My Experience With… Crayola Art Studio 2

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog (or been binge-reading it for the past hour or so), you may notice that I have a bit of a history with old games. Well, being a millennial, I suppose it comes naturally. I’ve been playing with computer and video games since I was a tot, and I have a huge preference for olden games from the saintly days of yore. I suppose my mother had a big influence on that, which is weird because I wouldn’t exactly peg her as a game geek, but on the other hand, most of what she bought me was educational, so I guess she and I are both geeks of some reference.

Whatever.

Ever see a game that looks like it’s going to be every bit as cheesy as it sounds? Well, in the spirit of continuing to wax nostalgia… here’s Crayola Art Studio 2.

GAAAAH!!!!! Looking at this now, this is about as cheesy as cheese could get! Wisconsin can’t even manufacture this much cheese! So many fonts and colors, the wacky setup, and…. WHAT’S WITH THE TV AND BIKE HORN??!!!! Was someone sniffing Sharpies before they made this??!!!!! This makes the intro to Hey Vern, It’s Ernest! look sane!

Looking back on it now, I realize just how ridiculous this game was. But back then… and to an extent, still now… THIS GAME ROCKED!!!!

This was nothing short of an amazing part of my childhood. I enjoyed games like Kid Pix and SimTunes, but could only play them at school because I didn’t have a Mac. I also have no idea what Crayola Art Studio ONE was, but who cared! Best game intro ever, completely danceable, AND it was a two-stager!

The first was Crayola Art Adventures, which was for the little kids. It was kinda boring, but still had its value. Because most of the “Art” was structured, then “free color,” I felt a little stinted using that. The second part, the actual “art studio” was AWESOME! The challenges were more fitting for my age, plus you had your OWN CANVAS. You could make awesome slideshows with drawings and animations, and you could even save them to a miniature “gallery” or print them. Unfortunately, and obviously, you couldn’t print the animations. Whatever. It was still cool.

In each room, there were all kinds of things to click on to set off animations, etc., and in the studio, there was a phone that you clicked to hear a random joke. There must’ve been at least 5 or 10 jokes, and I used to know every one of them. I don’t remember them, but I’m certain my mother must, considering the number of times she’s heard them from me or the game. (Oops. Sorry, Mom… if you happen to be reading this blog.)

Yeah, this game was jam-packed with wacky sound effects, bright colors, and crazy animations to keep the child’s interest and to bug the living daylights out of parents (Again, sorry, Mom.) Oh, and didn’t even mention the part of the game where you can find out the history of Crayola, plus how crayons and markers are manufactured. Having been raised on Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood (among many others), this was insanely exciting for me to watch, especially since it was “hosted” by kids, plus “explained” by a cartoon crayon and marker.

Like Qwirks, this is a game that I miss. I need to find these games! Well, if you happen upon Crayola Art Studio 2, let your kid try it out, or try it yourself, because why not? I can almost guarantee that you will enjoy it… provided you’re not like these cynical internet critics. J

See ya!

What’s your favorite cartoony sound effect?

My Experience With… Qwirks

Recently, I wrote a blog post about my experience with Tetris on NES. I eventually remembered there was a special version of Tetris (made by Pajitnov, the Tetris creator himself), that was way cooler, way more colorful, and way more 90s.

You guessed it: Qwirks.

I’ll give you a minute to get

through all the nostalgic feels.

This was an über-cool game that I remember getting excited about pretty easily. My mother showed me the ropes of this clever little CD game, and I think I spent most of my time trying to figure out the brain-breaking puzzles. Seriously, Mr. Alexey Pajitnov, if you’re reading this (which may be unlikely), would YOU be able to figure these out?

Then again, I was just a kid,

and special relations was not

a very strong skills set of mine.

There are several modes to this game (from what I can remember).

The first one was the regular mode. This is where you can see all the Qwirks. They have names, and if I had been writing this about twenty years ago, I could probably give you their names along with fabricated social security numbers. But seeing as how I didn’t even have internet or e-mail at that time, let alone a blog, and that I have more important things to stuff into my overcrowded brain, there you go.

BAAHAHAHA!!! Forgot about the yellow’s complex.

Okay, okay, okay. The objective in this game is a little like Tetris. You have to keep the screen clear as long as possible. As with the NES Tetris game, the pieces start off dropping slowly, progressively getting faster as the game continues. You… I dunno, “blloolororolrop” these guys???! That’s the sound it makes when they pop and disappear! Anyway, you get rid of them by connecting four or more at a time. When you have at least two of the same color adjacent, they conjoin, giving hilarious results with the eyes. You can also use combinations (I’ll explain that later) to beef up your score.

