Sesame Street: Big Bird's Hide & Speak

Name: Sesame Street: Big Bird's Hide & Speak
Year: 1990
Publisher: Hi-Tech Expressions
Developer: Riedel Software Productions
Genre: Educational
Hours Played: One
Beaten: Yes

Sesame Street: Big Bird's Hide & Speak is the third Sesame Street game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System; it's also the first one to be created specifically for the console, and the first NES game of any kind to feature digitized speech (i.e. the game talks).

When you start up the game, you're greeted by several walls of text (with copyright statements, credits, etc), and then an impressively large graphic of Big Bird skates onto the screen and gives you a choice of six different mini-games.  Oddly, there's no title screen with the game's name (unless you count it being crammed in among the walls of text), and no name or description for any of the games.  I guess they figured their target audience couldn't read anyways?

The format of each game is simple.  Four random Sesame Street characters (the only ones I've seen so far are Ernie, Bert, The Count, Grover, and Elmo) go inside the famous Sesame Street apartment building, and take their places at four different windows.  Big Bird comes out from hiding and issues you a question, and Little Bird is used as a cursor.  You select the appropriate window, and once you've answered four questions correctly, one of the characters comes out of the building and does a little animation to celebrate (Elmo blows a bubble, The Count juggles numbered balls, etc).

The six games comes in three different flavors: two of them are about identifying the correct Sesame Street character, two are about finding the correct letter, and two are about spelling three-letter words. In the first game, the four characters are clearly visible, and you just pick the one Big Bird asks for.  In the second, you see the characters for several seconds, and then the windows close and you have to remember where each one was.  The third and fourth are repeats of the first two except each character has a letter, and Big Bird asks for letters instead of names.  On the fifth game, you have to spell a word using three of the four letters available, and in the sixth you have to spell as many words as you can before a cartoon sun reaches the bottom of the screen.

On the whole, as an educational game, this one works all right.  The overly simple controls and Big Bird verbally speaking instructions makes this game playable even for very small children.  There's not much to be learned from the "find the characters" modes, since you don't even have to guess at their location (as you would in a game like Memory); the real meat of the game seems to be learning your letters and spelling.  It's not the best letter and spelling game I've ever played, but it is the best one I've found so far on the NES.

Graphics & Animation: 3 (Good)
Bird Bird and his friends are all nicely rendered here.  The game doesn't have too many sprites, so the developers wisely put that extra space to use with oversized sprites for all the characters.  The Big Bird that skates onto the title screen is particularly impressive for the NES.

Music & Sounds: 3 (Good)
Big Bird talks!  The digitized speech isn't perfect; I had trouble telling if he was asking me for a "b" r a "v".  Still, for the first talking NES game, it's hard to be too critical; even by 1994 (the end of the NES's life cycle), this was still impressive.

Controls & Level Design: 2 (Average)
If you read my review for Sesame Street: A-B-C, you know how frustrated I was that the game won't accept valid words if it's not the word the game is looking for.  I've played several rounds of Big Bird's Hide & Speak and haven't come across this problem.  The controls here are almost frustratingly simplistic, but that's appropriate for the target audience, and you can quickly jump back to the main menu at any time.

Story & Presentation: 2 (Average)
It's odd how text-free the menu screens are.  Don't be fooled by the screen shots; when you play the game, it's really easy to miss the "title screen" among the other screens of text that flash by.  I am however impressed by their dedication to recreating not only the characters but the sets from Sesame Street; the famous brownstone apartment building is instantly recognizable, as is the made-from-doors fence that surrounds Big Bird's nest.

Length & Replayabilitiy: 1 (Bad)
My only real complain about this game is I would have liked a couple more modes; maybe numbers in addition to letters, or at least a harder version of the find-the-characters game.  The game as it stands is a little on the simplistic side, but it's still heads and shoulders over games like Fisher Price: I Can Remember.

Total: 11 (Average)