Fisher-Price: Firehouse Rescue

Name: Fisher-Price: Firehouse Rescue
Year: 1992
Publisher: GameTek
Developer: GameTek
Genre: Educational
Hours Played: Half an Hour
Beaten: Yes

Fisher-Price: Firehouse Rescue is one of three Fisher-Price DOS games to be ported to the NES.  The gameplay is simple; first, you must navigate a maze from the firehouse to an emergency; secondly, you must rescue people (or a cat) from a "burning" building (or tree).  How many people (one or two) and the complexity of the maze varies depending on the chosen difficulty level.

The mazes in this game are actually pretty nice.  They're viewed from overhead and resemble the mazes found in any coloring or activity book.  They have a time limit, and the more complicated mazes on the hardest difficulty could actually stump a younger child.  Unfortunately the rescue part of the game isn't nearly as good.  You simply drive your fire engine so that the ladder is underneath the rescue-ee, then hit the button.  There's really no challenge or possibility of failure, and their's no attempt whatsoever to make it look like the buildings are on fire.

Of the three Fisher-Price games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Firehouse Rescue is easily the best.  While that's not saying very much, I can at least honestly say that I might actually recommend this game, presuming it's free, to a very small child as their first NES game.

Graphics & Animation: 1 (Bad)
The mazes look alright, but GameTek's attempt to render Fisher-Price Little People figures and vechicles is pretty terrible.

Music & Sounds: 0 (Awful)
Like the other NES Fisher Price games, they didn't bother to update the public domain music of the DOS original.  Hope you like Entry of the Gladiators!

Controls & Level Design: 2 (Average)
The maze portion of the game is actually kind of fun!  The fire truck controls well, the mazes are well designed (even the ones on the easiest difficulty level are still more challenging then the mazes found on the back of some restaurant children's menus), and the game randomly picks one of several mazes each time you play.  Honestly, they should have dropped the whole "rescue people" aspect and made a kid's maze game, and they might of had something.

Story & Presentation: 0 (Awful)
Take a look at that title screen screenshot!  Doesn't that blank forest-green background totally get you pumped to go save some lives?  A game about firefighters should have been incredibly easy to theme (firehouse brick background for the title screen, a fire bell for the menu screen cursor, etc), but they made absolutely no attempt whatsoever.

Length & Replayabilitiy: 1 (Bad)
There's several difficulty levels, and the game rotates mazes so that you can't just memorize them.  Had this been the whole game, it might be worth playing for maze enthusiasts.  However, the monotony of the no-challenge people rescuing gets old really quick.

Total: 4 (Bad)