealness. If you’re a fan of these shows and grew up with these games, then this is an essential choice. If you missed them, it might be worth checking out. For everyone else, I’m not sure this is the most essential pickup for someone who doesn’t have a sense of nostalgia for these shows.
Let’s start with what these games do right. Aaaah!!! Real Monsters and Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day look like their respective shows. The cutscenes for Aaaah!!! Real Monsters and backgrounds on the SNES version look very good in particular. They look like you’re watching a 16-bit version of the cartoon. The three monsters you control, Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm, look great and their character animation when you perform a scare look great. I prefer the music of the Sega Genesis version of Aaaah!!! Real Monsters, but mostly just because I like that signature Genesis sound on games that got a multiplatform release. The SNES version is quite good too. In a compilation like this, I like having both games because it’s fun to compare them and everyone had their favorite back in the day.
This compilation also includes your standard bonus features for retro compilations. You have CRT filters, scans of manuals, a music player, and a museum with scans of the boxart for each game.
Moving onto Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day, once again the game is faithful and feels like a 16-bit version of the cartoon. The digitized voices and soundtrack are great, the backgrounds are colorful, and the characters all look and feel like they do in the show. There’s something to be said about licensed games of this era that stuck to the presentation of their source material. The best licensed games felt like you were playing an episode of the show or the movie. So far, these games meet this criteria.
Next up is Nickelodeon GUTS and this one is the show I’m least familiar with. This was like American Ninja Warrior for kids but beyond that, I don’t remember watching this show as a kid since I mostly watched cartoons. To start with, the music at the beginning has a good groove to it and great voice samples. The graphics here are a little less impressive to me and I think that’s because this isn’t an adaptation of a cartoon, so it doesn’t have those bright and colorful graphics of the previous games. It looks more like a generic sports game and that’s fine. Just looking at some stills from the series, I would say that it is still visually authentic to the show.
Now we need to get to the issues that these games have. None of these games are particularly intuitive. You really need to read the manuals before playing any of them, otherwise you aren’t going to know what to do. Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day is a puzzle platformer where you have to guide Rocko’s dog, Spunky, through each level and get him to the fire hydrant at the end of the level. It’s easier said than done and you need to read the manual for survival strategies in order to keep Spunky safe. It doesn’t help that the controls are unresponsive and it’s hard to even hit anything. Every time I kept hitting an enemy, Rocko’s attacks would go right through them. Spunky also keeps getting stuck in water and dying as a result.
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is a more traditional platformer where you play as the three monsters, but each of the monsters have individual abilities. There are team moves, and even though items like garbage and bones make sense given the series, you still need to look at the manual to know what to do. This would’ve been more fun as a straightforward platformer, but the level design doesn’t make the destination obvious. There are also items and platforms that you have to use team moves to access, but in a game like this you’d expect to be able to jump higher rather than have to use a more complex team move.
Nickelodeon GUTS is the most frustrating because this is really a two player game, so if you don’t have someone to play it with, you’re limited to training. You have elastic sports where you’re connected to a harness like Slam Dunk where you shoot a hoop, Attack where you hurl a ball into a net with a lacrosse stick, and Spirals where you throw a football through a hanging tire. There’s Action Sports where you run through an obstacle course. Then there’s Aggro Crag where you are going through a mountain of obstacles to the top. I’m not into sports games, and I’m especially not into sports games when they aren’t intuitive. This is not a pick up and play type of game. You need to read the manual and learn the different button combinations in order to even have a chance of winning at these games. But even then, the controls aren’t very responsive and half the time I can’t figure out if it’s me or the game.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a game where you have to read the instructions to figure out what to do. In fact, these manuals are great. They’re beautiful and clearly a lot of love was put into the graphics here. They’re worth looking at. But these were games marketed towards children who loved cartoons. These games should be a little more intuitive. There are other examples of games based on cartoons that had better controls and weren’t this frustrating. For that reason, I have a hard time recommending this game to general lovers of retro games. However, if you loved these cartoons as a kid then it might be worth it to pick up this franchise because the presentation is there.
Your enjoyment of the games in Nickelodeon Splat Pack is going to depend on your love of these cartoons and your willingness to overlook flaws and dive deep into the instructions. If you have fond memories of these shows, then this collection is for you. If you were ever that kid who loved waking up early in the morning before school to play a game based on your favorite cartoon, put aside the parts of you that are a more jaded adult and dive into this. Sometimes it’s worth it to just feel like a kid again who doesn’t have strong opinions about intuitiveness and just loves cartoons because they exist. Despite the four games in Nickelodeon Splat Pack being of mixed quality, if you grew up with the classic Nickelodeon cartoons then you really should get this game.
Sometimes it’s worth it to just feel like a kid again who doesn’t have strong opinions about intuitiveness and just loves cartoons because they exist. Despite the four games in Nickelodeon Splat Pack being of mixed quality, if you grew up with the classic Nickelodeon cartoons then you really should get this game.
