Tag: Dan

Walt Disney’s Bambi Review

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Released in 1942 by Walt Disney, Bambi really is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Just looking at the first few frames of the movie really helps show the amount of effort Disney put into Bambi and the animation they produced really helped bring the movie to life. 

ImageBambi is about a young fawn (Baby Deer) called Bambi, The whole movie is pretty much the story of Bambi growing up but the movie really does make the audience feel like this is a real wild animal and before you complain that the movie is too cutesy at the beginning I have only one thing to say ITS A BABY OF COURSE ITS GOING TO BE CUTE !!. 

Bambi provides its audience with some beautiful background work and some very good character development all the animals really do seem like their real animals for example Bambi has two main friends in the movie A rabbit called Thumper and a Skunk called Flower which turned out to be a dude which was a big surprise. Thumper is very similar to an actual rabbit because of the way he acts and because he thumps his foot just like a what an actual rabbit does when feeling certain emotions such as excitement or fear. Flower is very shy and hardly comes out to play, as you may know skunks are not very sociable creatures and feel threatened very often so its not often that a skunk will come out of hiding, Disney decided to make the skunk very bashful I guess this was so that children watching the film didn’t feel like the skunk was afraid or upset.

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At the moment the movie may seem very girly but I can assure you that by the second half the movie really starts to pick up with some very well designed action sequences. This mostly happens after that infamous scene which made children all over the world cry

By far apart from the animation my favourite part of Bambi is most definitely the music, The character Bambi actually has music for everything it does as if the music is part of Bambi himself as a baby the music is very soothing and almost comical but as Bambi grows up Bambi’s music changes to a more intense level and this helps show the changes that Bambi has to make in order to survive by himself in the wild. Even the rain and the wind has its own music my particular favourite is the song little april showers which plays during the raining scene, each drop of rain is a new note in the song and this helps give of a really cool and rather clever effect. 

Bambi is beautiful movie but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone only to people who can appreciate cinema for other things other than story. Don’t get me wrong Bambi has a great story but I feel that everything else deserves more appreciation from the critics because of how well it is all executed. You can clearly tell that this is a Disney movie and personally I think its one which is definitely worthy of being called a classic

Hope you enjoyed this blog

This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

The Croods Review

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I’m not gonna lie when I saw the trailer for The Croods I wasnt expecting much, I saw the movie in the theatres today and I didn’t realise that I was gonna get a lot more than I expected.

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The Croods is about a family of cave men who live a danger free and boring life style of rules set by the Father Ugg, the whole family has learned to live like this but the daughter Eep wants more out of life and dreams of one day adventuring outside of the cave.

One night Eep sees a light and decides to leave the cave and follow it, following the light leads Eep to find a boy called Guy, Guy talks about the end of the world and how Eep and her family need to get to safety.

The rest of the movie is pretty much the family’s adventure to a high up mountain which will protect them from the earth cracking open the ground below.

The Croods is a very well animated movie which has a good blend of comedy combined with quite a few heart warming and even tear enducing moments. I particularly liked the croods them selves and this is because they actually seemed like a real, family, you got the over protective dad, the hard working mother, the crazy grandma, the sibling rivalry between Eep and her brother and the out of control baby which is also the dog (by far my favorite character). One thing that was a bit off putting was Nicholas Cage voicing the dad, I just don’t think Nicholas Cage and caveman is a good combination.

Overall The Croods is a very good movie which you definitely will not regret seeing.

Hope you enjoyed this blog
This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

Aladdin (Genesis/Mega Drive) Review

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Their have been a lot Aladdin games made since its release in 1993 but the two best selling Aladdin games always seem to cause arguments among fans. When it comes to video games the biggest debate is what was better Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis and a subject often brought up is the Aladdin games people still to this day will argue which version is better the super Nintendo platforming adventure game or the sword fighting action platformer on the Genesis. I was a sega kid growing up and I feel the super Nintendo version gets way to much praise (yes I have played it all the way through) so today I will review and try to defend the Aladdin game I grew up with.

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What I love

A lot of classic licenced games are just a way for developers to make money so the arrangement of levels didnt really matter as long as developers made money and the kids are quiet right?  Wrong this ruined video game experiences for me as a kid because if I was playing a game based on one of my favourite movies I wanted the levels to be in the same order as in the movie so that I got a fun experience which made sense. Aladdin kind of did this and by that I mean yeah the levels are in the correct order for the most part but some levels in the game didn’t make sense as they didn’t follow the movie at all, for example their is a stage in the desert where aladdin needs to find the scarab to open the cave of wonders but according to the film Jafar already had the scarab. This does annoy me but to be honest it doesn’t annoy me that much because there isnt many stages like this in the game and like I said for the most part the level order is spot on.

