Stay Tooned! (video game)

Last updated
Stay Tooned!
Stay Tooned CD Cover.jpg
CD cover art
Developer(s) Funnybone Interactive [1]
Publisher(s) Sierra On-Line [1]
Designer(s)
  • Susan Decker [2]
  • Ben Howard [2]
  • Kevin O'Neill [2]
  • Chris Lewis [2]
Engine Macromedia Director
Platform(s)
ReleaseOctober 1996 [4]
Genre(s) Action-adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Stay Tooned! Unsweetened Multi-Game Experience! [5] is a 1996 action-adventure video game that was developed by Funnybone Interactive and published by Sierra On-Line. [1] In the game, the player must navigate through the apartment complex to find the TV remote to zap rogue cartoon characters back into TV Land. [6]

Contents

Plot

The game begins in a large apartment building in the middle of an unnamed city. The player takes the place of an ordinary patron living in an apartment. The player starts off simply channel-surfing with a TV remote and watching short cartoons and commercials that parody real-life shows. [7] The shows parodied include Seinfeld , which is parodied as Whinefeld. [8] One channel has the game's chief programmer providing hints on how to play the upcoming game.

Several cartoon characters either forbid or encourage the player to push the red button on their remote as the player surfs the channels. When the player pushes the button, the cartoons break out of the television set, steal the remote, and cause the entire apartment complex to go into animated form. The player must recover the television remote, which is the only thing that can zap the escaped toons and send them back to TV Land, the fictional toon world found within the depths of the television. The player searches the other apartments for the remote while playing nearly thirty games contained within them and avoiding the destructive trickery committed by the escaped toons.

At the end of the game when the remote is retrieved, the player must zap all of the toons back into the television (and that includes extras such as the Überbugs and the penguins). Once all of the toons are captured, as a plot of revenge, Pixel demands Chisel that they can not let the player get away with this. Chisel grabs the player and warps them into the television. Once they make it into TV Land, the player gets flattened, and has the disturbing realization that in the process, the player has been turned into a toon as well.

Characters

The first five characters mentioned are the five toons you have to capture at the end of the game. The others serve as background characters. Most of the toons are against you, but some will help you in the game.

Others

Gameplay

After the player lets the toons out of the television, several keys need to be retrieved to find the remote. The apartment complex has five floors to navigate (including the roof, the basement, and several hidden rooms). The player must complete numerous tasks to retrieve the keys, such as building a Rube Goldberg machine, and also includes abnormal tasks such as shaving Fiddle to the bone.

To retrieve the remote, the player must find an oven mitt for the oven in Apartment 5D, which houses the remote. Once the player gets the remote, various toons must be zapped, and once all of the toons are zapped into the television, the game is beaten.

Running the game on modern systems

For people attempting to play the game on PC running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or 7, it is highly improbable due to the highly different structures of earlier operating systems. The game will run, however for Microsoft Virtual PCs with earlier versions of Windows. Macintosh users will likely find similar problems trying to run the game on the most recent versions of macOS, as the Classic function has been discontinued.

Reception

Related Research Articles

<i>The Ren & Stimpy Show</i> American animated television series

The Ren & Stimpy Show, commonly referred to as simply Ren & Stimpy, is an American comedy animated television series created by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi for Nickelodeon. Originally produced by Spümcø, the series aired from August 11, 1991, to December 16, 1995, spanning a total of five seasons and 52 episodes. The series follows the misadventures of Ren Höek, an emotionally unstable and psychopathic chihuahua dog; and Stimpy, a good-natured and dimwitted Manx cat. It is the third cartoon to be aired of the original three Nickelodeon animated series known as "Nicktoons", alongside Doug and Rugrats, and is considered to be one of the progenitor series of the brand.

Witch Hazel (<i>Looney Tunes</i>) Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon character

Witch Hazel is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons and TV shows. Witch Hazel is a fairy tale witch antagonist with green skin, a round figure, bulbous facial features, and a single tooth. The name is a pun on the witch-hazel plant and folk remedies based on it.

<i>The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show</i> Television series

The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show is a half-hour American animated comedy television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation and aired in 1995 as a spin-off of the show Marsupilami, a spin-off itself of Raw Toonage. The show represents Disney's attempt to do a more "edgy" cartoon in the vein of Nickelodeon's The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life. Unlike other Disney Afternoon cartoons, Shnookums & Meat only aired once a week, usually Mondays. Only thirteen episodes were produced.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toon (role-playing game)</span> 1984 Cartoon tabletop role-playing game

Toon is a comedy tabletop role-playing game in which the players take the roles of cartoon characters. It is subtitled The Cartoon Roleplaying Game. Toon was designed by Greg Costikyan and developed by Warren Spector, and first published in 1984 by Steve Jackson Games.

<i>Jabberjaw</i> American animated television series (1976)

Jabberjaw is an American animated television series created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears and produced by Hanna-Barbera which aired 16 original episodes on ABC from September 11 to December 18, 1976. Reruns continued on ABC until September 3, 1978.

Saturday TV Funhouse is a segment on NBC's Saturday Night Live featuring cartoons created by SNL writer Robert Smigel. 101 "TV Funhouse" segments aired on SNL between 1996 and 2008, with one further segment airing in 2011. It also spawned a short-lived spinoff series, TV Funhouse, that aired on Comedy Central.

