The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents: Stimpy's Invention - Review

I love Ren & Stimpy. I used to watch the show all the time growing up. I still have a Stimpy doll that farts and tongue comes out when you squeeze its stomach... and yet I remember almost nothing about the show. I remember a few of the characters and the general feel of the show, but I couldn't tell you the plot of even one episode. So when it came time to give this game a whirl I was kind of excited to play it, perhaps it would bring back some of those long lost memories.

First off, let me say this: This game is incredibly short. Not Contra short, but getting there. It took me about an hour to beat the entire game. Not that it wasn't a fun hour, but I kind of expected my game to last longer then three episodes of the TV show it's based off of.

Overall Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention was enjoyable. It captured the wackiness and fun of the TV show. I enjoyed how you controlled one of the characters with the other being AI controlled. Sure the character you weren't controlling usually fell off of things and overall was kind of dumb but Powdered Toast Man always brought them back fairly quickly, plus you constantly used the other character for "special moves". Need to get up somewhere high? Ren would squeeze Stimpy and you'd shoot up like a rocket. Need to hit a far away target? Stimpy can pick up and throw Ren like a boomerang. There's tons of special moves that you'll use throughout the game. Most of them being very quirky and fun.

Now on to the bad. One of the special moves I had a very hard time with. It was when you pressed UP + C which is supposed to make you do a special move to get to higher points. I had a difficult time getting it to work, I would say it only worked about a third of the time. The only problem being, it could possibly have been my controller. I only have one Genesis controller and who knows how well it works. But let's just say that it's not my controller, even if this is the case while it was annoying, it certainly wasn't game breakingly annoying.

Also I would have liked to have seen different special moves for the characters. While they technically have different moves, those moves do the exact same thing. So pressing UP + C as Ren would make you squeeze air out of Stimpy and shoot you up like a rocket, with Stimpy it would make you turn Ren into a helicopter.. both of these just you to higher places. I would have liked to have used separate characters for separate things, you can beat the entire game as just one character. I would have liked to have NEEDED to use both characters to beat the game.

Also, I would have liked the game to be a longer.

Sure there are cons to this game, but other than the the length of this game I would say they're rather insignificant. This was a fun game and really did well in preserving the entire feel of the TV show. If you're a fan of Ren & Stimpy and want a fun but short game, this is for you. I'm also guessing this game would be pretty fun playing two player mode. If you can pick this game up for $5 or $6 I would say to give it a go.

Squid.