In 1999, to coincide with the release of Pixar's fan-favourite sequel in cinemas, Toy Story 2: Activity Centre collated 4 games, a comic creator and a print studio in one package. Like its toy-themed predecessor, the Pixar touch elevates every element to be one of the better kid-friendly collections in the series.
The Pixar Activity Centres often fare better than their Disney counterparts with an art style and creativity to match the big screen counterparts. Toy Story 2 is no different. All four games are worthy time-wasters with deeper gameplay than the usual fare. First up is Cone Chaos, a re-skinned version of Frogger. You have to guide a number of toys hidden under traffic cones across a busy street. Cars will swerve if the cone stands still although fire engines will just plough straight through. While entirely playable, Cone Chaos remains the worst mini-game of the four. The cars, trucks and fire engines that rush across the screen are imbalanced and poorly placed with some levels requiring cars to spin out of the cone's way in order to succeed. Not bad, but it's no Frogger.
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Watch out for gum when crossing the road in Cone Chaos (left).
Your phasers are set to Stun in Toy Shelf Showdown (right).
Next up is Toy Shelf Showdown. As Buzz Lightyear, you travel across shelves dropping rocket ship parts into place so you can reach Emperor Zurg and gut out hs Duracells. Toy robots are patrolling the shelves and if one of them touches you, you will drop to the shelf below. If you get hit on the bottom shelf, you will lose a life. To protect yourself, you have a limited number of laser blasts that will temporarily stun them, but being a kids game they're still easy enough to avoid. Ultimately it's a fun if shallow arcade platformer in a similar vein way to Burger Time.
Things get a bit more cerebral in Critter Corral, a western themed take on Chinese Checkers. The aim is to move all of your critters to the other player's starting points. You can get there quicker by leapfrogging over strategically placed pieces which is a must on the hardest difficulty. Even so, this setting is still pretty easy so if you want more of a challenge you can play with one of your more intelligent friends. You'd just have to convince them of it first.
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Woody and Bullseye battling it out in Critter Corral (left).
Those cardboard boxes aren't as stable as they seem in Luggage Lunacy (right).
Finally, there's Luggage Lunacy, another above average mini-game for the series. Buzz has to jump over a maze of suitcases to reach the one that holds a trapped Woody. Some cases will have you jump over gaps, while cardboard boxes will collapse if you stand on them long enough. There are a good number of levels here too, suitably gaining difficulty as you go. Or you can just jump straight to the challenging stuff by selecting the hardest difficulty.
The other two activities are art based and are ones that remain firmly for the little ones. You can create an animated comic book that's better looking than the one found in The Emperor's New Groove: Groove Centre that came out a few years later. It doesn't have the same zany humour so you won't catch yourself in a chortle as you would with Kuzco's sarcastic barbs. You also have a Printing Press, which I didn't really look into it that deeply. Unlike other games in the series that emulate an older version of Windows, this one runs out of the box so you might be able to use this feature as intended.
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You can print posters, cards and postcards in Woody's Printing Press.
When you boot up Toy Story 2: Activity Centre, it gets right to the point. There's no real storyline or creative use of a menu. Instead, we have an old style TV modelled on the Woody's Roundup set seen in the movie. You change the channels to highlight the activity you want, click on it and that's it. It's telling how good the overall package is that the missing bells and whistles of other entries aren't noticed. In all honesty, I'd rather have a number of good activities than an interesting presentation.
As most of the games are based on existing properties, you can find some technically better versions of each one of them for free on smartphones or through your browser. None of them online will carry the charm of the Toy Story license, however, and to a Disneyphile like me that's a big selling point. Like it's Pixar predecessor, Toy Story 2 stands as one of the best Activity Centres of the lot.
To download the game, follow the link below. This is a custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber will run natively on modern systems. Manual included. Tested on Windows 10.
File Size: 139 Mb. Install Size: 253 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ
Download
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Disney's Toy Story 2: Activity Centre is © Disney Interactive
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me
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ReplyDeleteThe internet may be an increasingly depressing place as flash games become lost media and artificial intelligence makes life less livable than insufferable. However, as it currently stands, you can find articles on games you played a few times when you were five and then never thought about again until one night decades later when life was at an apparent all time low. Toy Story 2 - Activity Centre is not a good game. It is not historically significant, and I would struggle to recommend it to anybody. But if you did not come home on insignificant days in grade school and put this CD-ROM disc into your desktop computer, you could not possibly understand. It is remarkable. It is everything that is the human experience. It is the memory I leave behind when I die. And I am grateful for that.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully said
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