Nickelodeon Splat Pack is a compilation of four 16-bit era games. You have both the Super Nintendo and Genesis versions of Aaah!!! Real Monsters, Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day for SNES, and Nickelodeon GUTS for the SNES. These are all accurate translations of the shows turned to video games. That signature art style that animation house Klasky Csupo was famous for is there along with the humor and that signature Nickelodeon feel of slime and surrealness. If you’re a fan of these shows and grew up with these games, then this is an essential choice. If you missed them, it might be worth checking out. For everyone else, I’m not sure this is the most essential pickup for someone who doesn’t have a sense of nostalgia for these shows.
Let’s start with what these games do right. Aaaah!!! Real Monsters and Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day look like their respective shows. The cutscenes for Aaaah!!! Real Monsters and backgrounds on the SNES version look very good in particular. They look like you’re watching a 16-bit version of the cartoon. The three monsters you control, Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm, look great and their character animation when you perform a scare look great. I prefer the music of the Sega Genesis version of Aaaah!!! Real Monsters, but mostly just because I like that signature Genesis sound on games that got a multiplatform release. The SNES version is quite good too. In a compilation like this, I like having both games because it’s fun to compare them and everyone had their favorite back in the day.
This compilation also includes your standard bonus features for retro compilations. You have CRT filters, scans of manuals, a music player, and a museum with scans of the boxart for each game.
Moving onto Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day, once again the game is faithful and feels like a 16-bit version of the cartoon. The digitized voices and soundtrack are great, the backgrounds are colorful, and the characters all look and feel like they do in the show. There’s something to be said about licensed games of this era that stuck to the presentation of their source material. The best licensed games felt like you were playing an episode of the show or the movie. So far, these games meet this criteria.
Next up is Nickelodeon GUTS and this one is the show I’m least familiar with. This was like American Ninja Warrior for kids but beyond that, I don’t remember watching this show as a kid since I mostly watched cartoons. To start with, the music at the beginning has a good groove to it and great voice samples. The graphics here are a little less impressive to me and I think that’s because this isn’t an adaptation of a cartoon, so it doesn’t have those bright and colorful graphics of the previous games. It looks more like a generic sports game and that’s fine. Just looking at some stills from the series, I would say that it is still visually authentic to the show.
Now we need to get to the issues that these games have. None of these games are particularly intuitive. You really need to read the manuals before playing any of them, otherwise you aren’t going to know what to do. Rocko’s Modern Life: Spunky’s Dangerous Day is a puzzle platformer where you have to guide Rocko’s dog, Spunky, through each level and get him to the fire hydrant at the end of the level. It’s easier said than done and you need to read the manual for survival strategies in order to keep Spunky safe. It doesn’t help that the controls are unresponsive and it’s hard to even hit anything. Every time I kept hitting an enemy, Rocko’s attacks would go right through them. Spunky also keeps getting stuck in water and dying as a result.
Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is a more traditional platformer where you play as the three monsters, but each of the monsters have individual abilities. There are team moves, and even though items like garbage and bones make sense given the series, you still need to look at the manual to know what to do. This would’ve been more fun as a straightforward platformer, but the level design doesn’t make the destination obvious. There are also items and platforms that you have to use team moves to access, but in a game like this you’d expect to be able to jump higher rather than have to use a more complex team move.
Nickelodeon GUTS is the most frustrating because this is really a two player game, so if you don’t have someone to play it with, you’re limited to training. You have elastic sports where you’re connected to a harness like Slam Dunk where you shoot a hoop, Attack where you hurl a ball into a net with a lacrosse stick, and Spirals where you throw a football through a hanging tire. There’s Action Sports where you run through an obstacle course. Then there’s Aggro Crag where you are going through a mountain of obstacles to the top. I’m not into sports games, and I’m especially not into sports games when they aren’t intuitive. This is not a pick up and play type of game. You need to read the manual and learn the different button combinations in order to even have a chance of winning at these games. But even then, the controls aren’t very responsive and half the time I can’t figure out if it’s me or the game.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a game where you have to read the instructions to figure out what to do. In fact, these manuals are great. They’re beautiful and clearly a lot of love was put into the graphics here. They’re worth looking at. But these were games marketed towards children who loved cartoons. These games should be a little more intuitive. There are other examples of games based on cartoons that had better controls and weren’t this frustrating. For that reason, I have a hard time recommending this game to general lovers of retro games. However, if you loved these cartoons as a kid then it might be worth it to pick up this franchise because the presentation is there.
Your enjoyment of the games in Nickelodeon Splat Pack is going to depend on your love of these cartoons and your willingness to overlook flaws and dive deep into the instructions. If you have fond memories of these shows, then this collection is for you. If you were ever that kid who loved waking up early in the morning before school to play a game based on your favorite cartoon, put aside the parts of you that are a more jaded adult and dive into this. Sometimes it’s worth it to just feel like a kid again who doesn’t have strong opinions about intuitiveness and just loves cartoons because they exist. Despite the four games in Nickelodeon Splat Pack being of mixed quality, if you grew up with the classic Nickelodeon cartoons then you really should get this game.
by Kayla Merritt
