This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on September 8th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for grammar and formatting.
Welcome to the second issue of Playstation Basement! I’ll be here every Saturday afternoon reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original PlayStation. My rating system is out of nine. 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
For the second Playstation Basement, I’m talking about Punky Skunk. This is an unusual entry for the PlayStation: a 2-D platformer. It was set to be released for the Super Famicom but got pushed back a few months to take advantage of the new 32-bit CD-based console! Though it came out in 1996 in Japan as Cooly Skunk, developed by the Ukiyotei (developer of SkyBlazer) and published by Visit, Jaleco brought it to the US in 1998. It was surely an attempt to cash in on the mascot platformer market at the time, and images from that time indicate that Punky was intended as a mascot. Was it worth waiting until 1998 to see how Punky can save his friends from the evil Badler and his gang of rodents?
First off, I love the cover art of Punky Skunk; it’s so stupid but awesome. The character is clearly based off of Sonic the Hedgehog, and here we see the titular Punky inside a hypnotic, colorful wave that recalls, in a way, Sonic’s Japanese game covers. It’s not particularly awe-inspiring, but it’s very old-school and does have a 70s garage/punk look. Punky Skunk takes after his name, even in Japan. The Japanese cover is busier, but it’s more than just a portrait; this one shows Punky, his in-game gadgets, along with his friends and enemies. It has a cool graffiti style that reminds me of the cover of the garage punk band Teengenerate’s Savage!!!. The Japanese cover is better for sure. There’s clearly more care put into it. By the time Punky Skunk hit America, it seems that any attempts at pushing Punky as a new, big, video game hero were over
The graphics of Punky Skunk don’t really match either cover particularly well and show their origins as a Super Famicom-intended release. The sprites have a softer look to them, sort of bulbous and chunky, something that you see in a lot of Super Famicom games that never came to the West. The colors are bright and a little garish, and some objects seem out-of-place. The animations for the enemies and Punky are decent, but they also seem lacking; they need a few more frames to really look great. There are not a particularly large amount of enemy types, though there is a decent range of backgrounds. Some of these backgrounds are pretty weird with things like flying statues but most have nice panoramas of mountains, cityscapes, or forests. The level select map looks especially bad and barren, though the big map where you select the world has a decent "Age of Discovery" look to it. Overall Punky Skunk doesn't have any visual punk flair to it.
What the visuals lack, the sound does not make up for - Punky Skunk is quite an annoying game to hear. It really fails in this department. The music is lifeless and generic; it also loops noticeably, fading out and coming back in at the beginning of the track. The songs tend to sound like a somewhat distant carnival, upbeat but too generic to lift any spirits. The sound effects are the same things you’ve heard a million times, and some of them even seem to clip, especially the jump sound. To top it all off, Punky has a few lines that he repeats over and over again. Unlike say Gex or Spider-Man, who have some degree of variety, Punky says the same thing every time he grabs a power-up, every time he gets hit, every time he jumps, and in other similar instances. It becomes annoying quick. The overall lower sound quality, hollow like the Super Famicom and not CD quality, really doesn’t help things.
Welcome to the second issue of Playstation Basement! I’ll be here every Saturday afternoon reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original PlayStation. My rating system is out of nine. 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
For the second Playstation Basement, I’m talking about Punky Skunk. This is an unusual entry for the PlayStation: a 2-D platformer. It was set to be released for the Super Famicom but got pushed back a few months to take advantage of the new 32-bit CD-based console! Though it came out in 1996 in Japan as Cooly Skunk, developed by the Ukiyotei (developer of SkyBlazer) and published by Visit, Jaleco brought it to the US in 1998. It was surely an attempt to cash in on the mascot platformer market at the time, and images from that time indicate that Punky was intended as a mascot. Was it worth waiting until 1998 to see how Punky can save his friends from the evil Badler and his gang of rodents?
First off, I love the cover art of Punky Skunk; it’s so stupid but awesome. The character is clearly based off of Sonic the Hedgehog, and here we see the titular Punky inside a hypnotic, colorful wave that recalls, in a way, Sonic’s Japanese game covers. It’s not particularly awe-inspiring, but it’s very old-school and does have a 70s garage/punk look. Punky Skunk takes after his name, even in Japan. The Japanese cover is busier, but it’s more than just a portrait; this one shows Punky, his in-game gadgets, along with his friends and enemies. It has a cool graffiti style that reminds me of the cover of the garage punk band Teengenerate’s Savage!!!. The Japanese cover is better for sure. There’s clearly more care put into it. By the time Punky Skunk hit America, it seems that any attempts at pushing Punky as a new, big, video game hero were over
The graphics of Punky Skunk don’t really match either cover particularly well and show their origins as a Super Famicom-intended release. The sprites have a softer look to them, sort of bulbous and chunky, something that you see in a lot of Super Famicom games that never came to the West. The colors are bright and a little garish, and some objects seem out-of-place. The animations for the enemies and Punky are decent, but they also seem lacking; they need a few more frames to really look great. There are not a particularly large amount of enemy types, though there is a decent range of backgrounds. Some of these backgrounds are pretty weird with things like flying statues but most have nice panoramas of mountains, cityscapes, or forests. The level select map looks especially bad and barren, though the big map where you select the world has a decent "Age of Discovery" look to it. Overall Punky Skunk doesn't have any visual punk flair to it.
