FINAL FANTASY FASHIONS

Final Fantasy XV is almost upon us, after being in development for longer than most tectonic plates. Will it be any good? I have no idea, but I haven't hugely enjoyed any main-series Final Fantasy games since FFVIII (XII is pretty decent, I guess) and I'd be surprised if Square-Enix managed to break that trend this time around. I'm definitely not impressed with what I've seen of the character designs thus far, with their painfully on-the-nose Latin names and, most of all, their costumes.

This is Noctis, the main character of FFXV, a game which apparently takes place in a world without hairbrushes. I'm finding it very difficult to warm to an RPG hero who dresses almost exactly like the teenage boys I used to see trying to wangle their way into over-eighteens-only rock clubs. The clothes maketh the man, and in this case they've made a My Chemical Romance fan circa 2005. Of course, my feelings on the matter are almost certainly down to misplaced nostalgia and encroaching old age, so I'm going to look back on what the other main characters of Final Fantasy games were wearing. If anyone is qualified to make judgements on fashion, it's me. You don't suffer through Rugrats: Totally Angelica without learning a thing or two about style.

Warrior of Light - Final Fantasy

Already I've hit a snag - the party members of the original Final Fantasy are characterless ciphers whose appearance changes based on what job you give them. So, here's the Warrior of Light, the first game's representative in the Dissidia fighting game spin-offs. He's supposedly based on series artist and hardcore bead fan Yoshitaka Amano's original artwork for the knight class, so he'll do in a pinch. The most immediately arresting feature of the Warrior's outfit is his massive horns - combined with his metal armour, they make it impossible for him to go out in a thunderstorm. Why are they so long? Is this like the Secret Boots from Symphony of the Night and he's insecure about his height? Does he desperately want to ride a rollercoaster but didn't quite reach the "you must be this high to ride" limit? Maybe he lost a fight after being headbutted once and he's determined it'll never happen again.
Horns aside, there are some other nice details here on what is overall a pretty neat design. He's using an ammonite as a clasp for his cape, he's wearing the most vestigial loincloth I've ever seen and best of all there appears to be a sharp-toothed monster face on his belt, as though at some point he won the Heavyweight Championship of Halloweenland.

Firion - Final Fantasy II

Ignore the fact that Firion is carrying more garishly-coloured fantasy weapons than a duffelbag at a LARPing event, that's really just a Dissidia thing. However, the later remakes of Final Fantasy II also depict Firion in this style, so that must be how Squaresoft always wanted him to look - and it's not a bad look, either. The bandanna / turban headwear and lighter armour give Firion a somewhat exotic look, and the single shoulder spike will come in handy for both deflecting enemy attacks and hanging his shopping bags on when both his hands are full. The negatives of this ensemble? Well, his cape looks more like a security blanket than, you know, a cape and his trousers appear uncomfortably tight around the crotchular region, but aside from that, yeah, I like Firion's look.

Onion Knight - Final Fantasy III

FFIII went back to using interchangeable job-having puppets as its cast members, but the Dissidia version of the Onion Knight is mostly consistent with the original Famicom sprite only a hell of a lot more... ploofy. Voluminous pantaloons, orange thigh-scarves and a feather duster sticking out of his hat give the Onion Knight a certain chicken-like quality. Mmm, chicken and onions. The most puzzling thing about this outfit is the string of fairy lights sticking out of each shoulder pad. I think their purpose is to illuminate and draw attention to the Onion Knight's biceps. He's surprisingly ripped for a kid.

Luneth - Final Fantasy III DS

When FFIII was remade for the Nintendo DS, the generic Onion Knights were replaced with actual characters, with names and different models and everything. The main character became Luneth, who you see here. Luneth does not understand how belts work. This is an accusation that can be levelled at great many of the Final Fantasy characters designed by artist Tetsuya Nomura. I don't believe Luneth was designed by Nomura himself, but whoever did come up with the idea of someone wearing three enormous belts as a breastplate must surely have been inspired by Nomura. I didn't play much of FFIII DS, but if there isn't a scene where Luneth begins an action sequence by shouting "okay, everyone buckle up!" then, well, what's the point of playing the bloody game? The belt-armour's most important design function, however, is to distract you from noticing that Luneth is also wearing a hoodie over one of his mum's chunky turtleneck sweaters.

