Rascal (PS1) | Is It Really the Worst Game on the PlayStation!?
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- This is a review of Rascal, released on the PS1 in 1998, developed by Traveller's Tales and published by Psygnosis. Despite owning this game since the year it released, I've actually never finished it. In fact, I've never even gotten past the second level. Now that I'm older though, it's got me looking back and wondering why on Earth I never played it more. So join me as we try and find the answer to that question while also reviewing the game generally too!
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If you think playing this game was bad, I had to write a strategy guide for this when I worked for psygnosis.
That's awesome! I imagine that could have been a difficult job depending on the game your making a guide for, but it must have been rewarding when you finally finished it! What other games did you make guides for?
psy...gnosis, were you working for D∴G ?
Was it not released? I can't find any poof it exists.
The first thing that always comes to my mind when i think of rascal, it's always "This is a game that really deserves a remake" think of all the things they could improve, plus the game already has a slew of really good ideas that deserve to be fully realized
Yeah, I do find it a little bit weird when games get remakes that are already really good in their original form. Like I would rather they remade a game that has aged badly in some way to bring it up to the level it was supposed to be. That's one reason I would like to see a remake of Croc and maybe the Gex games too.
@@PixelPursuitboth Croc and the gex trilogy have confirmed remakes coming. I agree, I wish they would do a remake of a bad game like a game that got rushed and give it a second chance. Perfect example is Spyro enter the dragonfly. Originally that game was supposed to have two bosses and multiple homeworlds.
This game that's a technical achievement on the PS1 really deserves to be redone and have it be an incredibly really good game since it has a lot of potential.
Plus Jon Burton and the whole Team of Traveller's Tales (who got pushed by studio executive meddling) deserve an award or two and a big round of applause for really pushing the hardware limits of the PlayStation like never before at the time.
Absolutely agreed! It is super impressive that they managed to get a game running on the PS1 that's quite graphically advanced in certain areas and that ran this smoothly too. The people at fault for this game's downfall are the publishers and that's probably the case with a lot of these kinds of games.
@@PixelPursuit Exactly!
All that studio executive meddling from publishers on a bunch of games (good or bad) is completely out of whack!
The fact you have home video of getting this as a gift is one of the greatest achievements of man.
My family was into the Muppets and my brother wanted to get this cause Jim Henson's name was on the case, and even as like a 4-5 year old I had a premonition it was bad.
Of all the games I got as a kid this would be the one with the best home video footage 😅
I have memories of it being awful but I think that's because I never actually got very far. It's not amazing or anything but it definitely has some awesome ideas!
Haha, if you went into this expecting something like the Muppets, I can see why you'd be disappointed!
Great review! I pretty much agree with every point made in this video. I think Rascal is more like a showcase of what the PS1 can do in terms of visuals and performance, rather than a showcase of how fun games can be on the system. That said, I’ve played it loads of times to the point where I find it to be a guilty pleasure of mine.
Fun fact: The Japanese version removed every single boss track in the game, meaning that every fight with Chronon is played in silence, minus the sound effects. On the plus side, it doesn’t have a broken level select cheat, unlike the American and PAL versions of Rascal.
Oh yeah, the game has a pretty horrific level select cheat. If you mess around by randomly transitioning between levels and even the title screen/game over screen on the fly, the game’s textures and models just corrupt, and it can even cause the game to crash when there’s too much going on. It’s possibly due to how Rascal’s loading works, because it’s actually quite fast in that regard. Nevertheless, it is pretty hilarious to use! However, I would proceed with caution, because it can cause flashing in-game. At least in the Japanese version, it is not buggy in the slightest.
Thank you! That's true, from a purely technical standpoint it's actually quite impressive, the graphics are good and there's some really advanced visual effects for the time and the fact it runs at a high frame rate too is all really impressive. I can definitely see why this is a guilty pleasure game, there's definitely some enjoyment to be found with it and it's not actually all that bad.
You know, that's actually quite funny because I played most of the bosses in silence too. If you pause the game on the bosses it actually stops the music and I paused at the start of almost every boss to make notes for the review.
Huh, that's actually really interesting. I never tend to look up cheat codes for anything so I always miss out on this sort of stuff. That sounds like it could end up becoming quite terrifying though! When I was younger I used to have nightmares about games glitching in scary ways, so it's like the real life version of that!
Anyone saying that this is the worst game on PS1 likely hasn't considered the fact that Bubsy 3D got released as it was & Animorphs: Shattered Reality was boring as heck. Or really, any of the Miracle Designs racing games!