If it gets to the top, you do have two helps before you’re on your own. The first one looks like a peace sign or some kind of Mario character named Cosmo (this is one of two names I remember), which you control until you hit a Qwirk. This changes a bunch of Quirks to that color, resulting in a giant pop. The second time, you get Bigelow (the other one) which is simply a large red-ish Quirk that clears out the middle of your screen. Mind you, this one comes out of nowhere, and it freaked me out when I first saw it.

When you have exhausted all of your helps and you make it to the top, the game ends, and all of your quirks fall through the floor. There is a leaderboard on there, but I don’t think it’s online, so basically, you challenge your family and friends instead of that one master wizard on the other side of the planet.

I was looking for some images related to Qwirks, and I came across this, which is basically all the characters (save Cosmo and Bigelow) and their connected states. Then again, I haven’t seen a couple of these things. Like that comet one. Where did that come from? The crown, star, and purple blob don’t look familiar. Not to mention the ice thingies? And what’s with the fireball and clear quirk in negative… I dunno, but it’s a good reference chart of the sprites, frame by frame.

Another way to play is the challenge mode, which was my favorite as I got older. You play against these mutants, which are honestly the coolest things I’ve seen, despite their basic, weird 3D renderings. It’s almost personal the way you play with these things. There are 16 levels, total, I believe, each one progressing further and further. The rules of the regular game do apply to these games, with some special power-ups and opponent blocks.

Yeah, yeah, so a 10-year-old could make better things on Blender. But

COME ON! This was something to be played on Windows 9X

(pronounced “ninety-ex”), so you HAVE to admit, they’re pretty cool.

There are ways to tell without looking at the mutant’s board if you’re winning, losing, or even. If you’re even or if you’ve just started, each mutant has a “neutral” pose. If you’re losing or if you’ve lost, the mutant starts getting excited, or “in your face.” If you’re winning, it looks as though it’s in pain. When you defeat the mutant it kind of… dies???? Some of these “deaths” are pretty dramatic, and it makes me feel a little sorry for them, but only for a second. There’s no big fanfare after you defeat the final mutant. For crying out loud, you just spent 16 rounds on CGI’d mutants, what do you want, a parade??!

The two-player challenge mode is pretty much the same format as the regular challenge mode. I’ve tried playing both sides by myself… it doesn’t work.

#SolitaireQwirks, anyone?

The final mode (from what I remember) is the Puzzle Mode. This is… well. Puzzles. Remember that “combinations” thing I was talking about? Go ahead, scroll back up. I’ll wait.

Got it? Cool.

This helps you try to delete all of the Qwirks on screen within a certain number of moves. This also gives you practice about combinations that will help you pop multiple sets of Qwirks. When you complete a level, you get some fireworks, then go to the next level. If you fail, they give you a chance to try again or just end the game. You can abort at any time. I’m not sure how many levels there are on here, but I think that my highest accomplishment was 4-1, which might be pitiful. Again, I’m not really sure.

I really miss this game, and sadly, I haven’t seen it on any of my thrift store runs. *sigh* Even the music on this game rocked! Those simple MIDI loops…

Well. I won’t give up my search for it, and if you can find it, do play it. It is an amazing brain-stretching game.

I wonder if it’s on Steam? Whatever.

What’s your favorite 80s, 90s, or 00s thing makes you wax nostalgic?

My Experience With... Charlotte’s Web (Book vs Movies)

I will always have a love for cartoons in my heart, especially the old ones. They seem to have such a charm about them that has yet to be recaptured, even by today’s technology. A part of me wrestles with whether or not I even want the old style to come back, lest it loses its charm.

Anyway, I was introduced to E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web through cartoons. When I was very young, my mother bought me the movie (I’m surprised she didn’t give me the book to read first!), and we enjoyed watching it together. It’s hard to describe just how charming and nostalgic it was. I, a very urban-suburban girl, felt like I wanted to be on the farm. I’m guessing I imagined myself among the talking, singing farm animals.

Speaking of singing, oh the music! I love orchestral music, pretty much always have. Once again, this was cultivated by old cartoons.

Go figure.

My mother even took me to a live special called “Tunes and Toons” (or was it the other way around?), which taught kids about parts of the orchestra and how musical pieces worked with old cartoons.

Best. Mother. Ever.

But I digress.

The music in there is nothingshort of fabulous! You pretty much hear a medley of the songs in the overture as the opening scenes and credits roll, then you hear the narrator -- with the perfect voice for any farm / rural story, plus he’s the same guy who narrated The Incredible Journey -- as the story starts.