Cecil - Final Fantasy IV

Cecil: now there's a name you don't see much these days. Has any other name fallen off a metaphorical cliff in terms of popularity as much as Cecil has? Well, Adolf, I guess. Anyway, full credit goes to Cecil for being the last main character in a Final Fantasy game to have the common sense to wear proper armour. He might struggle if the monsters attack his arms, but other than that he's fairly well protected. That said, he must have had a few embarrassing moments when he tried to run through a narrow doorway and was stopped by his shoulder-spikes. All in all, though, a good set of classic fantasy armour that's made extra stylish by Cecil's choice of complimentary lipstick.

Bartz - Final Fantasy V

Another image taken from the Dissidia games, this alternate costume for Bartz - who'll always be known as Butz in my heart - is a recreation of his FFV sprite. Bartz Classic, if you will, and it's a good look for a young wandering adventurer. It's got something of a "squire" feeling to it, the look of someone who's not quite ready to be a fully-fledged knight, although I'm not sure green wellington boots are particularly heroic. Comfortable for trudging across the overworld, I imagine, but also leaving the vague impression that you grew up in the home counties and spent a lot of time around horses. I love Final Fantasy V and I'm very fond of Bartz, who's a simple, well-meaning, non-conflicted RPG hero. That's probably why he can get away with having a popped collar without seeming like a complete arse.

I can't mention Bartz's outfit without bringing up this completely fabulous alternate costume from Dissidia. Bartz doesn''t need armour, he's got dazzle camouflage and combat leggings.

Terra - Final Fantasy VI

It's often said that FFVI doesn't really have a main character and the game was designed as an ensemble piece, but Terra's on the game's logo and she's always chosen as FFVI's representative in spin-offs and crossovers so she fits the bill better than most. Terra doesn't really have a settled design, either: her hair colour changes regularly and her original sprite had shoulderpads that seem to have been done away with these days, but this is basically her look: floaty and magical, feminine without being sexualised and with shoes that you'd have to put on very carefully unless you wanted to lose a couple of fingers. Terra's outfit is an inversion of most of the ones we've seen thus far in that the arms are covered but her shoulders are woefully lacking protection, but as she was intended for a life of servitude spent riding around in a mechanical death machine her lack of armour makes a little more sense. I think her tights would benefit from a different pattern, mind you, because these ones look like she was eating taramasalata too fast. Still, Terra has one of my favourite outfits in the series and it definitely looks like the wearer might transform into a flying god-monster every now and then. She must buy her clothes at the same store as Bruce Banner.

Cloud - Final Fantasy VII

Ah, Cloud Strife. One of the most iconic characters in gaming, a fan-favourite who helped define the PS1 era. Not bad for someone wearing binbags as trousers. SOLDIER wages are not competitive, it seems. How do you even manage to make your trousers so pointy, Cloud? Do you spend hours ironing in each crease? No, you can't do. That wouldn't leave enough time for hair sculpting. The trousers do a good job of hiding just how weirdly long Cloud's legs are, though, obscuring the fact that his waist is practically under his chin.
Trousers aside, two things about Cloud's outfit draw my attention. The first is that he's wearing surprisingly normal boots. They've got slightly unusual fold-over tops, but aside from that they're common-or-garden work books. I own a pair of boots not dissimilar to Cloud's myself, and I get it, they're very comfortable. The other thing is his weird belt, stolen from a Victorian strongman and with attached suspenders for... what? Holding up the belt? What is it with Final Fantasy games and belts? Actually, now that I think about it the belt and suspenders are probably designed so that Cloud can hang the Buster Sword on his back. You might think doing so would lead to a moment of agony as your vertebrae explode followed by a lifetime in a wheelchair, but here's the theory I subscribe to: the planet of FFVII has much lower gravity than Earth. That's why everyone can jump ridiculously high and Cloud can lift his sword.