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For me the best aspect of the game is the animation, sure the super Nintendo version looked gorgeous and was burting with colour while the Genesis version was kind of MS DOS looking with very faded colours. The Genesis version did have one advantage in the graphics department though and that was the realistic animation on all of the character’s, honest to god the animation in this game is amazing for a Genesis game, nthe characters have real looking movements which help bring the game to life allowing to game to feel like your in the movie, Every thing from jumping on a camel, running over hot coal to cutting an apple in half just looks awesome and this is something the super Nintendo version didn’t do so well.

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What I didn’t love so much

You know I said that the overall look of the game is kind of MS DOS looking well sadly I have two gripes about the music in this game the first problem is that the songs are in the wrong order so that kind of ruins the experience and to top it all off the music sounds very MS DOS and this can get really and annoying, really fast. On the bright side it isnt as atrocious as that final stage music in Mc Kids which usually causes me to mute the tv.

My second problem is that the developers werent that creative when it came level design, this caused the game to be very boring and ugly compared to the super Nintendo version. The genie level is a great example to use because its a level which can have no limits. Below is a comparison of both games

Super Nintendo

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Genesis

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My final complaint is that unlike the super Nintendo version the Genesis version has no save feature or password system. This game isnt easy so not having these features is not the best idea since this is supposed to be a children’s game and since the game is pretty short (the ending is lame by the way) it may have been fair to have unlimited continues, but you can gameover in this game and if you do its back to square one, the games awful platforming does not help. You can buy continues (wishes) and lives from the selling dude, but come on kids don’t want buy stuff they just want to progress and kill things.

And that just about wraps up my review, Aladdin on the Gensis is a great game which does have its fair share of flaws
I’m going to rate aladdin a 7/10 a great game which could have been a lot better. Oh and as much as I love this game I will agree  that the super Nintendo version is the better version of the game but at the end of the day the super Nintendo version was made by Capcom while the Genesis version was made by Virgin games so what did you expect.

I hope you enjoyed this blog
This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

Three actual endings to some Disney Classics

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The Little Mermaid

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Disney Ending

Ariel is a mermaid who wants to be human and after what appears to be an entire movie trying to do this she makes a deal with an evil sea witch called Ursula. Ursula turns Ariel into a human but if she doesn’t find and kiss her prince within three days she will become one of Ursula’s slaves. Ariel doesn’t manage to do this and then gets captured by the sea witch, her father king Triton takes Ariel’s place, because of this Ursula gets hold of the crown and becomes what appears to be an evil Goddess but unluckily for her Prince Eric drives a ships broken bow right through her stomach. With Ursula defeated Triton turns Ariel into a human again and Ariel and Eric get married.

Actual Ending

The evil sea witch splits the mermaid’s tail in two and when she goes on land she pours blood everywhere, the prince finds this to be pretty funny and makes the mermaid dance for him while she suffers humiliation and pain. The Prince is to marry another woman and if he does the mermaid will dissolve, in order to save herself the mermaid must convince the prince that she saved his life. Unfortunately the mermaid doesn’t succeed and is told that she can save herself from a nasty fate if she proceeds to murder the prince. The mermaid disagrees and returns to the sea which leads to her dissolving.

The fox and the hound

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Disney Ending

The fox and the hound ends with Copper the hound protecting his childhood friend Todd the fox from his master. Todd then goes and settles down with a vixen while Copper carries on his life as a happy working dog.

Actual Ending

In the book the hound is a blood thirsty beast who wants revenge on the fox for the death of one of his fellow hounds during a hunt. Once the hound sniffs out the fox’s home the hounds master proceeds to kill both the fox’s vixen and her cubs. The hound proceeds to chase down the fox until the fox eventually dies of exhaustion, the hound and his master go home but the master shoots the hound because a child got infected by rabies and the hound was to blame. The master was then sent to a rest home.

Hunchback of Notre Dame

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Frollo proceeds to set the Gypsy Esmeralda on fire while Quasimodo is chained to his bell tower in perfect view of the deed, using a combination of his strength and his anger Quasimodo breaks free and rescues Esmeralda, Phoebus proceeds to smash the crap out things and Frollo meets his fate when he is cast into the fires of Paris. With frollo defeated Quasimodo realises that Esmeralda is way out of his league and so he gives her Phoebus, Quasimodo is then carried though Paris and celebrated for his heroic deeds.

