Video Game Review: ‘Wonder World Amusement Park’ Creates Portable Fun

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CHICAGO – Majesco’s “Wonder World Amusement Park” for the Nintendo DS is a pleasurable diversion but could just as easily be deemed by some buyers to be a wasted opportunity to be something more. Ultimately, for a low purchase price and a game targeted at kids, it’s hard to complain too much about a title that will likely satisfy its target audience.

Reviewing a title like “Wonder World Amusement Park” can be difficult. Anyone with even casual gaming skills will burn through the “plot” of the game in under an hour. If you like detail, character, and story, then this is not the title for you. It’s merely a collection of mini-games, something that will be challenging for little kids and an occasional diversion for the older ones.

Wonder World Amusement Park
Wonder World Amusement Park
Photo credit: Majesco

Could “Amusement Park” have been a little more diverse in its mini-game design and a little more in-depth? Of course. But it’s a game that most outlets are selling for under $20, so even if only a dozen of the mini-games satisfy the player, it seems like a reasonable purchase. Nothing about “Wonder World Amusement Park” is going to revolutionize how you look at your DS, but its creators never set out to do so.

Wonder World Amusement Park
Wonder World Amusement Park
Photo credit: Majesco

“Wonder World Amusement Park” features 30 different park games in six areas of a fictional theme park. Players use the touch screen to play nearly all of the games and can challenge their friends in local multiplayer fun. As they do at real amusement parks, each games earns a player tickets and prizes, the former to unlock each successive area of the park and the latter to customize your character with goofy outfits and accessories.

The game may boast 30 mini-games, but many of them are repetitive variations on the same thing.

For example, “Troll Whack” and “Ghost Whack” are essentially the exact same game in different sections of the park. There are a few variations on the ring toss, racing games, shooting gallery, and fishing/crane games but to say the title boasts 30 mini-games is a bit of an exaggeration when one considers how many games feel exactly the same.

The park is divided into one central area known as the “Carnival Zone” and five themed sections - “Pirate Zone,” “Fantasy Zone,” “Haunted Zone,” “Space Zone,” and “Dino Zone”. Most areas feature three games to start and then tickets earn the player access to the final two.

For example, in the “Carnival Zone” that starts the game, the player uses the stylus to pop balloons in “Balloon Darts,” shoot hoops in “Basketball,” and roll for points in “Roller Ball,” before opening “Demon Shooter” and “Bumper Cars”.

Wonder World Amusement Park
Wonder World Amusement Park
Photo credit: Majesco

It will be personal preference but some of the games barely qualify as diversions. In one, all the player has to do is tap the stylus quickly to hit a strength meter and another is completely random, requiring nothing more than the pull of a crank with one tap. Come on. It’s like a slot machine but you can’t win any money.

Every game should require at least a small amount of brain power and/or hand-eye coordination. Otherwise, it’s not really a “game”.

The other games included in “Wonder World Amusement Park” are “Bell Ring,” “Knife Throw,” “Dunk Tank,” “Broadside,” and “Pirate Race” in the “Pirate Zone”; “Troll Whack,” “Ye Ol’ Ringtoss,” “Elven Arrows,” “King’s Pond,” and “Dragon Catch” in the “Fantasy Zone”; “Fright Wheel,” “Bat Toss,” “Slingshot,” “Ghost Whack,” and “Graveyard Golf” in the “Haunted Zone”; “Space Rings,” “Alien Whack,” “Astro Smash,” “Space Race,” and “Robo War” in the “Space Zone”; and “Dino Hunt,” “Dino Toss,” “Dino Fish,” “Dino Roll,” and “Dino Run” in the, you guessed it, “Dino Zone”.

Everyone will have their favorites, but “Roller Ball,” “Ghost Whack” and “Dragon Catch” are pretty addictive. Like a trip to the actual amusement park, your satisfaction with “Wonder World” will depend largely on your expectations. Personally, I don’t expect to thoroughly enjoy more than a handful of games in an actual theme park, so $20 for a few addictive diversions in a virtual one seems like a reasonable deal.

‘Wonder World Amusement Park’ was released by Majesco Entertainment and developed by Majesco Studios Santa Monica. It is rated E (Everyone). The version reviewed was on DS, but a version is also available on Wii. It was released on January 23rd, 2009.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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