Squall - Final Fantasy VIII

It's a "James Dean falls into a vat of liquid anime" look for the hero of FFVIII, and this is almost something you could see a real person wearing. It's basically just a white t-shirt, leather jacket and black trousers, after all, although they do seem to be leather trousers. Swap the leather for jeans and hey, that's almost normal! Oh, right, the belts. There's always something going on with the belts. The crossed belts do make sense when you think Squall's kind of a gunslinger, and FFVIII's intro does show that the Gunblades require ammunition even if you're stabbing the bullets into people rather than shooting them. I'm not sure how those belts aren't falling down Squall's legs, though. Let's say it's magnets. Less readily explained are the belts wrapped around his right leg. Are they spares, in case his other belts fail? Does he hand them out to those without belts, bringing joy to the loose-trousered people of the world? If only FFVIII had received as many sequels as Final Fantasy VII, we might have had a glimpse into Squall's future as the owner, proprietor and best customer of Squall's Belt Shack, the Cheapest Belts in Balamb.

Zidane - Final Fantasy IX

If that's what the cuffs look like, we should all give thanks that Zidane got rid of the rest of the shirt. However, seeing someone wearing cuffs that aren't attached to any sleeves always makes me think of male strippers, so thanks for that, Square. I'm sure there are other things that can be said about Zidane's outfit, but I cannot get past those cuffs. I feel like he should be able to glide short distances using those bloody things. I can just imagine Zidane walking into a jewellers and saying "I need the biggest cufflinks you have. No, bigger. Bigger."
Okay, cuffs aside Zidane has has a very nice doily around his neck and boots that would fill with water every time it rained. He's so close to figuring out how belts work, though! He just needs to buy a shorter one. Or steal one, because he's a thief. An unappealing little goblinoid thief with the disturbing face of a porcelain doll and hair like a bad David Bowie wig.

Tidus - Final Fantasy X

Good god, and I thought Zidane's design was bad. At least I could kind of see what they were going for with Zidane, but Tidus' outfit is just completely insane. I once described this costume as "the result of running a toddler's wardrobe through a woodchipper and then randomly sewing the pieces back together," and I'm not sure I can come up with a better description than that. I'm going to try, though. He's the ghost of a surfer who died in a terrible accident at a fabric recycling centre. The host of a kid's TV show from a universe where mankind was enslaved by a race of alien clowns. A jigsaw puzzle of garbage dump that's been assembled wrong. He looks, to be blunt, like a complete idiot. He's wearing what appear to be rubber socks, for pity's sake. And again, surprisingly normal boots. Which he swims in. Underwater. Yes, these are Tidus' underwater swimming clothes, because nothing says deep-sea exploration like dungarees. It may sound hypocritical of me to complain about this after I said Noctis' design was boring, but it's possible to go too far in the other direction, you know?

Vaan - Final Fantasy XII

As a child, Vaan was once kicked in the shin. Vowing to never suffer through such pain again, he built a custom set of impenetrable leg armour. Unfortunately, this meant he had no money left to buy any other clothes, and so he had to settle for a vest he made from the leftover scraps of metal. All I can think of is how unpleasant a steel vest would feel as it rubbed against your nipples. Or maybe Vaan is into that kind of thing. If he is, I wish they'd mentioned it in FFXII, anything that gave Vaan even the smallest amount of personality would have been a welcome addition.
They say wearing socks with sandals is a fashion faux-pas, but I'm not sure if that rule still holds when your socks are leather. On the other hand (ha ha,) Vaan has swerved the stigma of wearing fingerless gloves by donning gloves that are only fingers. I should point out that Vaan lives in a desert city, just in case you had any lingering doubts as to the practicality of his outfit. Business on the bottom, party on the top, that's Vaan, and if this image is anything to go by it's a sexy party.

