Developer
THQ

Released: September 13, 2004
Genre: Platform
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

6
8
7
7
7.0

Supported Features:

However, for kids the fact of the matter is a bit different. The game's slower pace and friendlier world make for a virtual environment where they can have a blast running, jumping and exploring everywhere. This game has as much pure fan service as it does gameplay-related content, which is always fun for fans. And fans, after all, will be the ones asking for this game come the holiday season.

Jimmy Neutron, being the "genius" that he is, somehow manages to bring back an alien lifeform from a comet he visited to mine minerals from. The lifeform chews its way out of a box, hears some music and becomes a large, mischevious monster with big teeth, which proceeds to asexually reproduce all over the place by spitting babies out of its mouth. They're kind of like gremlins, only not.

At any rate, the cast of the show is all here in this very story-oriented game, from Sheen to Jimmy's mom. Each mission plays out like an episode of the Jimmy Neutron cartoon, with lots of voice acting, character interaction and new inventions to discover. Fans of the cartoon will find this game a treat in this respect, since playing the game is very much like playing through an extra-long marathon of Jimmy Neutron episodes.

Getting into the meat of the game, Jimmy's main mode of doing just about anything is to invent something to help him do it, just as in the show. The first few missions exist largely to teach the basics of inventing.

Creating a new gadget is pretty simple. Jimmy runs around, looking everywhere for various items like a backpack, a can of soda or a ball of string. Items fall into five categories: some teach his robot dog Goddard new tricks, while others are blueprints for more complex inventions. The other three categories are physical components for various different doodads just waiting to be invented in a trademark "brain blast!" by the boy genius.

Gizmo category components will combine to make generally useless items, such as extremely slick shoes that make it hard to run or a ray that turns Jimmy's normally disturbing hair into an even more upsetting outsized afro. This is just pure kid service, plain and simple. Who hasn't wanted to just mess around with their favorite cartoon characters?

The last two categories, Inventions and Super Inventions, comprise the majority of potentially useful items. These can be synthesized (when enough items are collected) into things like a shrink ray, jet pack and rocketship. The way all three categories work is automated. You don't decide what to mix up, the game tells you. This way, it's impossible to miss any vital gadget Jimmy might need to advance the story. The system, while a bit limited-feeling (how cool would it have been to be able to test out a mix of any items you wanted?), works well and is very much in the spirit of the show.

Once the inventions have been made, it's time to get down to business. Attack of the Twonkies is basically a platformer, and Jimmy can run and make feeble little jumps all over the cartoony world. Invented tools are usually accessed by pressing the D-pad to select (any direction brings up the "Hypercube" submenu with all of his inventions stored inside), and can then be used either by pressing B (projectile or targeted effects) or Y (miscellaneous effects). Naturally, each area revolves around vacuuming up Twonkies, building new tools to get past certain objectives, and making sure life in Retroville gets back to normal.

Since a large part of this game is Twonkie wrangling, there is an entirely different control set for utilizing the tools Jimmy will need to accomplish that task. For the smallest, mostly-harmless type of Twonkie, he simply needs to vacuum them up, Ghost Busters style, using a control scheme that is a direct shadow of the one from Luigi's Mansion. Fire the vacuum to lock on to a Twonkie, then keep it on and push the control stick in the opposite direction of whichever way the little rotter pulls. Five or six seconds later, you've bagged another baddie. Parents will appreciate the nonviolent nature of this method, and the system works fine. Just don't expect the subtle nuances of Luigi's Mansion in the setup here.

For larger monsters, the Sheenograph XL is a ray gun that shoots waves of ear-grating sound, causing them to "de-volve" (music made them get bigger, remember?) into one or two regular-sized Twonkies. The rest is the same as before: vacuum the things up and be on your merry way.

However, the gameplay, while not exactly bad, does have its flaws. First on my list is the utter lack of direction at some points in the game. Many of the areas are very homogenous (they are suburbs, after all) and a minimap would have been extremely useful in order to keep track of which house was which.

The lack of clear direction at some points also made the game drag horribly at times, and some of the puzzles require more lateral thinking than many adult platformers - not that this is a bad thing at all, but being a kid's game it threw me for a loop more than once. Take the shrink ray for example: Jimmy invents it when he's trapped in a room with some Twonkies (who are thankfully ignoring him, since he has no way of getting rid of them at this point). The straightforward thing to do would be to try shrinking them down and bagging them up, right? What I thought a really smart person would do, though, is fire it at a mirror and shrink himself so that he could sneak through the barricade in front of the door. This, of course, is what had to be done. Kids who just want to run around and have fun might be put off by the subtlety of such puzzles.

The lack of useful hints doesn't help, either. Most hints usually fall somewhere along the lines of, "I wonder if my inventions could be useful?". Rarely does the game throw players a bone (for example, "maybe if I could shrink myself with this, I could escape"). Being a children's game, I have to say this is a failing, though at the same time I have to admit a lot of mainstream games could take a cue from this title's inventiveness.

All in all, the gameplay experience is generally underwhelming without any one big thing being wrong with it. The fan service is what will keep kids hooked more than anything.

Everything is bright, deformed and cartoony. Textures are minimal, but effective. Character animations are flawless, and the character design... well, if you like the look of the show, you'll like the look of the game here, too. And that's all I have to say about that.

Cutscenes are in-game, which is fine, but a real treat would have been some TV-show quality sequences, since the game's graphics aren't nearly as polished as the show's. Draw-in is minimal and not usually noticeable unless, like me, you're looking for it. Overall, Attack of the Twonkies has a pretty nice visual package.

As one might expect, the sound effects are wildly varied and all wacky, from Sheen's horribly distorted voice spewing from the Sheenograph to the thud of Jimmy falling onto a trash heap when his jetpack gives out. There are plenty of different effects, though not much in the way of small details. Overall, the sound effects are what one might expect for any cartoon - or a cartoon-based game.

The soundtrack is mostly background stuff, drawn from the show. The main riff is a cheeky retro guitar piece that loops smoothly throughout large portions of the game. Other pieces are generally more theatrical and often quite short, since they're usually tied to particular events. There's nothing to complain about regarding the soundtrack other than that none of it really stands out.

Of course, fan service has to count for something too. Everything a gamer likes about the show, she can find here, and more. Inventions both useful and useless abound, all the cast of characters play at least a somewhat major role at some point in the game, and the little details, like Jimmy's bedroom decor and the riveting on Goddard, are all in place.

While not exactly edutainment (space does not, in fact, have air to breathe, kids), it holds up simple values like not getting angry, thinking a decision through and being forgiving to friend and foe alike. In essence, it's a well-done translation of the TV show into a game, with nothing lost in the process (except some graphical quality).

Perhaps most importantly, it gave me the one and only chance I've ever had to use the phrase "Twonkie wrangling" in an article, and for that, I am thankful. In the end, Attack of the Twonkies isn't a bad kids' game at all - just bear in mind that it is, after all, a kids' game, and you won't be disappointed by it.