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Category: Game
Developer: Iconic
Requirements: iPhone 2.1 software
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 144MB
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Age Rating: 4+
Price: $1.99

“Bill, do you want to review Banjo for iPhone?”

“Is that a great new application from Smule?”

“No, it’s a touch game based on a Don Bluth film.”

“Oh. Sure. I suppose.”

Do you remember Dragon’s Lair? It was an arcade game who’s claim to fame in 1983 was the amazing graphics. The reason they were amazing was that it was actually an animated film playing from laser discs, and you didn’t so much play the game as waited for a spot on the screen to be illuminated, then quickly moved your joystick in that direction, which would move you on to the next screen.

So if you do remember Dragon’s Lair, Banjo the Woodpile Cat will seem very familiar, because not only is it virtually the same game mechanic, but the animation for both was done by Don Bluth, best known for An American Tail and The Land Before Time series, which, like MASH, has been running longer than the era in which it was set.

So here’s the good: the game looks great. It has fluid motion, good voice acting, and professional music. It looks just like an animated short, probably because it is, Banjo the Woodpile Cat was the first film by Don Bluth way back in 1979. It’s the story of a troublemaking kitten who runs away from home to the bright lights of Salt Lake City.

The bad part is that you may initially have trouble figuring out the story because the scenes are so choppy. We start off with Banjo chasing chickens, then immediately cut to him trying to get his sisters to jump off a chicken coop with him. I think some interstitial scenes may have been lost.

Also, the interactivity of the game is extremely limited: you simply watch for an object or spot on the ground to be illuminated by a flashing light, and quickly try to touch it. Succeed, and the game moves on to the next bit. Fail, and you get a nonsensical scene of Banjo being whapped around by windshield wipers—at least Dragon’s Lair had failure screens that were somewhat related to the action.

Banjo starts with nine lives (natch) and since most scenes feature only three or four touch points, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of tries to get through them. Once you’ve reached a scene, you can return to it (rather than starting the game over). If you quit the game and return to it, you get your full quota of lives back, which is nice, I thought, and would make Banjo a good game for young children or adults, like myself, who act like young children when they play video games.

But at some point, something broke. I had beaten the third scene (where Banjo is mournfully sent off by his Dad to get a switch (Dad has an opposable thumb?)) and moved onto the fourth, where Banjo sneaks onto a truck to run off to the “big fun” of Salt Lake City.

No, go ahead and read that again, I’ll wait.

When I returned to the game, however, it wouldn’t let me into the fourth stage, which meant I had to replay the third again. No problem, it was a simple enough bit, with a little exposition and a nice musical reprise. Except that I couldn’t beat the level. The game wouldn’t recognize when I tapped on the illuminated spot, no matter how many times I replayed the level—which was now driving me bonkers with its exposition and teeth-grinding musical reprise—I simply kept getting the failure screen over and over.

It eventually got so bad that I deleted the game and reinstalled it. No dice. Every time I tried to hop onto the branch, Banjo was suddenly teleported to the windshield and battered about by the wipers.

Given the choppy nature of the narritive, the randomness of the touch spots, and the buggy nature of the game, I think you’d be better off just buying the original short and watching that on your iPhone. Then you could enjoy the old school cel animation and audio without being distracted by a frustrating, awkward “game.”