Lightning - Final Fantasy XIII

The shoulderpad makes its triumphant return in FFXIII! It's something of a runty, vestigial shoulderpad with no elaborate horn sticking out of it but hey, it's nice to see it back. Lightning is often accused of being nothing more than a female version of Cloud, but I don't think that's fair. True, they both favour the single shoulder-pad and the sleeveless turtleneck, but were Cloud's boot plagued by a swarm of small belts? I think not. I don't mind Lightning's shoe-belts so much, even if they are utterly useless, because she's on of the few FF character to wear a regular, standard belt around her waist in the appropriate manner. Lightning also brings back the cape, something that has been sorely lacking from FF heroes in recent years. Overall, though, I'd say Lightning's design is a little bland and no amount of superfluous belts is going to change that. Unless they wrapped her entirely in belts like some kind of leather mummy. That would definitely not be bland. It'd make the combat a lot more interesting, for starters.

So, in conclusion I think my favourite is Terra and the worst is Tidus by a significant margin, and although I've given some of them a hard time I do like the majority of these character designs. The pre-Final Fantasy IX ones, anyway. They're striking, fun and unique and even after all these years a tiny part of me still wishes I could get away with dressing like Squall. Don't worry, I know I can't and I won't try it. Not again.

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RUGRATS: TOTALLY ANGELICA (GAME BOY COLOR)

It's time for another kid's game, by which I mean a game you'd give to your kids if you resented them for ruining your carefree life, the digital equivalent of handing them a birthday card that simply reads "you're adopted." It's Tiertex Design's 2000 Game Boy Color journey into spiritual oblivion Rugrats: Totally Angelica!

Rugrats was a Nickelodeon cartoon - the second original series they ever made, I believe - about a group of babies that could talk to each other and had wacky adventures thanks to them not understanding the adult world. Much like Doug, it's one of those shows I saw a lot as a kid despite not liking it, because watching any cartoon was better than watching no cartoons at all or even, god forbid, going outside or taking up a hobby. I think the main reason I don't like it is that I have a visceral hatred of baby-talk. A weird personal quirk, I know, but hearing a grown person referring to their parents as "mummy and daddy" sets my teeth on edge and while it makes more sense in a show where the characters are literal babies it still annoys me enough that I could never enjoy Rugrats. At least the show kept Mark Mothersbaugh in work while Devo were on hiatus.

The star of Totally Angelica is, unsurprisingly, Angelica herself. She's the slightly older cousin of Rugrats' main character: a spoiled, narcissistic bully who torments the other characters, which makes for an unusual choice of player character. Of course, none of that comes through in the gameplay, and because it stars a girl then this must surely be a (groan) "game for girls." I hope you like fashion and make-up.

The game begins, and Angelica is dumped into a desolate shopping centre with no other humans present and a décor scheme so vile it'll make you wish humans had evolved in pitch-black caves, thus obviating the need to grow eyes. Here's where I say the one nice thing I have to say about RTA: Angelica's sprite isn't bad. She's immediately recognisable as Angelica, and her animations are okay. It's all downhill from this lofty spire of praise, mind you.

I found a shop called Phil's Fashions. I seem to recall Phil is one of the babies from the show. I'm not going to take fashion advice from a baby. I've been dressing like a teenager from 1998 since, well, 1998 and it's served me very well thus far. I suppose I'd better go in, though. It's not like there's anything else to do and the wallpaper out here is causing my optic nerves to form a union so they vote on strike action.

Inside lurks Grandpa's Cookie Catch. Do I want to catch cookies? No, not really. Couldn't you just give me the cookies, Grandpa? Why do you have to make a weird game of it? Too much time on your hands since you retired, that's your problem.

The goal here is to catch the flying cookies as the toasters fire them towards you. Angelica slides left or right and the cookies always land in one of three specific spots in the left, right or middle of the screen, so as long as you move back to the centre after each cookie is thrown you'll have plenty of time to move and catch the rest. You only need six cookies to win, so if you manage to grab the first six you can put your Game Boy down and do something more exciting, like crossing every individual name out of the phone book with a bookie's pen or reading the shipping forecast for this day twenty years ago, until the minigame finishes.
As you can see, it's a minigame that takes the basics of Pong and miraculously manages to remove every iota of fun, but there's another more important issue here: who the hell puts cookies in the toaster? That has to be a fire hazard. Grandpa's going to have a hard time explaining to social services why he was launching scalding-hot biscuits at his granddaughter.

