Retroulette #26: The New Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley

A Mary-Kate and Ashley game! Of course. There's like 1,300 of them. There's something like a 18% chance to pick a MK&A game at any time with the Retroulette. I'm only shocked it took 26 games to finally get one.

Right away let me just say that I hate Mary-Kate and Ashley. I mean, obviously I don't need a reason. Everybody hated these two, right? But I do have a reason. These little catchphrase spewing bitches stole the spotlight from the true star of Full House. No, not uncle Jessie's hair. The other one.

How fuckin' rude.

Everybody knows SJT made that show. I mean, she drove uncle Joey's car straight into the kitchen! How fucking badass is that?

Now now, it's time to forget about those old adventures. We've got new ones (c. 1999) to embark on.

This is presumably MK&A's video game company. DualStar. I get it. It's clever.

 

And this is Acclaim's wacky kid's label. I'm astounded by the lack of backwards letters. Kids eat that shit up.

That looks familiar all right. And really, it is a good sign. Roswell wasn't an amazing game. But it was a better game than I would imagine any Mary-Kate and Ashley game could ever be.

Now, onto the main menu.

You can't hear it, but this screen was introduced by a staticy voice that say "khzzzzssshhhhs shhskzzzz" as far as I can tell, and music that would seem to indicate the duo is about to be attacked by a mummy.

Now, I can't remember. Were Mary-Kate and Ashley always conjoined twins? I seem to recall scenes in the hit movie It Takes Two where they were apart. But that may just be my memory playing tricks on me. And they could have just green screened the worthless one out of Full House.

 After pressing start I get this screen.

Like everything in this game, this is Trademarked. They were very protective of their Scooby Doo ripoff.

They say, in the static-iest  voice imaginable, "Will solve any crime by dinner time". And of course I only know that because it says it right there. Ignoring that sentence fragment, let's move on.

Ok, now we're on the main menu. That last one was just a decoy to throw off that mummy.

Predictably, the only "options" are MUSIC and SOUND FX On/Off and I don't remember know any passwords to this game. So let's get this show on the road already.

Trademark it, Trademark it all!!!

More static voices. I would assume they are just saying the same thing the screen says, but it goes on way too long for that. But maybe MK&A just don't read that well. I mean, did they ever go to school? They were making a new TV show/Movie/CD every day for like 20 years.

And after that...

Dudes, we fucking get it! It's almost dinner time right now and I started this game before freaking breakfast. Let's play the goddamn game!

Nope, now we have to read the story. It's gripping, I'm sure.

That's right Mary-Kate (or is that Ashley), just stare into the camera and don't say shit.

Ghost Goo? What the hell does that mean? And are Mary-Kate and Ashley equipped to deal with that kind of thing?

"C'mon Ash, grab to goo sucker."
"Shit, again?"

Now we finally get to play the game. I-

Hahahahahaha!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh shit. That is ridiculous. Look at those things. Those pudgy-ass troll dolls are supposed to be MK&A.

Well, I can't stand here laughing, I've gotta help Mrs. Busybody get ghosts out of her...dungeon. Isn't there anyone other than two 10 year old girls that could help her with this?

 I'm controlling the green one. There's a floating piece of paper in front of me, so I take one step forward...

SPIDER ATTACK!!!!

 Instant fucking death. I'm so sorry I attempted to touch your precious paper, spider. I know how important it was to you. Writing memoirs or some shit.

And why the hell didn't Mrs. Busybody say anything about massive spiders? I thought we were down here to find some goo!

I think to myself "Maybe you just have to do it faster...." No. That spider isn't having it.

Then I think "Maybe I can jump on that spider and kill it."

INSTANT DEATH

So fuck that paper. There's a switch over on the right, so I take Green Girl over there and use it. It opens the cage at the bottom with the puzzle piece in it.

Mrs. Busybody is a freaky-ass lady.

So I go and get that puzzle piece. Level complete. Blue Girl and Dog didn't do freaking anything.

As an aside, I pressed the down button and the character crouched. But instead of ducking or something, the characters feet just sink into the floor.

In motion, this is absurdly hilarious.

Next level!

Now I'm the dog. The dog's only real ability is you can step on it to get a little bit higher. Also it can climb ladders.

I mean, so can everybody else. But he's a dog. He deserves more credit.

It turns out if you press select, you can switch between the three. So I turn into the Blue One and walk over to the switch. The grey platforms disintegrate when you walk on them. But no matter what I do, Blue One can't flip that switch. Only Green One can do that. So I have to use the dog as a foot stool to get the green one up onto the platform, then over to the switch . Then the Blue One can jump over to the other side (she gets dizzy, but takes no damage) and up to the puzzle piece. The rat at the bottom is just for decoration.

Next level!!

The levels are getting a bit more complicated now. They are more than single screen affairs.

As the Blue One, I walk all the way over to the left of the screen. The Blue One can jump higher than any other character but at the end of the screen there's a jump even she can't make.

 I need the dog to use as a stool, but to get over to where the Blue One is, the dog needs to use the Blue One to jump higher. This involves switching back and forth between characters like 20 times. Then to press the switch at the top, I need to help the Green One get over to the left of the screen, and then she uses the Blue One to get to the top.

It makes sense while you're playing it. After getting both girls to the top I grab that piece of paper. On it, is a hint on how to...... get up to where I already am.

It took me a while to figure out that Clue was the dog, and not the thing I was reading at that very second. I guess if you bought a Mary Kate and Ashley game you should know that. Anyway, that hint is bullshit, because you don't have to get Clue to the top at all. One to press the switch, and one to get the puzzle piece. Clue is nothing but a glorified milk crate.

Next level!!!

This one is very similar to the last one. A lot of switching back and forth between character to help other characters get places. One thing that I can say about this level is it fucking LIES. Get all the scraps of paper, and you get this:

If you follow that advice, you will never beat this level. If you take Ashley to the top of the level, she can't press the switch, which is on the bottom of the level.

And once again you don't need two characters on the top anyway. You can use Clue to get Mary-Kate up there to get the puzzle piece, or Mary-Kate to get Clue up there.

Fuck this deceitful-ass game.

Next Level.

You need to get both Mary Kate and Ashley across multiple pits of spikes to beat this level. The jumps are very hard, and I die a whole bunch of time.

Mary-Kate and Ashley can both rot in this dungeon for all I care.

HOW MUCH DID THE COVER ART LIE?

Not as much as the goddamn game itself!

This game is actually a decent enough puzzle game. Take away the awful MK&A license, and this could have been something I would have played. But I'll never get over the fact that it lied to me.