I would like to take the time to speak about a rather highly forgotten game series, Oscar, and to let any in the VGMaps community know this, for those who haven't heard of it nor remembered it in long.
Here's the lowdown...
That series stars the rather titular character, Oscar, an otter/chipmunk hybrid of some sorts, on his adventures through many themed levels to get to the goal, mostly themed on Hollywood movie fame and such.
The first game, made by Flair Software, a studio from UK, was brought to the Amiga computers, and the CD32, which was a launch bundle-in with Diggers and was later ported to MS-DOS and SNES, and it focused on Oscar traveling through seven levels, each divided into stages, based on select Hollywood famous movies and their fitting genres, collecting the Oscars, the statues made after his liking, and facing many dangers and hazards along the way, before reaching the clapboard that marks the exit in each stage.
A bit of history, the game started out as a promotional game for a children's toy line, "Trolls", and was made to gather more sales to those toys. After its launch in 92, I guess the game was going to be followed up, but licensing rights made it a bit too troubling, and the rights they had lapsed sooner or later. So, a different IP had to be made from scratch, hence, the rise of Oscar, with almost the whole of its blueprints made intact, but everything else from the rest had to be made brand-new to distance it from that game.
I can quickly guess that premise had no story focus, nor plot cohesion, but the gameplay looked rather fun, running through each stage to collect Oscars before getting to the goal. It looked neat as a platform game.
The one weapon Oscar can fight off enemies is his yo-yo, and can be rather handy in many tight situations. Of course, Oscar can hop on enemies to defeat them, if careful enough.
Each level held plenty of goodies and secrets, such as power-ups and finding hidden letters that spell "B-O-N-U-S", which can take Oscar to the Bonus Stage upon collecting them all and spelled right.
But, there is one nasty trick hidden.
There is a collectable letter hidden just like all the previous, but that letter's spelled "G", and if Oscar collects it, that letter takes "N"'s place and put the rest together, it spells "B-O-G-U-S", and that, in turn, can take him to the "Bogus Stage", kinda the opposite of "Bonus Stage".
No joke. Even the stage's name gives it self-explanatory reason of why its named that.
There, Oscar has to find specific items before exiting, unlike the Bonus Stage that freely gains bonus points, not to mention the only place to get a Lucky Rabbit, which signifies as the game's Continues, before leaving.
One hazard they all do have in common, the rising water that fills the whole level, hence the main reason anyone can't stay there for too long. If in the water, Oscar has to leave fast before he drowns.
The Bonus and Bogus Stages do have their own negative outcomes upon failing them. For Bonus, everything collected there will be forfeit. For Bogus, and its a rather nasty cost, a life is forfeit.
The checkpoints in each stage are the Big Red Elephants, that kinda seemed to be Oscar's friend, who marks where he finds them and reappears if he loses a life by any danger. In the Bonus/Bogus Stages, the elephants are marked exits.
The CD32 version has graphics looked rather stellar, and having 2 more new levels in addition to total it up to nine, even the tilesets and backgrounds, but the music is amazing to hear!
However, people that bought that game have pointed out many flaws, such as complaints about enemy and hazard placement, physics problems, and level designs, but the SNES version had it quite worse.
I can point out, from seeing the game's videos I've seen on YouTube, the enemies don't take one hit to take down, but three, and I do mean, three hits to defeat. How could they be programmed to stop them in three hits? It should be regularly one, unless reserved for tougher enemies.
The game wasn't followed on until the DSi came out, and a comeback for Oscar had to be made.
The first game in the DSiWare line was "Oscar in Toyland", which centers on Oscar's adventures through many toy-themed levels. Later, we got "Oscar in Movieland", which is about movies, like the first game. Then, a sequel to Toyland, "Oscar in Toyland 2", continued the toy-themed adventures, but more different this time, and finally, "Oscar's World Tour", which featured Oscar going around the world for adventures and thrills in levels based on real-world locations.
They were all made by Sanuk Games, & published by Virtual Playground.
Oscar's DSiWare games have featured a neat minimap for the touchscreen that keeps track on where people explored levels. Kinda handy to make sure nobody got lost. If only it would've been improved more.
I can tell all of Oscar's DSiWare games are completely different, albeit with the same blueprint from the first game still used time and again, but they're not ports of it. Just different games.
The games sizes are rather small, and had so much levels in them. Impressed they crammed so much in keeping with the DSiWare's 20MB limit.
The only things that kept Oscar from being a more memorable series are lacks of story cohesion and plot relevance.
I mean, I can distinctly tell there's obviously no main villains in each game past the first that instigated dangers that started Oscar's newer journeys. And there's not an original story made for Oscar to be told in each of his games.
Not to mention this, not a single game featured boss battles, not even original bosses to take down by Oscar. Not a ONE. That would've been more enticing to the series to make for plot cohesion.
And, even more, the series didn't get its chance on the Nintendo 3DS that should've taken great use of its advancements, such as the wider top screen resolution, better audio, and new improvements to the overall gameplay blueprint to make the series less obscure. The 3D feature would be optional, of course, but that would've been neat to see.
We could've had more amazing adventures there. In my mind, I imagined a potential new original Oscar game for the 3DS, "Oscar's Galaxy Trip", an outer-space theme adventure. That would've been great.
I didn't get my chance to play them in my spare time, not even the DSi games. Kept forgetting to.
So far, no one else had made playthroughs/longplay videos about Oscar's DSiWare games. I've seen later videos that paid more attention to them, but not playthroughs. Not to mention there's not much behind-the-scenes insights/interviews about the people responsible for Oscar.
The only people worked on Oscar are more or less the same people that worked on Oscar, and I thought the same people or new devs worked on Oscar's DSi games, but I don't know yet for sure.
I don't even know which studio holds Oscar's IP rights now with Flair and Virtual Playground's shuttering(if its true or not), but I hope someone around here can take some time to gather that info.
Obscure as it is, Oscar still deserves to be remembered by people that acknowledge the series, the history, and the games made. I'm sure some people still had fun playing them, no matter what.
Oscar still has a chance to make another comeback someday, and I can sure hope his return will be made more memorable than ever before.
To any that played them before, what do you remember about Oscar and its games that followed up?