It is very important to keep Grandpa happy. You know the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"? It's that kind of situation, except rather than sending you to the cornfield Grandpa will kill you with high-velocity molten snacks.

Here's your reward - some new tights. Hush money from Grandpa, no doubt. Yes, RTA is all about fashion, with the aim of these minigames being to amass a collection of new clothes, jewellery, haircuts and make-up. I can hardly wait to see the finished ensemble.

Upon entering the next shop - Suzy's Shoes - I was presented with the chance to enter Fluffy's Pinball Maze. "Threatened with" might be more accurate, actually. "Punished by," even. Fluffy the cat has the expression of a pet that means to finally gain revenge on its abusive owner, and boy howdy does she have a cruel plan up her furry sleeves.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Rugrats: Totally Angelica is the most visually repellent videogame I have ever played. The equivalent punishment for your ears would be sticking your head into a metal drum filled with howler monkeys that have been trained to sing opera. Everything is a hyper-saturated nightmare of clashing colours and unfathomable patterns cunningly designed by the developers to make you look somewhere, anywhere but at the screen in the hopes you won't notice how bad the gameplay is. Well, sorry, Tiertex, but I've put my eyesight at permanent risk so I can see through to that gameplay and I'm sorry to report the the gameplay is complete shite.
The goal of Fluffy's Pinball Maze is to move the ball of yarn through the maze. You have no direct control over the ball, but at each junction you can press the A button to release a spring that nudges the ball onto the correct path. There is only one correct path, by the way. If you miss with the spring, you simply have to suffer through the agonisingly slow wait as the ball trundles back the way it came, bounces off a wall and then trundles back towards the spring so you can have another go. Not that you will miss, because as well as being so boring that even Satan himself would throw in a few power-ups to spice things up, it's also insultingly easy. Yes, yes, I know "it's for children" but what kind of children? Dormice children? Earthworm children? It must have really backfired on any parent who bought this game to keep their kids entertained, because kids love extremely slow and boring games where they have minimal influence over what's happening on the screen.

Our top scientists should start work immediately on investigating the maze's time-altering powers, because the three minutes or so it takes to clear the stage feels like several days. If you do manage to finish without your brain sliding you into a protective coma, your reward is one new pair of shoes from a small selection offered to you, including some high-heeled boots that are extremely inappropriate for a child.

This shop is called Lil's Lipsticks, and it looks like a cast member from Geordie Shore ran face-first into the window.

Oh come on. Sliding block puzzles? Already? This game is rapidly becoming my own personal nightmare, although something incredible has happened: Fluffy's maze was so soul-drainingly terrible that a sliding block puzzle is actually enjoyable by comparison.

It helps that the game doesn't bother moving many of the tiles around. It even shows you the tiles being shuffled, so it ends up being more of a memory game as you try to perform the moves you just saw in reverse. I can just about live with that. Rugrats: Totally Angelica therefore wins the coveted "VGJunk's Least Hated Sliding Block Puzzle" award. The trophy is a three-foot tall bronze hand extending its middle finger.

From the lipstick shop you receive eye shadow, which is not lipstick but it still just as inappropriate for a four-year-old as the boots were. Angelica herself appears to be preparing to slap someone with the back of her hand. Given what I remember about Rugrats the cartoon, this does not seem wildly out of character.

And now, the reason I've been collecting all these items is revealed: it's time for a fashion show. Let's hope the judges are impressed by yellow eyeshadow and pink boots, because that's really all I've got here.

The judges are Angelica's fellow children plus Reptar, Rugrats's fake Godzilla creature. That's Five Babies and a Kaiju, coming soon to a cinema near you. The judges give you a score that I would like to say is based on your outfit, but there's no guidance given as to what is fashionable and at this point all the judges were giving me scores of one and two. Even Reptar, the heartless bastard. He took one look at this child playing dress-up and said "Jesus, you're a mess, kid." That is brutal.
I suppose that you're just supposed to know what is fashionable, because you're cool and hip enough to be playing a Rugrats game. When preparing for the fashion show you get to choose which of the items you're wearing in each category, but I didn't notice an increase in score if I wore a matching outfit or anything. The only things that seem to increase your score are not wearing your default clothing and wearing items from later in the game. But how do you make progress?

