Taz Wanted | DJcube

Help Taz find all the Wanted posters and free She-Devil from Yosemite Sam.

NA release: 4th October 2002
EU release: 10th October 2002
JP release: N/A
Developer: Blitz Games
Publisher: Infogrames
NGC Magazine Score: 52%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

Taz Express was my least favourite Nintendo 64 game, so thankfully this is nothing like it. The main thing is spinning, as it’s no longer a massive faff to pull off, in Wanted you just hold B. Taz will be faster, and will be able to make it up steeper slopes due to his speed. It works well, and is enjoyable to use.

In Taz Wanted, Taz and She-Devil have been kidnapped by Yosemite Sam (who is mega rich and seems to own his own city), with Taz escaping. Taz needs to get rid of all the wanted posters and rescue She-Devil.

These “posters” are the main focus of the game. They’re not bits of paper, but various objects with Taz’s face painted on. Some require finding and then destroying with Taz’s spin, while others require completing a puzzle to get rid of it. It’s an interesting concept, but not one pulled off that well.

The biggest issue is the level design, there’s no flow to any of the levels. They’re a pain to navigate and they all feel like you’re just ambling about aimlessly hoping to find somewhere new. What doesn’t help is that some of the ways to break the wanted posters are nowhere near the posters. To make matters worse, you have to find all seven in each level to progress through the game.

Combat is also a huge problem. You’d think Taz would be good at taking on foes, but you can only stun enemies using Taz’s default abilities. There are two main enemy types: guards with nets and boxes that block your progress by punching you away with a large boxing glove. To defeat the guards, you need to find a phone box to get into a costume (incidentally, the bonus areas are found in a blue phone box that teleports away), which gives you a very slow attack. Connect with the guard (who can attack extremely swiftly and essentially kill you in one hit) and it will be taken out, then you’ll lose your costume.

For the boxing glove boxes, the levels have switches dotted throughout that disable them, then just jump on them or spin into them. They’re not a threat, they’re just there to slow you down.

Really, all the dangers in the game seem to be more about making the game take longer than actually being a threat. Being captured by a guard respawns you nearby and you lose some of your score (which doesn’t really mean anything). Falling in water is incredibly common as the game seems designed in a way that you have to run off a platform before jumping to be able to make a jump, but most of the time you’ll respawn on the side you’re trying to get to.

For the most part, Taz Express could have been a fairly short and enjoyable game, but the annoying elements added to slow down your progress are just frustrating more than anything, and marks the game down. It’s a shame as it captures the Looney Tunes style really well.

Fine

Once you start to adapt to the games’ glitches and annoying idiosyncrasies, there are times when it can be quite entertaining – at lease the first time you play through it. But ultimately the pros are outweighed by the cons. The levels, despite being impressive in size, lack and kind of focus and so a lot of your time can be wasted exploring avenues that don’t actually take you anywhere, giving you a constant nagging feeling that you don’t really know what you’re doing.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #72

Remake or remaster?

Fine for a compilation of Looney Tunes games.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Taz Wanted.