Wayne’s World (1993, NES) by THQ

Current Any% Leaderboard (speedrun.com)

GAMES FROM THIS EPISODE OF AVGN:
–Wayne’s World (NES)
-Wayne’s World (SNES)

It’s like some companies only make licensed games so they can get paid… and that’s just pretty sad.

Wayne’s World is an abysmal 1993 NES game developed by Radical Entertainment, and released by THQ.  There was an even WORSE SNES version, if you can believe it or not.  In this title, you alternate between playing as Wayne and Garth as you play through 5 extremely short, generic, and terribly-designed stages that are plagued by ugly graphics, repetitive sound effects, bogus looped music, heavy and slippery controls, enemies that have nothing to do with the movie, and in general, very few references to the movies.  The game attempts to interject the movie’s signature humor into single-screen cutscenes between each stage, but they come off as having been written by a nine-year-old that stole the VHS out of your storage unit and played it in an attempt to sneak a reaction video onto Tik Tok.  They fall flatter than day old Dr. Pepper.

The graphics are horrendous.  They are some of the ugliest on the NES, next to Secret Scout and Rocky & Bullwinkle.  The music is a short loop, sometimes consisting of the same three notes™ played over and over.  The controls are terrible, with jumps that carry momentum with them in a way where precision is impossible, the attacks are difficult to aim, and enemies have huge hit boxes.  You have no i-Frames, so you can be juggled by enemies, such as spiders, flying TV screens, and an alto saxophone, all of which were directly ripped from the most popular scenes in the movie.  The final boss bears an uncanny resemblance to anyone other than Rob Lowe; the photos in the HUD sincerely look like some toddler scribbled on a piece of toilet paper with a crayon.

And the speedrun does little to salvage this lumpy turd.  With no real speed tech, a HEAVY emphasis on RNG and random bullcrap, and no strats other than damage boosting through enemies in one section of the game, this is just about getting good at a game that you don’t want to play.  It’s like getting good at wiping your ass when you have hemorrhoids; you have no choice but to, but holy crap does it hurt.

Do not play this game.  It’s sincerely good… NOT!