There's an elevator that'll take you to the next floor of the mall, but it's only accessible once you've scored more points than the target displayed at the top of the screen. Until I reach that magic number, I suppose I'd better play more minigames. So I did. I even tried the pinball maze again, against my better judgement, and guess what? It's exactly the same as the first time, with not even the slightest change in layout. RTA has somehow surpassed the tedious grinding of even the most hateful Japanese CRPG, but I got there in the end. I found some new clothes, and I put together an outfit that is sure to wow even the most ennui-filled giant lizard: polka-dot tights, a tutu and a shirt covered in swastikas.

See? Straight from the Third Reich embroidery team! Okay, so on closer inspection you can see that they're clockwise, "non-Nazi" swastikas and they'd be much harder to see on actual GBC hardware but still, you'd think that when making a game for kids based on a Nickelodeon cartoon you'd try to avoid anything that might look like a goddamn Nazi emblem.

That outfit was still not quite enough to meet the points threshold - although I can't imagine why - but it helped me figure something out: you don't have to score all the points in one go. They're cumulative, so you can simply keep entering the same outfit, subjecting Angelica to a withering judgement of her looks by her peers, over and over until you've scraped up enough points to move on to level two. That's what I did. I think Angelica could stand to learn a humbling lesson or two.

A new floor of the mall means new minigames, like Tommy's Match and Snap, with an image of Tommy that looks as though a skateboard was edited out from under his feet mere moments ago.

Match and Snap is, well, it's Snap. Pairs of cards flip over, and if they match then you hit the button to win a point. Get four correct and you win the game, press the button when it's not a matching pair and Tommy gets a point. Good old Snap, surely Tiertex can't mess that up? Oh, bless your naivete. The problem is that the card flips sometimes - almost every time I played it, in fact - seem to get stuck in a loop where the same set of four or so non-matching cards are repeatedly revealed and you just have to sit and wait for this to play out. I honestly thought I might never play a more boring game than Doug's Big Game starring Doug, the human equivalent of unseasoned porridge, but an awful lot of RTA involves waiting for something to happen and then not doing much of anything when it does happen.

I did get a new haircut out of it. I call it The Spaghetti Rat's-Nest Disaster.

Another new game is Chukie's Color-Match Machine, and Chuckie's looking very confident for a character whose main defining trait is cowardice. Maybe he's got insider knowledge that Angelica is colour blind.

This one's a simple Simon-type game: Chuckie's machine flashes a series of colours at you, and you have to remember the sequence and repeat it. Is it fun? No, it absolutely is not. Will Chuckie's grotesque face, the visage of a Troll doll that was melted in a microwave and then had a single human tooth shoved into it, haunt your nightmares for weeks to come? Quite possibly. On the plus side, this is one of the more competent minigames, because it works as expected, it's relatively quick and mercifully brief.

Apparently the judges did not find this outfit sufficiently "fly" and "fresh" enough to grant me access to level three. Did Reptar just fly in from Milan Fashion Week or something? I can't meet his impossible standards. All the other judges, sure, I can ignore them. They're babies. I'm not upset about not being fashionable enough for someone who regularly shits themselves, but Reptar? That stings. I crave validation from the giant reptile monsters of this world.
Oh well, I'll just keep entering the same outfits in the fashion show until I rack up enough points to move on, right?

And so Rugrats: Totally Angelica becomes a Sisyphean punishment for some terrible crime I must have committed against the gods. Now I have to repeatedly play the same terrible minigames with no variation, over and over, until I can move on to the next level where more of the same games await. I know Angelica's a pretty terrible kid but she's still just a kid, she doesn't deserve this.

