Yes, the awesome Angry Video Game Nerd shredded Wizard of Oz on the SNES years ago. But we just want this thing on our website, too.
It remains one of the worst SNES games. A lazy and misguided cash-in on the movie from 1939. Clever? Not really.
The Wizard of OZ on the SNES
From the now defunct American developer Manley & Associates, this 1993 2D platformer is famous for being rubbish.
We’re not sure whether there was demand for a Wizard of Oz game in the early 1990s, but whatever. It exists and we all have to deal with the consequences.
In the title, you can take control of either Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, or the Cowardly Lion.
The goal is to take Glinda’s magic slippers to the great Wizard and all of that. And you do this in a slow-paced and kind of lackadaisical fashion.
As with titles such as Bubsy 3D (another reviled retro game), the Wizard of Oz was pretty well received when it first launched.
There was a great deal of praise in the press for its graphics and challenging gameplay.
It’s thank to retrospective reviews from the likes of the Angry Video Game Nerd that the title’s flaws have become more apparent with age.
Having read gaming mags since the early 1990s, much of the press was usually a bit less critical in the past. These days, if there’s a bad title boy do you hear about it.
The game’s poor collision and hit detection has been widely panned in recent years, along with the need for incredibly precise jumps.
From what we can tell, its main problem is it’s just a bland platformer with gaming mechanics that haven’t aged at all well.
There’s also an extremely mediocre musical take on We’re Off to See The Wizard, which is enough to drive anyone a bit mental.
The game is very twee. The chunky graphics and the plodding nature of the platforming aren’t remotely near what you’d expect from the SNES.
Wizard of Oz has a kind of sedate approach to life. As Dorothy, you lumber along at a snail’s pace bumbling through levels.
So, it’s a frustrating title to play. But it’s turned into a fun game everyone (like us) wants to comment about online.
We’ve got nothing new to add to the debate here. Other than to indicate we just one this glorious ode to mediocrity sitting on our site.