Cheese Cat-astrophe with Speedy Gonzales

Everyone's favorite lightning-fast, nonhedgehog character leaves his pursuers in the dust in yet another Looney Tunes video game adaptation.

Speed Kills

For a portable game, Speedy looks as if it just jumped off the Saturday-morning cartoon lineup. This little rodent is excellently detailed, right down to his trademark ten-gallon hat that flaps in the wind when his little legs start going. Essentially a run-and-jumper, Speedy also uses a hat-throwing attack to waylay meanies that can't be dispatched by simply jumping on them.

Speedy's main problem is that he lives up to his name all too well. The Speedster is a fairly large sprite, and once he gets going, he's always positioned at the center of the screen instead of the extreme sides. This cuts into your reaction time substantially, which gets particularly maddening when you don't have time to jump across a missing bridge section or chasm, and lose a ! life. The only way around this j is to slow Speedy down and enjoy the scenery, but that only makes the game boring. „ This fella was meant to race!

Too Cheesy?

Speedy excels where the other handheld 'Toon games (like the Taz entries) failed-in the control department. The well-done backgrounds depict detailed mountains and other environments (mostly deserts). Speedy almost stalls at times, but he floors it over the speed bumps and makes for a fun little game.