Here's another minigame: Phil and Lil's Bug Hunt, and as hard as I prayed that it'd turn out to be related to Aliens in some way, it is not. Instead it's the vegetable-picking parts of Harvest Moon's gameplay made slow and awkward. It also makes a mockery of the title Totally Angelica, because Angelica doesn't appear at all. Instead, you use one of the kids to lift up plants, your actions hampered by your sprite's tendency to slide into a different position without your input to prevent you from picking a whole row of plants quickly. Sometimes the plants have an insect underneath, and if they do then control switches to the other baby and you have to grab the insect. At least they're out in the fresh air and getting some healthy exercise?

I'll be honest, I've played far too many "kid's" games but none have made me feel my age like this one, where I'm skeeved out by applying blusher to a child. It's one step removed from the terrifying world of child beauty pageants. I cannot wait for this game to be over.

After a long and arduous struggle (to stay awake) I managed to reach the final floor of the mall, where a special minigame lurks: Fantasy World. The first two times I wrote that name out I typed "Fantasy Zone." Oh, how I wish this was Fantasy Zone... although it's not entirely dissimilar. Fantasy World is almost, almost a side-scrolling shooter, where Angelica flies around on a carousel horse. Her goal is to collect enough ladder parts to reach the tower where her favourite doll has been imprisoned. Why doesn't she just fly up to the tower on her flying horse? Because her flying horse is shit, that's why.

This may be difficult for you to believe, given the quality of the other games, but this one is the worst of the lot. This means that the sliding block puzzle are only the third most terrible experience in RTA, which I'm sure is a portent of the End Times. There are many reasons why Fantasy World is the worst, first and foremost being that that it's the longest. Maybe even The Longest Thing. It certainly felt that way while I was playing it. Another problem is that every aspect of the gameplay is completely awful in every way, which you can see is going to hinder your attempts to get some fun out of it. Simply moving Angelica around the screen is an exercise in pure frustration; the horse can't maintain a steady altitude and it's movements are as smooth as a gravel enema. Then there are the other babies that constantly pelt you with projectiles from off-screen. Get hit by a projectile and Angelica is sent flying, completely out of your control, halfway across the stage. You can collect magic wands for your own projectile attack, but this does nothing to the babies and only serves to turn the winch handle on the various wells - assuming you can line yourself up to hit the handles in the first place, when your horse is thrashing around as though it's just realised it's a wooden fairground ride brought to life through dark magics.

Even placing the ladders is a nightmare: you're supposed to simply fly to the place where the ladder needs to be and it's automatically assembled, but the final ladder space is too high for the horse to reach. So, you have to find an apple in the well, which lets you fly a little higher... but the hitbox for depositing the ladder is tiny and also not at the end of the ladder. It's around that area somewhere, but not where you'd think (i.e. where Angelica is in the screenshot above.) I eventually found it by flapping around the area and making groaning noise like a washing machine filled with talking Eeyore dolls.
I don't think I'm really selling this properly. This minigame is astonishingly bad. How-did-this-get-released, barely-playable, what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this bad. The faecal cherry atop a crap cake with diarrhoea icing. But I did it. I built that goddamn ladder.

I won a tiara. Okay, sure. I'm psyched. Maybe Reptar will give me the time of day now.

I've gone for a sort of Cleopatra-meets-lumberjack look. I think it works. Please tell me it works, I can't take this much longer.

It worked, in the sense that I have exceeded the maximum points required, The "points required" counter has not increased. The elevator won't take me to a new floor of the mall. Nothing else has changed. I think I'm trapped, alone forever in this nightmare world. The only other thing I could think of that might trigger an ending is collecting every single item of clothing / make-up / jewellery, and I will not be doing that. I'd sooner gnaw through my own scrotum and use my testicles as finger-puppets to recreate the "Summer Lovin'" scene from Grease.

This is where my time with Rugrats: Totally Angelica comes to an end, then. Congratulations, Tiertex, you did it. This game has supplanted NSYNC: Get to the Show and Russell Grant's Astrological Bullshit and become the single worst game I have ever played. Everything about it is utterly dreadful, and it's served with a toxic sauce of sheer contempt for any of the children unfortunate enough to play it. That's the Game Boy Color: Where Beloved Cartoons Go To Die.

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