Finding Nemo: Nemo's Ocean Discoveries

A quick one for now. I was literally just messing around with stuff I can emulate, I guess I chose this game to test V.Smile with because at least I know what Finding Nemo is and who everyone is (I guess that was my reasoning?), and next thing I know… whoops! I’ve beaten the game.

So, for those not in the know, the V.Smile was a weird console marketed towards very small children, for allegedly educational games. Like it would have been in the toy section of department stores and not the entertainment section (probably). Same sort of SunPlus SoC that powers a lot of plug & play games. Cartridge based games that they call “Smartridges” with sprite graphics. That sort of thing. Allegedly, the idea would be that all the games are edutainment games and so if you get one for your child they become smart and learn all the things. Almost all the games are a licensed game based on some movie or character that kids like, but I don’t think any are a direct adaptation of any movies or anything.

Finding Nemo: Nemo’s Ocean Discoveries is aimed at 4-6 year olds, because it says so on the box, and supposedly teaches you about sea animals (as you would expect from the franchise), and colours and logic and shapes and “comparison skills”. I don’t know if those are things 4-6 year olds are supposed to know already, or if they don’t need to. This is set after the movie, where Nemo wants to go on an adventure of his own like his dad did, so his teacher sends him on one, which sounds more like a class assignment than an adventure on the level of what his dad went through.

I don’t quite actually know what genre to call it, it’s just mde up of 6 stages which are all a different sort of minigame, kind of like the kind of licensed movie tie-in games they had in the early 90s where they just slapped a bunch of level ideas together. Of course I am going to be fair to this and review it with the context that it’s for children, and actually it’s not too bad all things considered. It has the actual basic structure of a game, which is more than I can say for some other things aimed at kids, and nobody would get stuck even on the highest difficulty (fuck if I know what the lowest difficulty is like).

In level 1, for example, you swim around and press the action button to dash which bursts bubbles, which contains… animals, kind of. And then the teacher teaches you about them. With no text! Only recorded speech (which admittedly is pretty clear coming out of a console like this). Fuck you, deaf children! You’re meant to collect all the books on each level as an optional objective, but I accidentally completed the level and you can’t go back, so that sucks. The first minigame is okay too, you just press the button at the right time to go through the swimming fish, taking note of their pattern of movement. This is a very good one to help kids learn stuff actually! Learning when to run across busy roads to avoid traffic is a very important life skill, especially for Canberrans who can’t be arsed waiting for the light to turn green.

Level 2 (where you surf on Crush and collect a certain shape) feels kind of too long, and also teaches kids that a triangle is a triangle. I mean yeah, it’s on the box that it teaches shapes, but is that really what we’re going here? Not teaching kids about any of the cool shapes, just triangles and squares? Swear I already knew that at 4 years old. Also you’re meant to avoid the little turtles but you kind of can’t sometimes, so it’s a good thing it doesn’t really matter because you just pick up more health along the way.

Level 3 is where it gets weird. Dory is there with you, just because we paid good money for this Finding Nemo license and we’re going to use the characters, dammit! And this could be a good concept because you have to pop bubbles that have sea animals, and don’t pop the ones that don’t. Did you know that Dory herself is a sea creature? Also, how’d she get trapped in a fucking bubble when she was there 2 seconds ago? I know it’s part of her character that she’s an idiot, but how? Can’t take that girl out anywhere. By the way, did you know that a bottle is not a sea creature? Amazing! I found myself popping the bubbles here anyway just to be a dickhead. Did you know that a hook is not a sea creature? And also what the hell is going on here?

That’s the only image I have because I didn’t really intend to review this game and I was just messing around, but uhh. It wouldn’t be an emulation glitch, right? It just seems too specific. Could be a bad dump of the cart? But I can still progress through the level and everything else is fine. Did the devs just forget to make that look like a normal part of a submarine? You think kids aren’t going to nootice? When I was 4 years old I nitpicked everything! Still do, 26 years later!

Second minigame is actually kind of interesting, you slide rocks around (they only move in straight lines until they hit something else and then stop, like a good old Pokemon ice puzzle) and then a hermit crab to get it out of there. Kinda liked that, but I’m also a sucker for tile puzzles of all kinds. Last level where you collect colours also drags on a bit too much, though the attempt at a 3D perspective behind Nemo is interesting, although it also doesn’t really work and it is possible for one’s alignment to be off, and also like… colours? Okay, so I guess it’s good that it teaches colour combinations (albeit paint combinations and not light combinations), but it also just feels like a bit of “up yours, colour blind children!” but then I guess the whole console is because the controller has 4 coloured buttons on it (which this game doesn’t seem to use).

And then I got 15 books and my total completion time was 17 minutes and a few seconds.

I guess that’s kind of short, but if one was a kid… hmm, no, there’s only so much more enjoyment they can squeeze out of collecting all the books and doing the minigames instead of the adventure mode (which I didn’t look at (whoops)). Depends how much Smartridges cost? Are you meant to just have a bunch of them and just start playing a new one when you’re done? Or is it like back in my days, where a game cost… as much as games cost now, and so you have one or two games and you’re gonna learn to like them? Dunno.

Overall the game part isn’t that bad given it’s target audience. Just have to take off a point for the questionable educational value. Let’s give it a 4/10.