Actual Ending

Esmeralda has three potential suitors and no Quasimodo is not one them because she is quite clear when she tells him that he is a hideous beast, one of the suitors happens to be Phoebus who eventually wins her heart and gets his way with her. Frollo stabs Phoebus in the back (he doesn’t die) and blames Esmeralda for the deed, Esmeralda is hung by the neck until death in the public square for all to see. Quasimodo throws Frollo from the top of the cathedral and then proceeds to climb into Esmeralda’s grave, curls up with her body and then starves to death.

 

Well there you have it Disney really can make the most horrible of things magical and nice, but these are not the only stories Disney have changed and I can’t wait to share some more endings with you however I can’t do that until I have read the books so until then.

I hope you enjoyed this blog

This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

Madagascar as a whole

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Welcome to yet another review today I will be looking at the entire Madagascar trilogy, giving my own personal views on the movies and eventually deciding which one is the best so without further ado lets jump right in.

If you don’t already know, Madagascar is about four zoo animals a lion called Alex, a zebra called Marty, a giraffe called Melman and a hippo called Gloria they all love the zoo life but Marty wants more, with all the pressures of Zoo life Marty runs away and the other Animals go to find him they eventually get caught and are boxed onto a boat to Africa they try to escape but end up shipwrecked on the island of Madagascar.

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So that’s pretty much the plot to the first Madagascar it has a few funny scenes the best are near the end Alex becomes a true ferocious Lion due to the lack of meat, a good movie but not as funny as people make it out to be.

Part 2
At this point the animals have built a plane and are heading back to new york but end up crash landing in Africa, they find a bunch of wild animals and they ask for hospitality while their plane is being repaired. Alex soon finds his real mom and dad and decides to live with them problem is that Alex needs to fight another lion and win to prove he is worthy of living there. During the movie Alex learns a lot about his past and at the same time he has to proove that dancing isnt lame so his father will except him not being a fighter but a dancer. Oh and I think dancing is awesome btw

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Madagascar 2 has very few scenes that will make you laugh out loud, but I do think it has a better setup than the first movie I can’t really say its better though.

Part 3
The plane is finally finished but the penguins who built the plane fly to France and say they are never coming back,  Alex and the gang are having none of this and decide to go to France to give the Penguins a piece of their mind. They get to France only to attract a Crazy French woman to likes to collect the heads of animals and yes she really is monster because she also kills puppies. The French phycho chases after the animals but both them and penguins escape onto a cirus train which is heading to Rome. In order to not get reported by the dude who owns the circus the animals pretend to be a human and buy the circus, Alex and the gang find out that after Rome they are going to London and if they peform well in London they will get the chance to do a show in New York and at the same time still being hunted by the villain of the movie.

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Madagascar 3 is hilarious,  I was pretty much laughing the whole way through. I also found that it was a very powerful movie I even cried at one point because I’m just that manly. I won’t ruin the final circus peformance but I will say that is magnificent and truly a piece of Art and for these reasons I believe that Madagascar 3 is the best Madagascar movie

I hope you enjoyed this review
This review was written by Dan ( Padawan)

Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo review

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When it comes to easter there is only one animated movie which springs to my mind, Ive always wondered why easter is the most unpopular holiday to have animated movies. Christmas and Halloween have got loads of animated movies so why not easter? Oh well I guess I will just have to review the only one I can think of Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo
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Springtime with Roo is about Roo wanting to celebrate Easter with all of his friends. Roo and the gang all go to Rabbits house so they can get the annual Easter decorations that they use every year, problem is that Rabbit wants to celebrate Spring Cleaning Day instead so he cancels Easter forever for his own selfish needs and he makes everyone clean his house. Later on we find out that Rabbit canceled eater because last year no one followed his schedule and did things how they wanted, so they could make sure that Roo had a great first Easter, everyone left Rabbit and did the Easer egg hunt without him. The movie now turns into Charles Dickens tale and all of Rabbits friends have left home because they are fed up with Rabbits attitude,  Rabbit is upset and begs for a second chance, he wakes up the next morning and realises that isnt too late to save Easter. I won’t say no more but if you are familiar with the story of Scrooge then you already know how the story is going to end.

