The Worst Sesame Street Game that Never was... Grover Music Maker.

Drtooth

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While it is hard to judge a barely completed video game, and one for preschoolers at that, I have actually played (if that's the word for it) an emulation of this game and... well...

This person's video can explain it.


That's right. The game is little more than a kid's keyboard with jerky animations of Grover having convulsions and impersonating Frankenstein. I'm guessing the project was abandoned when they realized how frightening a zombie Grover lumbering around to music would be to the target audience.

And at least with other Sesame Street titles... you actually can DO something.
 

minor muppetz

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I heard about that game, but I had no idea it wasn't released. I even looked it up on Muppet Wiki previously and didn't notice it was an unfinished game.

I saw gameplay footage in a video on YouTube called "Sesame Street Game Retrospective", which for a title like that only reviews four games. Here's the link:

In fact lately I've seen quite a few videos giving negative reviews of Sesame Street games. I've only played four, and can only judge others by their graphics and plots. I feel like most of them aren't/don't seem that bad, though most of them don't seem to be too great, either. For the most part I can overlook the poor graphics of the NES games because that's how NES games looked at the time.

But when looking at the gameplay footage and seeing the concept, yeah, this game looks downright terrible. I know that's average Atari graphics, but I still feel it looks worse than other Atari games I've seen the graphics of (I've never actually played any Atari systems).
 

Drtooth

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In fact lately I've seen quite a few videos giving negative reviews of Sesame Street games. I've only played four, and can only judge others by their graphics and plots. I feel like most of them aren't/don't seem that bad, though most of them don't seem to be too great, either. For the most part I can overlook the poor graphics of the NES games because that's how NES games looked at the time.
I just don't get why there's SOOOO much hate for Sesame Street games. I mean, they aren't supposed to have intriguing game play for anyone over the age of 5 because they aren't designed for anyone over the age of five. I've played a few on emulators for research reasons, and I can see them being fun from the view point of someone who's way too young to be able to have the hand eye coordination for something more complex. ABC and 123 are alright, considering they're basically computer software type games ported to the NES... but I gotta admit, Countdown with the Count is pretty fun. That's the most video game like of all those games. But the best I've played is Counting Cafe for Genesis. Just for the cameos alone.

But when looking at the gameplay footage and seeing the concept, yeah, this game looks downright terrible. I know that's average Atari graphics, but I still feel it looks worse than other Atari games I've seen the graphics of (I've never actually played any Atari systems).
There are Atari games that had good graphics for what it was.... this just wasn't one of them. I love the graphics for the not produced Garfield game... even Cookie Monster Munch had a very recognizable Cookie Monster. Pigs in Space had some killer graphics for the Space Invaders game (Link looked like Link, Gonzo, like Gonzo). But Grover doesn't look too well here. Even with the limitations, he could have looked better.

But the problem is there is no game play because there IS no game to play. It's basically a toy piano. I'm sure they could have added in another game, like a follow along Simon type game, but they were testing the limits of what the Atari can be pushed to. It did have 20 pre-programmed songs (you'd think they'd at LEAST get ONE lousy Sesame Street song in there, though)... I guess that ate up too much memory. Though the applause sound effect sounded pretty good. I'll give it that.
 

D'Snowth

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While it is hard to judge a barely completed video game, and one for preschoolers at that, I have actually played (if that's the word for it) an emulation of this game and... well...

This person's video can explain it.


That's right. The game is little more than a kid's keyboard with jerky animations of Grover having convulsions and impersonating Frankenstein. I'm guessing the project was abandoned when they realized how frightening a zombie Grover lumbering around to music would be to the target audience.

And at least with other Sesame Street titles... you actually can DO something.
The audience sounds like they're shooting at him rather than applauding him.
 

minor muppetz

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ABC and 123 are alright, considering they're basically computer software type games ported to the NES... but I gotta admit, Countdown with the Count is pretty fun.
123 and Countdown are among the few Sesame Street games I've played. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I was never able to beat the Astro-Grover game in 123.

Recently I noticed that Sesame Street ABC has one non-ABC game (the Rubber Duckie game) and 123 has one non-numbers game (Ernie's Magic Shapes). And several months back I wondered why they had Ernie be a magician instead of just making it a Mumford game (then I found out that the mini-games in those were released seperately, so they'd need name-brand characters).
 

Drtooth

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watching grover atari is a new kind of creepy.
Yeah. He looks like he's in pain, not dancing. He doesn't translate half as well as Cookie Monster did...



Of course, it was still creepy watching a giant graphic of Cookie Monster in stilted animation eating a cookie.

But at LEAST that was a game.
 
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D'Snowth

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Commercial for an old Atari video game featuring Big Bird


Oh yeah, and Alan Alda did the commercial, talk about a winning combination!
 
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