Review: Super Tanooki Skin 2D
Can this hastily created platformer live up to the hype, or will it fail in the wake of Super Mario 3D Land’s release?
If you’re at all like me, you’ve probably been looking forward to Super Tanooki Skin 2D for a long time. After all, since its initial announcement nearly 48 hours ago, the information we’ve gathered, screens we’ve seen, and videos that were posted online were nothing short of astonishing, and when I finally got my hands on a review copy this afternoon, I was ecstatic to say the most. We most certainly don’t get enough 2D platformers in this day and age, and with Maximillion and the Rise of the Mutant Mudds getting delayed until early 2012, we all need a little something to tide us over. With a little luck, that something would be Super Tanooki Skin 2D.
Clearly something in the heavens doesn’t want us to have a little luck.
The first thing you notice when you boot up STS2D is the music. Oh god, the music. If I ever had the choice to not listen to this music forever, or to listen to this music forever, I would choose the former in a heartbeat. It’s as if someone took the train whistle noise from Thomas the Tank Engine (bad sound quality and all) and played it half-heartedly over a beat that makes Justin Beiber’s instrumental tracks look like Beethoven’s 5th. And it loops. Forever. I’m halfway surprised I didn’t end up leaving the game with a look of sheer devastation on my face from the music alone.
Of course, there’s more to a game than music. What about story? Or locations? Surely beautiful vistas and stunning dialogue can make up for a poor soundtrack, right?
Well, yea. This game doesn’t have any of that shit either though. The basic premise of the story, if you can believe it, is actually simpler than the actual story of the Mario games. Ready? You’re a raccoon, and you have to catch Mario because he stole your skin. Your bloody, maimed skin that somehow flawlessly re-attaches at the end of the game. Spoilers, by the way.
If you can muster the strength to start up the game, you’ll notice that it looks eerily similar to something we’d see on the Super Nintendo from back in the late 80s, if the stuff we saw on the Super Nintendo back in the 80s had a baby with Fallout: New Worldexplode and FatTanooki Mountain 3. Man these jokes are horrible. I am so sorry you guys. I think I actually got dumber after playing this game, and part of it has to do with the fact that I had to play it over and over again.
You see, the game is hard. In theory, the levels would be some of the most simplistic platforming in recent memory (after all, there’s only one of them, and it consists of 6 randomly repeating sections), but you actually can’t control your movement directly. Instead, the game moves you forward on its own, and all you can do is jump. Again, this would be pretty simple if the controls weren’t more buttery than something really buttery, like a stick of butter, but I swear, half the time I died was because I was platforming too well, or simply because I touched too much blank space. BLANK SPACE. However, I pulled through. After about fifteen mintues of madness I finally caught Mario, rescued the Tanooki suit, and become a whole raccoon again. The irony of this whole thing is that, after playing it, I had never wanted to skin a raccoon so badly.
The Verdict:
For a game that they could have been in development since the reveal of the Tanooki Suit in 1988, Super Tanooki Skin 2D is mindblowingly simple. There’s no online play, little to no replay value, and the controls are so dated you’d think they came from a time before video games existed. Definitely not something I’d recommend.
The Score: 2/10
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