Yeah, Bubsy 3D is worse than Rascal in almost every single way. I literally have never heard of Animorphs before, I'm going to have to look into that haha!
3:55 "Dislikes: Ticking clocks"
That might explain why he prefers the hourglasses, while Chronon being the living clock is his biggest threat.
He must find his house pretty annoying, there's a constantly ticking clock in the entryway!
That's true though, the ticking clock thing probably does relate back to Chronon!
What I dont get is this game is why was Jim Henderson Creature Workshop Logo on it. They was nothing else based in the series created for it and it's odd seeing the creators of the Muppets on a video game thats nothing to do with Puppets of any kind.
I'm not exactly sure what element of the game they were involved with. I doubt they had much to do with the game honestly. Apparently they designed Rascal himself but considering how uninspired the design is that doesn't feel right to me. Maybe it's a situation where they initially were going to have more of a creative input but then they distanced themselves from it or something? Who knows!
That opening cutscene is some Aphex Twin shit right there. I can one up you in FMV cutscene creepiness tho. Check out the opening to a game called Blam! Machine Head. Makes my skin crawl to this day, since 11 year old me was caught completely off guard by it
Haha, it really is! You can totally see Chronon being in a crazy Aphex Twin video!
Woah, that is pretty intense... The game itself looks strangely scary as well, there is something that can be very eerie about PS1 graphics. It's like you can't properly tell exactly what things are supposed to be because it was still early 3D.
@@PixelPursuit Oh yeah. And I played it on the SEGA Saturn. So it was uncanny by the power of grim!
24:39 🤣 ok, that made me laugh! This channel is slowly becoming my favourite!!
26:35 I find it hillarious how this guy who is some sort of time lord or time God literally just throws frying pans and boxes at you. Not very impressive 😆
Haha, thank you! I'm glad you've been enjoying all of the videos!
Yeah it's not the most impressive form of attack really is it! It is a bit weird how a time god needed to gain access to the inventor's time machine though. Like you would think he'd be able to travel through time without the need for that. Maybe he's actually just some super weird looking guy who breaks into Rascal's house and pretends to be a time god!
I don't know why, but seeing this game always makes me think of 40 winks. Probably because you start the game in the protagonists house in both games
I can totally see the correlation there! Both are set in a normal house which you didn't really see very often back then and I guess you play as kids in both of them too!
Once again, great thorough review! Bubsy 3D next?
Thank you! I've actually already reviewed Bubsy 3D! Admittedly it is a fairly old video now though, but just as thorough if I remember right 😅
@@PixelPursuit Ok cool, I'll watch it!
It's always something special when you upload
Thank you! That's really nice to hear, I'm glad you enjoy the videos 😀
29:18 I was half-expecting you to mention Bubsy 3D at some point, but instead you reference the first Hugo game instead. Impressive. :)
I wanted to go back to my roots with that reference! :D
I remember having this game, but also never playing it all the way to the end. It's nice to finally see the full game. I think it looks nice visually if nothing else.
It does actually look pretty great graphically, I guess my main issue would be that all of the areas are very boxy and it does just feel like you're going through different rooms than an actual organic place. But there's some pretty cool visual details with reflections on certain surfaces and stuff and the character models all look pretty decent too!
@@PixelPursuit imagine if this was phychological horror on purpose, and they slapped the name platformer just to troll everybody
it's a shame the mechanics let it down, as it looks an interesting platformer. By the way, have you ever thought about doing a seriese review of zelda games? i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on botw in particular.
It actually is quite interesting and it's not really all that bad to go through either. There were certain moments where I was actually having a good time!
I have thought about doing that before a long time ago, but reviewing massive games like that is always such a huge undertaking. On a technicality I have actually already reviewed BOTW but this was years ago when I was running my blog. I've just had a quick skim through it and I think I mostly still agree with everything I said there, so you could take a look at that if you're really interested!
pixelpursuitrob.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-wild.html
Like I say though that is quite an old review now though, so my opinion on things may have changed since then! :D
Rascal is not worst game ever it takes practice to beat all the levels without messing things up by dying all you had to do is to stay focused on what you doing without dying it’s a perfect way to do that especially getting 9 lives is challenging you’ll get use to it trust me I was a gamer legend since I was a teenager like no joke no joke at all this is serious
I was born in 98 and Rascal was the very first game i ever sat down to play solo and immediately got creeped out by the starting cut scene and the atmosphere of the game. I think if my parents saw me playing it, they wouldve stopped me, not so much from fear of emotional damage, but scarring my gaming memories and skills with the terrible gameplay.. my first rage was from this game and im pretty sure I quit on the first level😂
(Edit: That song on the first level lives in my mind forever though)
These games sat on the shit shelves at Walmart’s and targets for a long long time
It's kind of a shame that more people didn't give Rascal more of a chance though because there is actually a bit of a good game hidden under the surface!