I’m not going to lie after buying this on eBay and looking at the cover I wasnt expecting a lot from this movie especially since it never got a theatrical release. I wasnt expecting a lot but I wasnt expecting it too suck either. There is nothing about this movie which makes it worth seeing , the animation is mediocre, the songs are annoying and overall the movie is just boring. If you want to see a decent Winnie the Pooh movie go and watch the Grand of adventures of Winnie the Pooh or even the Tigger Movie but I defiantly wouldnt watch this one.
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If both Tigger and Piglet got half decent movies then its only fair that Roo does too, and where the hell Owl in this movie?  Did he die or something I guess he was pretty old, but come on Owl is quite a big character in world of Winnie Pooh some indication of his where abouts would have been nice.

I hope you enjoyed this Raggle Fraggle Review
Have a great easter
This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

The mysteries of easter cracked wide open (sort of)

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Easter the nations excuse to eat loads and loads of junk food and a holiday which celebrates Jesus Christ resurrecting from the dead (if you believe in that stuff). Easter may just be another holiday but a lot of it dosent really make sense as people often wonder why we have the easter bunny and why we celebrate easter by eating chocolate eggs. If you are one of these people then wonder no more as I have looked into these mysteries and I believe I have discovered answers which may put our minds at rest.

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Question 1

Why is easter sometimes celebrated on different dates of the year?

Easter is celebrated on different dates between the 21st of March and the 25th of April depending on when there is a full moon in spring. I didn’t even know that easter was celebrated on different dates each year but if this is true It make me wonder what happens if there isnt a full moon one year do we just not celebrate easter?

Question 2

Why chocolate eggs?

Over the weeks of easter it is considered tradition to eat hollow eggs made of chocolate but back when easter first became a christian holiday (originally a pagan celebration) it was concidered wrong to eat eggs during the week before easter so any eggs laid where saved and decorated for children as gifts for easter. The tradition was carried on by Victorians who gave children carboared eggs which were filled with easter gifts.
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Chocolate eggs originated in the 19th century in Germany and France problem was that the chocolate eggs were hard and had a bitter taste to them, as time passed  chocolate making techniques improved and hollow chocolate eggs were developed they quickly became popular and the tradition of giving chocolate eggs on easter has stuck ever since.
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Question 3

Why do we have the easter bunny?

Originally we didn’t have a mascot for easter but in the 19th century a legend of a character who delivers the eggs was told to children. The character was soon revealed to be a bunny rabbit this is because bunnies have lots of babies at once (kittens) this symbolizes life. So the easter bunny delivers eggs as a symbol of new life which links back to the ressurection of christ on Easter Sunday. Apparently not all countries have an easter bunny because Switzerland has an easter cuckoo and Germany has an easter fox.
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I hope you enjoyed this easter related blog, have a happy easter

On saturday I will be reviewing an easter movie I won’t say what it is but here is a clue
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This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

Walt Disneys Snow white and the seven dwarfs review

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As well as being the first animated movie by Disney Snow White and the seven dwarfs is also the first full length animated movie to ever be made so it only seems right to pay tribute to it.

Released in 1937 Snow White and the seven dwarfs is the story of a young princess called Snow White (named for having skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony). The Evil Queen gets told by her mirror that Snow White is pretty than her and the Evil Queen is not having this so she hires a hunter to kill Snow White and bring back her heart. In the mean time Snow White falls in love with a prince who quite literally only has a few lines in the whole movie and most of those lines are sung, any way the hunter finds Snow White but he won’t kill her because apparently she is to pretty and so he tells her to run away and instead he brings what I believe is the heart of a pig to the evil queen. It isnt long until the Queen finds out that Snow White is still alive and shes decides to kill Snow White herself the Evil Queen poisons an apple and takes the form of an old hag before hunting for Snow White

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Snow white finds 7 Dwarfs (Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy,Sleepy,Bashful, Dopey and Doc) and she hides out in their cavern, the Dwarfs go to work in he mines and The Evil Queen finds snow white in her hag form and she offers her he apple.

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Snow White takes a bite out of the Apple and she dies, the Queen takes off not realising that Snow White can be brought back to life with a kiss from her true love.

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For a film that came out in 1937 I have got to say I’m impressed the animation is spectacular for the time, the film has some very delightful songs and as a whole its a very enjoyable film. I recommend seeing this one not just because its a good film also because it is Walt Disneys first animated movie making it a very important part of animation history.

Dance crazes?

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I want to take some time to talk about Michael Jackson

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Michael Jackson was one of the greatest dancers of all time,  he created some amazing and now world famous dance moves like the lean and the moon walk. The man was truly a genius who as well as becoming a very well known celebrity he also showed the world that dancing is not just a hobby or a pass time, its a passion and Michael shared his passion for Dance with the entire world.