<i>101 Dalmatians: The Series</i> Television series

101 Dalmatians: The Series is an American animated television series that aired from September 1, 1997, to March 4, 1998, on the Disney-Kellogg Alliance and ABC. It is produced by Walt Disney Television Animation and Jumbo Pictures and is based on the 1961 Disney animated feature of the same name and its 1996 live-action remake. It features the voices of Pamela Adlon, Debi Mae West, Kath Soucie and Tara Strong, and is the first television series based on the 101 Dalmatians franchise; it was followed by 101 Dalmatian Street in 2019.

<i>Stay Tuned</i> (film) 1992 American fantasy comedy film

Stay Tuned is a 1992 American fantasy comedy film directed by Peter Hyams and written by Jim Jennewein and Tom S. Parker, with an animated sequence supervised by Chuck Jones. The film stars John Ritter, Pam Dawber, Jeffrey Jones, and Eugene Levy. Its plot follows a suburban couple who are sucked into a television world by an emissary of hell, and must survive for 24 hours in order to be released from it.

<i>Teachers Pet</i> (TV series) Disney animated television series

Teacher's Pet is an American animated sitcom produced by Walt Disney Television Animation and directed by Timothy Björklund.

Zachary Thomas Moncrief is an American artist, producer, director, and writer in the animation industry. He's currently a co-executive producer on Netflix's pre-school series Ghee Happy. His titles have included supervising producer, writer, supervising director, storyboard artist, designer, and songwriter. In 2009, an episode from Phineas and Ferb, which he directed entitled "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein", received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in the category for Outstanding Special Class Short-format Animated Programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grinch</span> Fictional character created by Dr. Seuss

The Grinch is a fictional character created by children's author and cartoonist Dr. Seuss. He is best known as the main character of the 1957 children's book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! He has been portrayed and voiced by many actors, including Boris Karloff, Hans Conried, Bob Holt, Walter Matthau, Anthony Asbury, Jim Carrey, Rik Mayall, Benedict Cumberbatch, Matthew Morrison, David Howard Thornton, and James Austin Johnson.

<i>Gary the Rat</i> American television program adult-oriented animated series

Gary the Rat is an American adult animated sitcom created by the Cullen Brothers for Spike TV and animated by Spike Animation Studios. It was produced by Grammnet Productions and Cheyenne Enterprises and distributed by Viacom.

"I, Roommate" is the third episode in the first season of the American animated television series Futurama. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 6, 1999. The title of the episode is a reference to collected short stories written between 1940 and 1950 by author Isaac Asimov titled I, Robot. The episode was written by Eric Horsted and directed by Bret Haaland. The plot focuses on Fry and Bender's search for an apartment after deciding to become roommates and the various difficulties they have in finding a place that is acceptable to both of them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penelope Pussycat</span> Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon character

Penelope Pussycat is an animated cartoon character, featured in the Warner Bros. classic Looney Tunes animated shorts. Although she is typically a non-speaker, her "meows" and "purrs" were most often provided by Mel Blanc using a feminine voice. The character did not originally have a permanent name; she was alternately referred to as "Penelope", "Fifi", "Pussycat Purr", and "Fabrette", and animator Chuck Jones' 1960 model sheet simply calls her "Le Cat". The name Penelope Pussycat was created retroactively for Warner Bros. marketing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ren and Stimpy (characters)</span> Animated cartoon characters

Marland T. "Ren" Höek and Stimpson J. "Stimpy" Cat, created by John Kricfalusi, are the title characters in the Nickelodeon animated series The Ren & Stimpy Show, and its 2003 spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon". Kricfalusi created the characters during his stay at Sheridan College and they first appeared on film in the pilot episode "Big House Blues". Ren is a scrawny, emotionally unstable, and sociopathic "Asthma Hound" Chihuahua, and his best friend Stimpy is a dim-witted, good-natured Manx cat. The show portrays their wacky, bizarre, and often surreal adventures.

<i>Animaniacs</i> American animated television series

Animaniacs is an American animated comedy musical television series created by Tom Ruegger for Fox's Fox Kids block in 1993, before moving to The WB in 1995, as part of its Kids' WB afternoon programming block, until the series ended on November 14, 1998. It is the second animated series produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Animation, after Tiny Toon Adventures. It initially ran a total of 99 episodes, along with a feature-length film, Wakko's Wish. Reruns later aired on Cartoon Network from 1997 to 2001, Nickelodeon from 2001 to 2003, Nicktoons from 2003 to 2005, and Discovery Family from 2012 to 2014.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lewis & Johnson (1996), p. 17.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lewis & Johnson (1996), p. 16.
  3. 1 2 Lewis & Johnson (1996), p. 2.
  4. ↑ "The new fall CD-ROM line-up Explodes with the season premiere of "Stay Tooned! from Sierra On-Line". education.com. October 7, 1996. Archived from the original on January 20, 1998. Retrieved March 27, 2024.
  5. ↑ Lewis & Johnson (1996), p. front cover.
  6. ↑ Lewis & Johnson (1996), p. 1.
  7. ↑ Lewis & Johnson (1996), p. 5.
  8. ↑ Pescovitz, David (July 5, 2019). "Whinefeld: the bizarre Seinfeld parody clip from the Stay Tooned! videogame (1996)". Boing Boing . Retrieved September 3, 2022.
  9. ↑ James, Bonnie (December 5, 1996). "Stay Tooned! - Electric Playground". Greedy Productions. Archived from the original on August 4, 1997. Retrieved April 6, 2017. If you find yourself getting up Saturday mornings to watch cartoons in your pajamas and eat sugar cereal on the couch, then I think you'll like Stay Tooned.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.