Dennis the Menace (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
321A playthrough of Ocean's 1993 license-based platformer for the Super Nintendo, Dennis the Menace.
Played through on the hard difficulty level.
I remember my parents buying a VHS copy of the Dennis the Menace movie for my sister and I when it was first released. We had always loved the show, and we quickly came to love the film as well, so we were pretty excited when we found a copy of the brand new SNES game on the shelves of our local Hollywood Video soon after. You'd best believe that that cart came home with us for the weekend. After spending some time with it, however, we had no complaints about it being returned to the store on Sunday afternoon.
The game is a maze-based platformer. Most levels have you, as Dennis, searching for five large coins taken from Mr. Wilson's collection as you fend off bad guys with a slingshot, a water pistol, and a pea shooter. You begin in Mr. Wilson's house, and from there move on to a park, a boiler room, and some sewers before things wrap up in the woods where Dennis finally saves Joey and Margaret from Switchblade Sam.
As you'd expect from Ocean, the game looks and sounds fantastic. The backgrounds are beautifully drawn and colored, the animation is extremely smooth, and the tunes, though a bit low key, are better than you'll find in the majority of SNES games.
For some reason, though, beyond the first level, none of it feels related to the license. The only time you'll see a recognizable character after Mr. Wilson's cameo appearance in the first level is at the last boss fight. The majority of the time, Dennis will be fighting psychotic rabbits, birds, steam vents, and tedium.
And unfortunately, it turns out that tedium is Dennis's most formidable adversary.
There is an endless parade of levels that all ask the same thing of you, and beyond the stage-themed window dressing, little ever changes between them. Worse yet, most of the mazes are huge, they stretch the play time as much as possible, and they are loaded with infinitely respawning enemies that attack relentlessly. The enemy placement and constant respawns turn what would already be a dull, boring game into a game that, while still dull and boring, also ends up being a very frustrating one.
In other words, it feels like most of Ocean's games for the Super Nintendo. It looks and sounds amazing, but the gameplay is a total chore. But hey, at least the SNES game can be finished. The same can't be said for its Amiga counterpart.
If you'd like to see the same gameplay ideas implemented in an entertaining and worthwhile way, I'd suggest checking out Little Nemo: The Dream Master on NES (https://youtu.be/BDi0Q0IVuG0 ). It, too, is a license-based collect-a-thon platformer with challenging gameplay, but unlike Dennis, Little Nemo is engaging and fun.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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