Sega's goal in the early 90's was to present its product with a high dose of attitude, as was apparent with Sonic the Hedgehog. When it came to finding other outlets to continue this heavy push towards 90's edginess, what better character to make a game out of than the Tazmanian Devil. Despite Taz only appearing in a couple of Looney Tunes cartoons prior, his popularity soared in the 80's and 90's, so much so that he would get his own animated series in the early 90's on Fox Kids.
The story is as follows. Hugh Tazmanian Devil, patriarch of the Taz family tells his kids a story about the mythical giant eggs of the giant prehistoric seabirds. The thought of these giant eggs are enough for Taz to not even give much thought and spin off on a quest to find the eggs and fill his stomach. Again, not exactly the most in-depth story, but for a reason for Taz to be on an adventure, it makes sense.
Taz-Mania is a one player game. You control Taz through 17 levels of deserts, factories, mines, jungles and more as he makes his way to the legendary eggs. You move Taz with the D-Pad, you can pick up/drop items with the A button, tornado spin with the B button and jump with the C button. Down and C will allow Taz to jump to lower platforms as well. In terms of other abilities, Taz can toss held items with the B button, and shoot flames after eating chili peppers with the A button. Overall, Taz has a decent enough set of skills for this game.
As previously mentioned, the game does offer a wide variety of levels. Starting at the desert, where platforming is basic long jumps and trying to avoid quicksands and spiky death spots. You eventually make it to the boss fight against Bull and Axel Gator. There's a lot of problems with this game, but the boss fight's super simplicity isn't one of them, especially after dealing with some hard platforming. Next up is two levels in the Acme factory.
Which seem to be building some sort of war machines.
One ice level with lots of platforming off sinking ice floes. Next up is several jungle levels, where inbetween you'll face cultured jungle boy Francis X. Bushlad (yes, I actually remember these characters names. Thank the show's theme song for that). After some annoying platforming on logs, you get to the worst of the worst in the game. A pain in the ass mine cart level.
And if you thought Donkey Kong Country's was bad, you haven't dealt with this. you have to raise and lower the cart to avoid obstacles, while also trying to speed up and slow down over platforms. It gets insanely fast and you'll lose lives at a rapid pace. The best strategy is spamming the pause button as quick as possible to keep track of the oncoming obstacles. After that is a painful elevator level with more super annoying platforming and cheap instant deaths.
But after all that comes my least favorite level, the second logs. You have to jump logs and rocks, gauging your jumps just right by pressing up or down as you go, but it's so easy to over or undershoot because sometimes Taz will land on a log that will be out of his way when he lands, causing some damage. It's easily one of the worst levels ever. After that however, the platforming gets a lot easier with an easy boss fight against a giant plant, followed by three temple maze stages (two literally being the exact same level).
Finally, you face the giant prehistoric seabird, in what can be a tricky fight if you aren't paying attention to the pattern. After it's bested, Taz gets the egg, but the egg hatches, with the baby bird mistaking Taz for his mother and chasing him off into the sunset. Wah wah indeed.
While Taz-Mania does have some innovative levels, the game is littered with problems. First off, the platforming is terrible. Taz feels zoomed in that nine times out of ten you have zero clue where the platform you're supposed to jump is, so you have to do a leap of faith, hoping you either don't undershoot, or even overshoot it. And since the game gets dependent on it (the worst being the second mine level), you'll lose a lot of lives quickly. Thankfully the game does offer plenty of extra lives and continues. The game also loves cheap death areas, plenty being literal traps for beginners. From falling elevators, to fiery statutes with no way of escape, the game never ceases to let up on the pain. And the levels that break that norm are no fun, especially the log and mine cart levels. Also, the tornado ability is great, but you can easily knock away useful items if you're not careful.
On the graphical side, the game does look great. Backgrounds do give of a nice Chuck Jones-ian feel, and Taz looks great. He's very well detailed and it does always feel like you're actually playing as him. Enemy designs are okay, though nothing really amazing either. Other than Bull and Axel, Bushlad and the Bushrats, there's really no other references in game to the cartoon, and that does feel kinda cheap. None of the characters at the hotel, no Buddy Boar, no Kiwi, nothing. It feels a bit lacking in that department.
Audio wise, the soundtrack is okay. Nothing particularly catchy, but it does give off a somewhat ambient jungle feel. My issue however, is the sound effects. For some reason, every time Taz lands on the ground, he makes a honking sound effect, and that gets annoying to listen to after a few seconds. I guess they wanted him to come off more cartoony, but it really doesn't pay off that well.
Overall, Taz-Mania is far from the worst game I've ever played, but it does feel very annoying to play. The difficulty is all over the place, the platforming could be better and there's a lot of other minor issues. That aside, it can be fun in certain areas and it's just fun to play with the Tazmanian devil. It just really could have used more polish. Something that would be rectified much later with the pseudo sequel, Taz in Escape From Mars.
Rating: C+