Peter Pan

Video games and movies have had a rocky relationship over the years. Quite possibly the worst game of all time was ET. Many video game makers have tried to capture the essence of a popular movie or TV series in an entertaining game, and more than a few movies have been attempted taking the plot of a video game to the silver screen. Most attempts have crashed and burned, with a few notable exceptions. Disney has a fairly spotty record turning their digital assets into games. This game is one of the misses.

Peter Pan takes you through the story of Peter Pan that we all know. You get the chance to pilot Pan through fights with pirates, flying through the air dodging cannonballs, searching for arrows and gold coins, etc. Yes, even though I don't remember any cannonballs or gold coins in the story, you see a lot of them here. Unfortunately, the game comes off very flat. This game seems to have been dusted off out of the Atari archives and given an infusion of pictures from the film to modernize it.

The save system features the return of the hated code system, that forces you to write down a code to return to a given point in the game. This "technology" was all the rage in 1985 with the Atari 2600 based on ROM, but current systems have access to RAM to save game states instead of trying to have players write down some ridiculous code.

Couple the save system with the need to page through endless dialog scenes from the movie, and you start to get the idea that this game really isn't that much fun. In fact, one of my chief reviewers, my 10-year old Chris, came to me after playing for about an hour and said "Dad, this game really isn't that much fun. You can have it back."

Unless you are a Peter Pan collector and intend to leave the game in the case, I would suggest passing on this one.