Developed by Traveller's Tales, wow now it makes sense, Wrath of Cortex made by them is definitely the creepiest Crash Bandicoot out of the platformer ones.
If you want to see another game that can be as bad as this try the Roswell Conspiracies on PS1
Oh wow, I just looked that up and it looks pretty rough doesn't it!
@@PixelPursuit it controls poorly and it has a lot of pointless features like you have to capture enemies to remove them from the world or they will respawn
Heyyy, you had this game running in 50-60fps
Yeah it's 60fps which is very uncommon for PS1 games!
@@PixelPursuit So the marketing of this game didn't lie after all
@@GWKTM Its definitely not a lie, it's one of the smoothest PS1 games ever made in terms of performance. It's just a shame that the camera and controls aren't so smooth haha!
@@PixelPursuit Though Hugo games ran in about same framerate. Especially Hugo 1-2
Well done on this video, that little montage at 24:47 had me chuckling!
This is one of those games that always intrigued me, but I never went out of my way to track down a copy to see if it was as bad as people say. Glad to know I wasn't missing out on anything *too* worthwhile. As for those weird, repetitive grunts after attacks land on enemies, I'm convinced that's Rascal himself making those sounds. He's probably trying to mimic that '90s "cool dude attitude" or something.
Thanks! Haha, I'm glad you appreciated the skit :D
I would probably say that it isn't anywhere near as bad as people say, but at the same time it's also still not very good either. It has little moments that feel really interesting but outside of those few key moments it's just a bit uninspired.
Hmm, I'm not sure, it's a good theory but it only happens when you hit an enemy and as the bubble hits the enemy so I'm fairly sure it's supposed to be the enemies themselves. Plus the dragon doesn't do it, I kinda wish it did though because that would have been hilarious!
It’s funny how they put so much more effort into the manual than the actual game 💀
That's true! If all of that stuff had been in the game I feel like it would probably have been better received. At least it would have had more character development and stuff!
I want this game again just because I had it as a kid because the ad looked so cool. My brother stole my original PlayStation and all my games.
You are criminally underrated. I started with your "Oddtober" series (I ended up buying Soulstorm on sale due to your recommendation, which I'm enjoying a lot) but then I watched pretty much everything else you have uploaded.
Regarding Rascal: of all available games back in the day, someone ended up gifting me a copy of Rascal. I was a kid so a new game was always something great, but I also didn't play it much at first, since it was the right amount of creepy and hard to control (compared to other games I played at that moment, like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot). Actually, I still remember the password "HOUSE" to access the level select screen, which was how I mostly played it after a while.
Looking back at it now, I can appreciate the technical achievement it is, despite its flaws. In fact, Jon Burton of Traveller's Tales spoke about it on his channel and what made it turn into the final game we got. It helps to give it a bit more context, but at the same time it's also sad so many great ideas and technical prowess ended up in such a mediocre product.
Great review! I pretty much agree with all your points about the game, both good and bad.
This is such a nice comment and I didn't get a notification about it!! Sorry it's taken me an entire month to respond!
It's probably a smart move to only get Soulstorm when it's on sale, it's definitely not the greatest game out there, but you can definitely still get some enjoyment out of it! Thanks for watching so many of my videos! There's a lot of them to get through haha!
I had a very similar experience with Rascal it seems! I always tended to play every game I got regardless of it's quality because I didn't have that many games to pick from. Even then though for some reason I never got very far into Rascal. I don't remember even using the passwords to see the later levels either! I was never really too interested in cheat codes which is a shame because I probably missed out on a lot of goofy stuff!
I really should give that video a proper watch, someone else mentioned that and I've been meaning to look into it but I keep forgetting! It's always awesome when we get some insight into the development of an older game like this.
@@PixelPursuit Don't worry about it! I'm glad you wrote back.
This looks so bad I kinda wanna play in on Duckstation, the fact that this runs at 60 fps on PS1 is so cool
G Police for me, the controls were terrible and that game so just so damn hard.
Ooo, that's a good one. That was actually one of the earliest games I remember playing and I remember I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in it. I just awkwardly flew around shooting stuff! I must have sold it years ago though because I no longer have it.