What the visuals lack, the sound does not make up for - Punky Skunk is quite an annoying game to hear. It really fails in this department. The music is lifeless and generic; it also loops noticeably, fading out and coming back in at the beginning of the track. The songs tend to sound like a somewhat distant carnival, upbeat but too generic to lift any spirits. The sound effects are the same things you’ve heard a million times, and some of them even seem to clip, especially the jump sound. To top it all off, Punky has a few lines that he repeats over and over again. Unlike say Gex or Spider-Man, who have some degree of variety, Punky says the same thing every time he grabs a power-up, every time he gets hit, every time he jumps, and in other similar instances. It becomes annoying quick. The overall lower sound quality, hollow like the Super Famicom and not CD quality, really doesn’t help things.
The gameplay follows suit. Punky is awkward to control with an odd hitbox and floaty jumps. He has a gas-spraying attack that is a little slow but functions decently. Unlike a lot of “radical” platformer heroes, Punky has a health bar, and he can even increase it during the game by completing minigames. I enjoyed some of these, but they are all a little clunky. The boss battles are similar with most being some kind of odd game like dodgeball; some of these are a little wonky and random. Some are fun, like the final battle against Badler. I should also mention that despite the health bar, Punky can still lose a lot of it easily due to a very short invincibility phase after taking a hit. Of course, it's not all just jumping and shooting poisonous gas.
The big gimmick in the game is that Punky has a few different inventions he can find and use, gifts from his friend Nash. The inventions include a parachute, a pogo stick, inline skates, digging gloves, a snowboard, and, eventually, a jetpack. Some of these are more fun to use than others. The parachute slows your fall and lets you use the wind to float; it’s a decent thing. The pogo stick lets you jump much higher, but you lose speed and can’t move very far horizontally; it tends to just make the level slower. Levels with skates auto-scroll, which is challenging but enjoyable. The gloves, (“diggers”) are not too great; they let you move in four directions when in dirt but leave you helpless to a lot of attacks. These levels also tend to have enemy generating objects (think Gauntlet), so I don’t particularly enjoy using the diggers that much. The snowboard must be the worst. When you have it on, Punky will move as if he has a lead weight on his person until he can pick up speed by descending a hill. It’s fun to zip around on the snowboard, becoming invincible when you hit top speed, but once you collide with something it’s back to slowpoke land all over again. Some of these levels are ridiculously specific in how and when to jump, though there are some cool ideas here too. Finally, the jetpack is underwhelming. It has limited thrusting capability, only lasting a few seconds before Punky has to land. Once I got the hang of it, it was okay. The game is still so floaty, though, and the need to constantly land is annoying. Overall, despite looking like Sonic, Punky Skunk is a slow game to play, and these inventions don’t do much good to make it better.
Overall, Punky Skunk really is a flawed game. It totally has potential, but there are quite a few blunders. Though it might sound like it, I didn’t really hate the game. The early levels were a lot of fun, but as the game went on, the levels just became absurd and not particularly well designed or fun. The repetitive music and sounds combined with the awkward collision detection when jumps become more precise really hurt my enjoyment of Punky Skunk. The bosses especially annoyed me with drawn-out and uninteresting fights. There is a story that has some fun elements to it, especially the numerous foibles of General Chew, the boss that Punky fights over and over again, but it’s nothing to write home about. The game’s overall lack of polish and reliance on firmly established tropes without bringing anything new really make Punky Skunk nothing more than a game out of time.
Punky Skunk receives a Neutral rating (4) and just barely at that.
The big gimmick in the game is that Punky has a few different inventions he can find and use, gifts from his friend Nash. The inventions include a parachute, a pogo stick, inline skates, digging gloves, a snowboard, and, eventually, a jetpack. Some of these are more fun to use than others. The parachute slows your fall and lets you use the wind to float; it’s a decent thing. The pogo stick lets you jump much higher, but you lose speed and can’t move very far horizontally; it tends to just make the level slower. Levels with skates auto-scroll, which is challenging but enjoyable. The gloves, (“diggers”) are not too great; they let you move in four directions when in dirt but leave you helpless to a lot of attacks. These levels also tend to have enemy generating objects (think Gauntlet), so I don’t particularly enjoy using the diggers that much. The snowboard must be the worst. When you have it on, Punky will move as if he has a lead weight on his person until he can pick up speed by descending a hill. It’s fun to zip around on the snowboard, becoming invincible when you hit top speed, but once you collide with something it’s back to slowpoke land all over again. Some of these levels are ridiculously specific in how and when to jump, though there are some cool ideas here too. Finally, the jetpack is underwhelming. It has limited thrusting capability, only lasting a few seconds before Punky has to land. Once I got the hang of it, it was okay. The game is still so floaty, though, and the need to constantly land is annoying. Overall, despite looking like Sonic, Punky Skunk is a slow game to play, and these inventions don’t do much good to make it better.
Overall, Punky Skunk really is a flawed game. It totally has potential, but there are quite a few blunders. Though it might sound like it, I didn’t really hate the game. The early levels were a lot of fun, but as the game went on, the levels just became absurd and not particularly well designed or fun. The repetitive music and sounds combined with the awkward collision detection when jumps become more precise really hurt my enjoyment of Punky Skunk. The bosses especially annoyed me with drawn-out and uninteresting fights. There is a story that has some fun elements to it, especially the numerous foibles of General Chew, the boss that Punky fights over and over again, but it’s nothing to write home about. The game’s overall lack of polish and reliance on firmly established tropes without bringing anything new really make Punky Skunk nothing more than a game out of time.
Punky Skunk receives a Neutral rating (4) and just barely at that.
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