More than likely, you know this story already. Fern saves a piglet runt from being axed by her father, and raises him herself until he’s big enough to sell to her uncle, Mr. Zuckerman. The pig, named Wilbur (by Fern) ends up lonely in the new big world of the Zuckermans’ farm, and the neighboring animals don’t help out much. Eventually, he makes a friend in Charlotte, a spider, who ends up making efforts to save Wilbur’s life, when he finds out he’s in danger of becoming Christmas dinner. She writes words in her web (“Some Pig,” “Terrific,” “Radiant,” and “Humble”), making the humans believe that Wilbur truly is a remarkable pig, and that the words in the web were a form of miracle. This makes Wilbur famous, and his life saved. Charlotte dies at the fair, but not before laying 514 eggs in an egg sac. Wilbur returns home a safe pig, and watches over Charlotte’s eggs until they hatch. All but three fly away, and life continues on the farm. There is a secondary story about Fern and her personal growth.

Alright, kids, if you’re writing a report about this,

please just read the book. This is not a complete

synopsis. Besides, it truly is a remarkable story.

Anyway, that’s the story in a nutshell. The old cartoon was really nice, and the songs were completely loveable. Plus, it took the descriptive writings of E.B. White and painted a nearly perfect picture of it all. Overall, it was a great adaptation.

I know that at some point in school, I read the book. It seemed even more classic than the movie itself. Plus, I think that was the point that I realized movie adaptations stray from book canon.

It’s really hard to say whether I like the book or the movie more. Even having read it recently (for this blog’s purposes, of course), I still can’t say for sure which is better.

I did watch the live action version years later, and it was actually a lot better than I expected. Dakota Fanning played a decent Fern, and the farm animals were pretty funny. Templeton was interesting, he definitely had the same “scheming” voice, but it wasn’t quite as exaggerated as the original Templeton voice, which I can live with. Wilbur was ADORABLE. I had NO CLUE just how stinking cute piglets could be! Plus, that tiny, Babe-like voice they gave him... I didn’t see it coming. I guess it makes sense since Wilbur is supposed to be young, and it was way cuter than the sudden grown man voice that he starts off with in the old movie.

If I had to make a choice between the two movies, I would say the original, hands down. The newer movie was pretty good and truer to the book’s canon, but I’m a sucker for classic movies and musicals.

So, what’s your fav--

Oh, wait, I forgot.

(Grrr, do I have to...?)

*Sigh...* Between the two Charlotte’s Web movies, there was a bomb of a Nickolodeon special called Charlotte’s Web 2: Wilbur’s Great Adventure. I was a child when I saw the trailer, but I knew it would be bad. I recently watched it, and... It was bad. Really bad. But not the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.... Top 10, maybe? (Bottom 10?)

Anyway, this story takes place after Charlotte’s Web, and we get to know Charlotte’s slightly creepy three daughters who stayed behind. They were pretty cool as far as character development, except, why did they have arms and “hands” if they already had eight legs???

Unsettling...

The Zuckerman farm gets a small lamb named Cardigan, who is quite literally the black sheep of the flock. All the other sheep pretty much diss him because he’s black-wooled and clumsy. (Like, seriously, what baby hoofed animal isn't?) Wilbur, knowing full well how it feels to be alone, befriends Cardigan. Their friendship seems to be at an end, however, when Zuckerman sells Cardigan to another farmer at the county fair. Wilbur, along with Templeton, Joy, Aranea, and Nellie, set out to find Cardigan and bring him back. They make new, insignificant-to-the-plot-at-large, friends at Cardigan’s farm, all while escaping a tricky fox whose appetite and demeanor are worse than Templeton’s. Wilbur, through a bunch of mishaps involving mud and foliage, gets mistaken for a wild boar that’s on the loose. Charlotte’s daughters are also terrible writers up to the crucial part of the climax, where they warn concerned farmers that a fox is in the area trying to eat... well, anything. Cardigan stays at the new farm, but Zuckerman promises to have Wilbur visit. Two of Charlotte’s daughters also stay at the farm, feeling they’ve had enough adventure for a lifetime. The remaining returns to Zuckerman’s farm with Wilbur, seeing as she’s the feisty, adventurous one.

Yeah. There are TONS of loose ends in this feature, and really, it isn’t all that good. If there is one thing I did enjoy about it, it would have to be the music! The duet with Wilbur and Cardigan was more than cute, and it’s big band sound made me want to find someone to dance with. The trio of Charlotte’s daughters was nice, too. Still, I didn’t like this movie, despite it being a cartoon musical. That’s saying something right there.

That was painful to go through. ANYway, what’s your favorite old movie, tv show, or short?