Retro Review - Tinhead
After a few weeks of absence from Retro Review, I'm back again for another of my classic classic video game reviews and this time it's about one of the most classic video game genres in the industry: A platform and adventure game, with the most basic but entertaining game mechanics and system you can see. In short, it's one of those games to pass the time and which you would complete in no time.
The story of this game is quite particular, but it is still the classic plot of "something has been stolen and the protagonist must recover it to bring peace again", basically the plot of many games of yesteryear, however, this does not take away the entertainment factor of this game. The story of this title begins when the villain of the story, Grim Squidge, by means of a vacuum cleaner that has his spaceship steals all the stars of the firmament and then locked them in crystal spheres, which then scattered them by different planets that are in the cosmos, in this way and somehow, affecting space, or something like that, it is a bit strange the plan of this villain. After this we are introduced to our protagonist, Tinhead, which is a Guardian who is in the farthest place in the universe and due to the actions of Grim Squidge, receives a signal for help from somewhere in the universe, so, as a good guardian Tinhead embarks on an adventure like no other to recover all the stars scattered throughout the universe. And that's how simple the plot of this game is.
Tinhead is a visually pleasing game and although its protagonist has a design which can be considered as "childish"; the stage design, but especially the color palette are not, since this game has a lot of variety in colors in all scenarios, however, they are a little dark colors and it is a big contrast compared to the design of Tinhead, however, it is not something that looks bad on screen, on the contrary, this title is very well done at the level of graphics, design and art.
As I already mentioned, our main protagonist presents a rather childish design, but his sprite is very well designed and has enough expressiveness in his actions to make him a character with enough charisma and personality. Besides, it has very good animations, very varied and fluid. With respect to the general design of the other characters, Tinhead has good enemy designs, with good variety, so we will not get bored by always seeing the same enemies. And as always happens in this type of games, the final bosses are the ones that present excellent designs and of great size. The scenarios are also very varied and perfectly represent what a platform game is, very original and challenging, however unlike the character designs, with respect to the design of scenarios, I must say that these are repeated a bit throughout the adventure, there are certain aspects that are repeated a lot, but it is not something bad at all.
Tinhead is another of those platform games with very good melodies, in the entire video game industry, there are very few titles of this genre that have in their set of melodies music that is all bad, it is something quite rare. So in Tinhead we will find a soundtrack very consistent with the aesthetics and atmosphere that we will see throughout this great adventure, melodies are according to the situation and the scenario in which we find ourselves. The sound effects, although they are not all bad, it can be said that they are quite simple and do not stand out much unlike the soundtrack.
Tinhead is another of those games that took inspiration from the classic Sonic and that is something that can be seen at first glance, however, unlike the blue hedgehog game, Tinhead can attack his enemies with bullets fired from his head and these bullets can bounce off surfaces, so it has a certain aspect of strategy when eliminating enemies that are in certain positions of the stage. Like any platform game, Tinhead can jump, run and also, as mentioned above, he can shoot from his head, and we can control the direction in which the shots will go: down, up and to the front of the character.
The control over our character is quite easy, like most games of this style, and we will go through a series of scenarios eliminating enemies and overcoming any obstacle we have in our way. Throughout this adventure we will obtain items that will help us complete our mission more easily, there are the classic items of life recovery and others that serve to increase the rate of fire of our bullets. In general terms, Tinhead is another platform game with the classic topics of the games of this style, but with certain elements that make it stand out among other similar games, although as it is logical, this is another one of those games that could not get the fame it needed to stay current with the passing of the years.
Tinhead really is an entertaining game, it is not a perfect game, much less a copy of Sonic, although its inspiration is quite obvious, but what it really is a very entertaining game, which has a charismatic character and could easily have been a successful mascot of any brand of video games.