Have you heard of a PS1 game called ODT? Its pretty obscure but a decent game.
I've heard of it but I know very little about it. I've definitely never actually played it for myself!
2:13 jesus crist imagine this combined with P.T., I would shit myself
Haha! Both P.T. and Rascal are very scary in their own ways!
@@PixelPursuit btw Croc gets an HD treatment 😀
@@agamaz5650 Supposedly it is! It's apparently in the very early stages though so it could be years before we see anything about it, or it could even end up being cancelled or something! But I'm keeping my hopes up!
@agamaz5650 Croc is getting an HD release, Glover is getting released on current consoles, gex trilogy, Tomb Raider trilogy this is a good time to be into retro games!
Gex is incredible, Rob should review it (the original on PS1) @@dsmoothb @PixelPursuit
I remember renting this game thought it looked cool played it yea it wasn't fun, luckily my nephew rented Tony hawks pro skater 2 so we had that to play
I imagine a lot of people would have rented this and then returned it pretty quickly! THPS 2 is definitely the better choice :D
what emu is¿?-
Do you mean what emulator did I use? If so, I didn't emulate this, it's being played on an actual console!
Cheesy is way worse
I remember hearing about Cheesy years and years ago and I had completely forgotten about it until now! But yeah it's most likely a lot worse than Rascal!
Really enjoyed this review, Rob. The clips of you going round your house opening stuff and adding the squeaky noise from the game was hilarious!
I’d never heard of ‘Rascal’ before I saw this video. Seems like a game that had potential but was let down in too many areas.
Anyway, keep up the great content mate (I’m secretly hoping you’ll be doing more Resident Evil reviews in the run-up to the release of the remake of 4 next year).
I'm glad you enjoyed it! :D Haha, yeah it's been a while since I've don a skit section like that hasn't it!
You're not really missing much to be fair! It definitely has potential but like you say there's just so many areas where it completely falls flat.
I would love to review all of the Resi games but that would be a gargantuan undertaking. There's absolutely loads of them and that's if you only consider the main ones! I have been thinking about reviewing Resi 2 though, so I will at the very least probably get around to that one :D
@@PixelPursuit That’s fine with me brother, a review of the original Resident Evil 2 or the remake would be brilliant!
I think I first found your channel through your Resi 1 review back in the day actually haha! :D
I'm feeling the urge to play through a few Resi games after all of this Resi news recently! So this review of the original Resi 2 might be happening sooner than I thought!
Oh really! That's awesome! That video actually ended up doing pretty well which I'm happy about because I put a lot of effort into that one. You've been with the channel for an extremely long time :D
@@PixelPursuit Yeah, I'm currently downloading the PS5 version of the Resi 2 remake (I had to delete it off my PS4 for storage space) and so seeing as the upgrade is free I thought why not because I have been wanting to play that game again for a while haha!
I still have the Resi 3 remake on my PS4 so I'm probably going to spend some time playing that as well before the remake of 4 comes out next year!
Yeah I was looking for a good review of the first Resident Evil game at the time and I watched your video and subsequently subscribed to your channel mate! Myself and another friend of mine are just obsessed with the first Resi in general! :D
You made a lot of very solid points. I too received Rascal in spring of 98 and I really like it. I made a video about it, feel free to check it out on the Triple EXtra Medium channel. -Cody
Hello! I'm glad I'm not the only one who sort of likes this game despite it's negative reviews!
I checked out your video and a few others you've done too. It seems like we have somewhat similar tastes in games!
@@PixelPursuit Thank you for checking them out! I really enjoy your commentary on the games we grew up with. It's funny how on paper Rascal was such a great idea, but there were so many poor design choices that gave us an end product that felt very rushed. There is a video on here made by someone who worked on the game that shows an early prototype. I'll have to find it and send you a link, but he goes on to talk about the developmental issues they had. Cheers! -Cody
2:13 it looks scarier than the monsters in Amnesia xd
3:55 his favorite place is Italy, while his favorite food is noodles? What the actual f- is that, ok this game is already so scary and it is not even trying xd
jokes aside we should do it :D
4:08 ok bro please I wanna see the videos of you as a kid, I will send some too
4:18 wow omg I see your smile, clear Rob.
7:06 so is it psychological horror on purpose?
23:57 wow
24:47 haha thanks I missed this
27:42 yesss, first thing I noticed
Haha! The funny thing is that it unironically probably is scarier!
Maybe he likes the culture of Italy but hates pasta and pizza!
