Save the day the Tonka way!
- NA release: 18th November 2003
- EU release: N/A
- JP release: N/A
- Developer: Lucky Chicken Games
- Publisher: TDK Mediactive
- NGC Magazine Score: N/A
- Mods Used: Widescreen Hack
Tonka is a brand of toy vehicles in America, and this game is driving vehicles around to complete tasks. A fire engine, police car, helicopter and three construction vehicles. The entire game is comprised of four levels, each with nine missions where you slowly drive around, following an arrow, then press A to complete the task. There’s no way to fail anything, no time limits and you have to do things exactly the way the game wants to – quite often if you have three things to pick up, you trying to pick one that the arrow isn’t pointing to simply won’t work.
There’s also nothing to do outside of these missions. This is a game about toy cars, and there’s no playground. You can’t swap into different vehicles and interact with other objects, you can only do what the game wants you to. So while this is for little kids, little kids still want to play in their own way, and it’s something that the game simply doesn’t offer.
There’s also a garage which lets you play a minigame. You can wash the vehicles, repair them and then pick a new paint job for it. The annoying thing, though, is that the paint doesn’t actually save. So no matter what you pick, you’ll be treated to the default colours for all the vehicles. It seems like a big oversight rather than anything intentional.
By far the worst thing about the game, though, is Tonka Joe. Every 40 second he pops up to give you repetitive advice. There’s no way to shut him up and his voice is immensely annoying. He just rotates through his various lines rather than actually giving you advice on your current task, too, which just makes it more annoying. This game is substantially worse than getting some second hand toy cars and a car mat.
Worst
My son liked the tutorial part of the game but didn’t like all the locked levels. He is 5 and very good at games but thought this one was a bit harder than he is used to.
mamawisch, GameFly Customer
Remake or remaster?
Real toys are much better.
Official Ways to get the game
There’s no official way to get Tonka Rescue Patrol.
Europe
Japan
North America
GameCube Games by Date
2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
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2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
