Jon told me on twitter that he wanted the game to have analog controls like Mario, but the publishers made him go with tank controls because "that was popular". I remember Michel Ancel had to fight with Ubisoft to let him use analog for Rayman 2, they also wanted him to use tank controls and told him he was crazy for wanting analog. It's a shame how much control publishers can have over these games. Sometimes it really is for the worse.

Okay, but is nobody gonna mention how smooth James' "turning animation" at 12:36 is? Damn, it's like he really is the tank controls.

My little Shesez

1:25 I'm glad there's actually an effort made by reviewers to actually play the game first before riffing into it for comedy's sake. A lot of reviewers still do it but it was super prevalent during the early YouTube days. But yeah the fact that you actually made an effort to see the game all the way through and also see positives where others didn't is a huge reason I appreciate you bud! Keep up the great work.

From the very beginning of this video, with Rascal running around in a house, I wanted it to be remade with better controls... it has that much potential.

You know, since this game has 10 levels and 5 boss levels, not counting the final 6th boss, this level pattern was also used for two more traveller’s tales games after Rascal, which are A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2.

Seeing Jon's prototype I think the game could have been much better. Even from a visual standpoint. I'm curious how he would change it for a director's cut without the pressure of a publisher.
Also, kudos for taking your time with the game. Most reviewers just yell at the bit of footage they made and call it a day.

Oh
My
God

James didn't leave the disc in the console when recording the intro... our little boy is all grown up now.

I love the fact that you actually play the games instead of just testing them and yelling and joking about the fact that they are really really bad! Appreciate it!

12:33 That was the best and funniest example of tank controls I've ever seen!

Jon is a god-tier programmer, and the stuff he and his team worked on all had something that was borderline magic baked in.

Yet again another totally insecure and forgotten platformer, I love you

A Goomba with a 1/5 chance of hurting you when you jump on it?  Sounds like a truly dastardly romhack.

Did you notice that the in-game graphics look better than the cutscenes? I sure as heck did.

You know what would be cool games for you to review, the De Blob games. They both got remastered for all modern platforms so I think they'd be a great choice.

Traveler's Tales was the probably the most impressive Western Developer before they were bought out by Warner Bros (sadly) and other developers got it eventually right, and Jon Burton stands as one my inspirations to try and push game engines to their limits (both storytelling and features to be optimised), considering he is still around (as you've mentioned, but I also want to point out of Jon's director's cut of Sonic 3D Blast) kicking ass on the internets.

The reason why I put (sadly) in the Warner Bros bit was that they are effectively hostages being held within to make Lego games for eternity (for better or worse, looking at Lego City Undercover and virtually all of the Lego games that they've developed respectively) which wastes their potential, but it makes them a heck of a lot money. Jon is still working for them, he should go independent. People would have already know this (considering of how common those games are, much to the point of being Shovelware with one exception), but I wanted to point that out of how sympathetic I am to the guys working at TT.

This game maybe uncontrollable, but there's something charming about the graphics.

Ive just noticed that the audio glitch has been removed in the opening intro so it doesn't sound like Nitro Fred anymore lol.

The game was actually originally supposed to have analog controls, but the lead developer left the project to work on Sonic R. So, they had to get a developer from Psygnosis to lead the game from then on, and they suggested replacing the analog controls with tank controls, a method the engine and camera weren’t built for. There are even early prototypes that have analog controls over on a YouTube channel known as GameHut, which is ran by the guy that developed a majority of Traveller’s Tales games from the ‘90s. Go check out his content, it’s a lot of amazing lost prototypes and content originally made by TT.

To be fair, on the topic of boss rushes, in Konami's Gradius games they have a series staple of having a boss rush level full of bosses that are found nowhere else in the game. The catch is though that they are all bosses from other games in the series so long time fans will still know whats up. They even did this concept in Castlevania Rondo Of Blood on the PC Engine CD with stage 6 being a boss rush of a bunch of old Castlevania bosses summoned by Shaft. In this game's case though, those SHOULD have been the bosses for each world.