Taz-Mania (Sega Genesis)

Taz-Mania is a 2D side-scrolling platformer game released in 1992, & was based on the TV series of the same name. It was released for the mh:awesomegames:Sega Genesis, Master System, and Game Gear, with all versions being published by Sega. This page will focus on the Sega Genesis version.

Plot
Taz's father tells him and his siblings the story of the seabirds. They lay giant eggs that can feed tasmanians for over a year. Intrigued, Taz goes on the hunt to find an egg from seabirds throughout Tasmania. This story is the same for all 3 versions.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The music, while not as unbearable as the Game Gear version, still sounds terrible. Now they sound like they were just thrown together in about 12 minutes without any real thought, nor effort put into it.
 * 2) * The title screen music is just a loud sound playing over a mindless jungle like tune. There are several other annoying repeating sounds throughout the whole tune that just make it worse as it goes on.
 * 3) * The Impatient Taz theme is absolutely awful as it's a bunch of horrid, & disorienting triumphant sounds.
 * 4) * The mini boss music is just 2 notes being repeated over, & over again.
 * 5) ** The mini boss weakening tunes are even more ear grating than the actual mini boss music, with louder pitches, & more annoying notes.
 * 6) * The factory music is either a really bad ticking noise on top that is very high pitch, or a really bad low-pitched ticking noise on top. The rest of those tracks are nothing to write home about either other than they go off-tone quite a bit.
 * 7) * The 1st jungle music is one disoriented jazz track put over another annoying track that consists of a repeating high pitched noise, then some random bleeps, & blips that are unfitting, & stupidly out of place within the music itself.
 * 8) ** The 3rd jungle music is somehow even worse. It is just a repeated note of a low pitched "bum" while the sound of what seems to be a low-pitched cat meow plays every 3 seconds.
 * 9) * The 2nd mine music(which is also the ending music) is very annoying as well, & off-pitch sometimes just to further tick you off.
 * 10) * The 1st deep jungle music is an even worse version of the 3rd jungle music! That is pure, & udder laziness.
 * 11) The level design is very poor, & unorganized.
 * 12) * In the desert levels, there are areas where you have to fall down to progress, & in some of those places, they put bombs in the very spot where you are most likely to land, forcing in damage.
 * 13) * There are times where you have to make small jumps, which are nearly impossible to do. The factory levels have it in spades.
 * 14) * In the ice levels, there are moving platforms that you have to navigate on, & thanks to the slippery controls, you might just fall off the moving platforms before you can get onto another one. Add in the bad draw distance, & you get a horrible combination.
 * 15) * Later on in the jungle levels, you'll have to go through leaps of faith in order to get anywhere! These also force you to use the spin attack as it also makes you go faster, but even with that it's still nearly impossible.
 * 16) ** In some instances, they have enemies on the left edge of the platforms that throw spears at you.
 * 17) ** You can even fall off the edges of the platforms as none of them have walls to prevent you from doing so.
 * 18) * The mine cart section of the mine levels is extremely unfair, & will even have different hazards right next to each other.
 * 19) * The dark jungle levels involve you having to go down rivers, & the logs will either take a long time to descend, or just descend immediately after you jump on them, & it's completely random.
 * 20) * The ruins levels are just boring mazes scattered with enemies, hazards, & food to pick up.
 * 21) While the characters from the TV series look fine, the rest of the graphics look to be poorly drawn.
 * 22) * In some levels, the platforms are very hard to make out due to them having the very same colors. This can get especially tedious later on.
 * 23) Terrible gameplay that reeks of bad idea after bad idea.
 * 24) * Taz either does a small hop, or a full on leap with nothing in between. Either way, you can barely move while you're in the air, which is inexcusable for a game in 1992.
 * 25) * Not only that, but Taz will automatically eat anything that the game considers edible, including bombs. Combined with the first example of WIS #2, & you got yourself a recipe for disaster.
 * 26) * When Taz gets hit, there is little to no invincibility time, so you're bound to die.
 * 27) * Some of the enemies are invincible, & will give away lots of your health. Note that some of these enemies appear early on in the game.
 * 28) * Plus, your spin attack can knock off key items off the map. This can be especially infuriating when you're low on health.
 * 29) * Very bad draw distance, which makes some enemies, & other harmful things nearly impossible to avoid unless you actually remember what to do in that segment of a level. This also means that even early on there are leaps of faith you have to do.
 * 30) * The mine cart parts of the mine levels go way too fast, & a touch of one of the walls is an automatic death! Some instances will have you jump onto another part of the track, & there is barely any time to do so.
 * 31) * The bosses tend to appear out of nowhere, causing cheap deaths along the way.
 * 32) Awful controls as mentioned in WIS #4. Taz is very stiff in most levels, & his walking speed is slow.
 * 33) * In the ice levels, he controls much worse as it makes him much slipperier. Plus, when he spins while on the ice, he simply stops. While this can be helpful sometimes, this will usually make it impossible to fight off enemies, & even worse is that you can't move until you stop pressing the spin button.
 * 34) * Even worse, when he picks up something to eat in the ice levels after running for a bit, he won't stop going in that direction, leading to chances of you getting killed easily.
 * 35) * The mine cart moves a little too slow for the insanely fast mine cart sections.
 * 36) * It is hard to go up a higher level in the dark jungle levels as it requires you to also press the up button while hopefully getting a full leap.
 * 37) * Picking up items that you can throw requires the action button, but the instruction manual does not tell you that you can do that.
 * 38) Horrible hit detection. Taz's hitbox is several pixels bigger than it needs to be.
 * 39) The bosses, while taken from the TV series most of the time, are very boring.
 * 40) Bad Ending: The egg hatches out a baby seabird, which then calls Taz its "momma", & chases him throughout the ending screen.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The characters from the show do look like they're supposed to look.
 * 2) The sound effects actually sound like they're from the cartoon and do a good job.
 * 3) The startup screen is pretty funny, with Taz eating the S in the Sega logo.
 * 4) The story of the eggs from Tasmanian seabirds told by Hugh, Taz's father is fairly decent for a concept of a video game (despite it suffering from poor execution of sub-standard music tracks, lackluster gameplay and simple, yet boring boss fights).

How to Fix the Issues

 * 1) Have a version of the game be made for the mh:awesomegames:Sega CD.
 * 2) Add a remix of the cartoon theme song and other music tracks to replace the terrible music in the Genesis original.
 * 3) * Also, make the soundtrack more of a CD quality.
 * 4) Voice clips will be provided by the cast from the show, including Jim Cummings as Taz.
 * 5) Reuse sound effects from the Warner Bros. cartoon library rather than creating original ones.
 * 6) Add characters, such as Digeri Dingo and Wendal T. Wolf, to the story.
 * 7) Make the boss fights more interesting.
 * 8) * Francis X. Bushlad brings out his war tank to destroy Taz after giving up on his bow and arrow.
 * 9) Redraw the cutscenes with shading and better colors.
 * 10) Add more frames to make the animation smoother in the gameplay.
 * 11) Fix Taz's hit detection issues, so that enemies won't hit him too hard.
 * 12) Tone down the difficulty of the gameplay to make the game much easier.
 * 13) Give the backgrounds more depth, a la the Disney multiplane camera.
 * 14) Add a mini-game in between levels, such as Taz chasing kiwis in a race (borrowing elements from the SNES racing game).

Gameplay
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Reviews
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