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Recently dance crazes have hit the scene all over the UK to my knowledge there are only two at the moment Gangham Style and the more recent craze the Harlem Shake so these will be the two I shall discuss.

Gangham Style

The first of the Dance Crazes is Gangham Style, Gangham Style is a rodeo like dance craze which was created for Korean artist PHY for his music video which is also called Gangham Style. The dance its self dosent bother me that much I actually find it to be a very creative dance my favourite part is when PHY pretends to ride a horse. Like I said the dance dosent annoy me but what does annoy me is the song in the music video, I have hated that god forsaken song ever since it got popular all I hear is wub sounds and a whole bunch of lyrics that aren’t even in English apart from one line “Hey sexy lady”  which gets repeated now and again. I don’t see the point in PSY singing a song mostly in Korean and then using one English line occasionally that would be like me writing a blog and then writing it in Spanish half way through.

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The Harlem Shake

Someone please explain why this is popular I have honestly watched a whole bunch of videos to try and understand why people like the Harlem Shake but all I’m seeing is people air humping for a few seconds before having a wobble fit  with randomness in the background when the bass drops. Is this real life, is this what the world has come to because if it is I want to bring you all back to Michael Jackson.

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I’m not saying its wrong to like these Dance Crazes to be honest all I want is answers to why their so popular because honestly I don’t get it.

I hope you enjoyed this raggle fraggle blog

This is my opinion if you respect mine I will respect yours

This blog was written by Dan (Padawan)

Time Lord (NES) Review

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Today I review a game called time lord , now from looking at the cover you may think that the game looks awesome and you instantly want to buy it but beware hide your wallets and stay far away because behind that awesome cover art is a real video game demon.

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Story

Time lord released in 1991 by Milton Bradley is based in the year 2999 it is January 1st and the earth is under attack by aliens, the aliens have sent armies to four historical locations with a plan to destroy the earth on January 1st 3000, the goverment send a time lord to travel to the four historical locations and wipe out the aliens before the planet is destroyed and to save mankind.

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Gameplay

You take control of the time lord in this side scrolling action platformer and you need travel to all four historical locations (Medieval England 1250 AD, Western USA 1860 AD, Caribbean 1650 AD and France 1943 AD) before heading to the final stage to fight the Alien leader. Time lord suffers from a lot of issues within its game play you see before the player can fight a levels end boss they need to find and collect 5 orbs which they can use to power the time machiene to get to each location, the problem is that the game is so glitchy that sometimes these orbs don’t turn up so the only option is to die or hit reset, another issue is that the game is pretty much impossible due to it being time based, that’s right that one year or the planet is destroyed actually has the player racing against the clock the problem is that a day passes every four seconds meaning that the player only 24 minutes and 34 seconds to finish game otherwise its gameover. I don’t know if this was some sort of sick joke by the developers but you can not expect children to have that sort of patience plus the game is really difficult to play with its dodgy controls and the enemies having an unfair amount of health compared to the player so these issues really don’t help.

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Graphics

The enviroments and colours used in a lot of the locations in time lord are quite pleasent to look at I only wish that the screens wouldnt repeat most of the time and because of this I feel the game lacks in creativity, for example in the medieval stage you are on top of a castle but all you can see in the background is mountains couldnt the developers have had dragons flying around, castles within the mountain, wizards etc. Its the same with the western stage all you seem to do is pass saloons and other buildings you have seen 10 times already. I would comment on the other areas but to be honest my copy never seems to give me the final orb in this stage so ive never passed stage 2. The characters in time lord for some reason all seem to be one colour the most common being the colour red, you could argue that there may be some radiation in the future or say that the time lord altered history and caused all the characters to look like they are from the old nicktoons show Doug but I blame laziness?

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Music

Time lord may be a pretty awful game but if there is one thing it does right its the music, the music in time lord is awesome. The tracks are really enjoyable and they suit the evironments perfectly which is a real shame because if the game was this good in all departments I can asure you it would have become an instant classic.

Final Verdict

Time lord was desperatly trying to be Doctor Who, it had a similar concept but it failed in almost all departments. Like I said the music is fantastic but that does not make up for the rest of the game, time lord is one big false advertisement, what you see on the cover art you dont get and the game is a cruel and broken mess and so I now have no choice but to give time lord the lowest score we here at Raggle Fraggle have ever given a game , I give time lord for the NES a 2/10 definatly a game to avoid.

This review was written by Dan (Padawan)