Chronological series of reviews

A bit less than two months ago, I decided to replay all of Humongous Entertainment's games in chronological order and review them. Well, I say all of them, but I don't know what I'll do about the console-exclusive ones. And I doubt I'll cover the post-2005 ones. I'm also not sure if the order is always going to be perfectly chronological. Figuring out the exact release dates for these games can be surprisingly tough at times.

I doubt many people will read them, but it seemed like a fun thing to do.

MobyGames was probably not the best pick, given its restrictive review structure and the fact that reviews take forever to be approved, but that's what I went with.

Don't pay too much attention to their ratings. I have no direct control over them. I can only give ratings to a game's individual aspects. Its overall rating seems to be the average of those. I disagree with this approach, but there's not much I can do about it.

At the time of this writing, reviews for all of the DOS era games are already up. I'm honestly not that big a fan of HE's output from their first few years, so the tone of these early reviews is a bit harsh. It'll get much more positive later on. I already reviewed Freddi Fish 1 and Let's Explore the Farm as well, but those reviews have yet to be approved. I'll probably update this post whenever new reviews become available.

Here are all the reviews that have been approved:

Putt-Putt Joins the Parade
Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise
Putt-Putt's Fun Pack
Fatty Bear's Fun Pack
Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon
Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear's Activity Pack
Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds
Let's Explore the Farm
Let's Explore the Airport
Let's Explore the Jungle
Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo
Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse
Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-o-Rama
Putt-Putt and Pep's Dog on a Stick
Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside
Freddi Fish and Luther's Water Worries
Freddi Fish and Luther's Maze Madness
Putt-Putt Travels Through Time
Pajama Sam's Sock Works
Backyard Baseball
Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal"
Big Thinkers! Kindergarten
Big Thinkers! 1st Grade
Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell
Spy Fox in Cheese Chase
Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning aren't so Frightening
Blue's ABC Time Activities
Blue's Birthday Adventure
Backyard Soccer
Pajama Sam's Lost & Found
Putt-Putt Enters the Race
Freddi Fish 4: The Case of the Hogfish Rustlers of Briny Gulch
Blue's 123 Time Activities
Blue's Treasure Hunt

Okay, I'm finally done with the games released in 1995. I just submitted my review for Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo. No idea when it'll go up. Some reviews are approved after a few days, some after 1.5 months.

It was hard to stay motivated while playing through all three of the Junior Field Trips. Hence why this year took me so long. At least I finally got to write my first positive review. There should be many more of those in the future, now that Humongous' early years are finally over.

And that's all for 1996. I've seen conflicting sources on whether Freddi's Junior Arcades were still released in this year or not, but I'm counting them as a part of it anyway since their files' timestamps are from 1996. Their reviews have yet to be approved, but I don't expect it to take much longer. It seems I just got unlucky when most of my early reviews got stuck in the approval queue for 1.5 months.

I found the quality of this year's games to be extremely inconsistent. I finally got to write my first very positive review, only to have to immediately follow it up with the most negative one I've written thus far.

Though I made it through this year pretty quickly thanks to most of its titles being Junior Arcades, I expect 1997 to take much longer. After all, that's the year of Backyard Baseball and the Big Thinkers! games.

Edit: Well, that was fast. Both of them just got approved.

Just submitted my review for the third Freddi Fish. I know that game was released in 1998, but it finished development in 1997, so I'm still counting it as a part of that year.

I know I said I expected 1997 to take me much longer than 1996, but I didn't think it would be this much longer. After playing (but before reviewing) Backyard Baseball, I got burned out and put things on hold for a long time. But after a long break, I regained interest at the start of April and continued.

Going through the Big Thinkers! games was pretty tiresome, as they clearly weren't meant to be played in such long bursts. I'm not looking forward to going through the same kind of experience again with the four Blue's Clues activity collections. But I'll still do it regardless for completion's sake. And some of the other games were actually pretty fun to play and review.

It doesn't look like anyone is paying attention to this topic, but it's not like I really expected anything else, what with the forums being nearly dead. I'm doing this whole review series mainly for my own enjoyment anyway, so I'm not too bummed about it. I'll probably keep posting updates here regardless after each year, just in case there are any lurkers watching this topic.

I finally completed 1998 by submitting my review for Putt-Putt Enters the Race. Everything else is already up by now.

I ended up taking multiple breaks, so this year took a long time again. I still intend to continue regardless, but progress will probably be sporadic.

I initially thought it might be a struggle to write all that much about Blue's Birthday Adventure, yet when I finally got around to writing my review, it became clear that I had a lot more to say about the game than I'd expected. It ended up easily being my longest review up to that point, and I regard it as one of my best.

I then immediately broke my record again with Backyard Soccer, though for decidedly less positive reasons. I have no childhood nostalgia for the series, and from what I've seen of it so far, I'm not particularly enamored with it.