Haha, the videos I have are extremely long and boring, you're not missing much!
No, I think the horror element of it is completely unintentional. It's just a case of uncanny valley, where things look almost right but something about it is off to a degree where it's unsettling to look at. I think the main thing that does it is that the house is completely empty and everything has weird scales. Like the tables are absolutely huge but also very short, while the stairs are massive and yet the doors are small. It's just odd!
Haha, you always notice the frames before anything else!
@@PixelPursuit i just had tiramisu,chino, and I eat lasagne regularly, italian food is the tastiest food on earth imo
Traveller's Tales omg, creators of Wrath of Cortex, which I still haven't played since it was stolen from me btw
btw I wanna burn MGS 3 Subsistence to play it on my PS2!
Finally a new video from Rob, I am excited to watch
That's true! They also made the Toy Story 2 video game I talked about in the last video! I didn't intend to cover two of their games in a row either, that was a bit of a coincidence :D
You definitely should do that! It's definitely one of the definitive versions of the game!
Haha, it has taken me a while to get this one done hasn't it!
@@PixelPursuit i am having trouble finding PAL rom tho
@@PixelPursuit i bought it already konami has money with gambling pachinko they wont give a shit me downloadimg the rom
Yeah at this point I doubt Konami would care about that. Even if you went to a shop to buy it, it would be pre-owned so they'd make no money regardless I guess!
I never got past the first level too
2:02 The scariest looking villain..... You bet he is. When I got to confront him in the first boss battle way back when I was a kid playing the game myself, he looked so scary that I literally avoided further boss battles against him and instead play through all of the 10 regular levels, which I did complete with ease way back then and even still do now..... albeit for the fact that I myself had and still have to go through some of the more scary parts of the game for me, such as that green squid and some of the other sea creatures in the Sunken Wreck, those wasps in the Lumber Yard, the ghost in Castle Hackalott in the present when it has been turned into a museum. The squid in particular still scares the hell out of me, even to this day.
And also.... There is something much more interesting about the game..... And that's the fact that the main culprit behind the game's poor quality is in fact, not the developers at TT Games, but were in fact, Psygnosis themselves...... According to Jon Burton, the designer and director at TT Games, as highlighted in a video he made about an early prototype of the game he showed off on the Gamehut channel, the game was originally designed to have directional controls similar to what SM64 had. However, due to the ever-growing hype and popularity sorrounding the one big game at the time known as Tomb Raider, Psygnosis demanded that the controls had to be changed to rotational controls just in a way to cash-in on the hype and popularity of said big game. Because the game's engine was originally designed for use with directional controls which had the camera focused on an entire room, rather than the camera being behind the player character which did not work well with the camera originally intended for the directional controls, the hasty switch in game controls as demanded by Psygnosis is what resulted in the borderline broken game that, as expected, became "loathed" by so many.......
And yes, Psygnosis was also the same company that also made another game that ruined my childhood just as much as Rascal did...... This being none other than the game starring my fake childhood waifu, known as "Retro Force".
And for being the worst game ever on the PS1, like I said, just wait until you get your hands on Pax Corpus, which of course is much worse than Rascal ever was!
Luckily I never actually got the the boss battles as a kid, otherwise it probably would have scared me too! The cutscene is pretty scary on it's own though, so by that point I think the damage was already done.
Haha, it's so funny how things like that were scary to us as kids, like I saw that ghost and literally thought nothing of it, but I probably would have obsessed over that as a kid and tried to find more of them or something and created a big story about why it's there.
That makes sense. TT are way more talented than what was showcased in this game. They made some absolute classics and Rascal is definitely one of their weaker games. I need to watch that video now, I didn't realise that there was that much information out there about Rascal. Interesting how the camera position was changed. It would have been interesting to see a build of the game with the original camera setup. It probably would have been more like Resident Evil which is odd.
I've never played Retro Force! Maybe that's another one to add to the backlog :D
Nor have I played Pax Corpus either, but from the sounds of it I should probably avoid that one!
@@PixelPursuit Interestingly, I just played the Japanese version of the game which is called Bubblegun Kid. Most of the game remains the same except that "some" of the text is in Japanese, the menus, Memory Card options and navigation prompts mostly, you cannot change between rooms with the HOUSE cheat active, expanded credits with Takara and the people who worked there being credited along the devs and Psygnosis, and, the most interesting difference out of all: You actually take LESS damage than you do normally.... No $%!+ really..... You really take much less damage than you did in the original western version of the game.