Part of what keeps me going with this whole Retro Review thing is being reminded of past memories involving videogame and just like the Toy Story films, Toy Commander fills me with incredible nostalgia from different era's of my life.



The obvious part is its place in my gaming past, a time when I was getting drunk at a friends house and playing 4 player games, having a laugh and taking 30 minutes to walk the 7 minutes or so journey back to my house, trying to sneak back in quietly (I didn't have a curfew, but didn't want to wake everybody up as I'd be in trouble obviously) and generally leading a fun, care free teenage existence.

Other memories are sparked by the games styling and theme which is very similar to Toy Story, here its all about the toys and the world we place upon them and whilst Toy Story gave those toys actual life, here its still within the realms of imagination in regards to what we used to do as kids. In this respect Toy Commander is absolutely excellent, the combination of toy planes, cars and boats with other things such as building blocks, scalextric track and make-shift "pencil missiles" gives the player a nostalgia kick that otherwise they'd find embarassing.

The problem here is the presentation of the game is very childish, which is to be expected, but the difficulty level and indeed its learning curve favours more experienced gamers and even then its not exactly friendly. The control's feel overly twitchy, even by Dreamcast analogue standards, which makes proceedings even more difficult especially when you take to the skies. Likewise the visual appearance of the game is very rugged, which is obviously to be expected of a launch Dreamcast game, but it lacks a certain "Retro 3D" charm emitted by something like last weeks review of Metal Gear Solid (which may have worked out due to the limitations of the platform it was on) and the lack of shading makes the world far too bright, colourful and breaks that sort of imaginary immersion feeling that the mix of real world and toy world achieved by Pixar's movies does so well with.

That said, when the gameplay clicks into place, and especially in multiplayer split-screen, Toy Commander is still good fun for a few hours, it was never ever a must-play title and was often just as frustrating as it was entertaining, especially when you missed a pick up by a fraction and allowed your enemy/best friend (same thing, surely?) to get it or hit the edge of an obstacle and bounce wildly off course, but its suprising just how well the game has aged compared to the rest of the Dreamcast launch line-up.