Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry

Developer: VIZ Interactive Publisher: NewKidCo

Released: November 8, 2000 Rated: E 5/10

Although it’s the closest of NewKidCo’s releases on the N64 to something intended for a general audience, Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry is still mostly held back by an oversimplification to market it to NewKidCo’s usual audience. Which, as you might imagine, is young children. Though it might feel odd nowadays to think that a cartoon from about 50 years earlier was a key license to market to kids, I can personally confirm that along with the Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and other old cartoon reruns were key components of afternoon viewing. They also have a surprising number of video games, both before and after this era. That being said, even though the idea of applying the cast and dynamics of the Tom and Jerry cartoons to a fighting game – in this case a 3D arena style game in the vein of Power Stone – makes sense, VIZ and NewKidCo don’t seem to understand how to approach this to make a good game out of it, for their target audience or in general.

Jerry delivering an uppercut that could knock down Drederick Tatum

In a way that doesn’t apply to the under-five-years age range of the Elmo titles or Tigger’s Honey Hunt, Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry being overly simple or lacking appeal to an older audience just doesn’t make sense. Opting for what I can really only describe as “baby’s first Power Stone clone,” since the 3D arena fighter is such a wildly underpopulated genre, Fists of Furry takes a mere seven characters from the cartoons and sprinkles them throughout a handful of small, diagonally-oriented fighting locales inspired by various shorts. As home-y as a standard kitchen, garden, and front yard or as exotic as a mad scientist’s laboratory and the deck of a cruise ship, the key issue that arises immediately is that everything about the presentation is so cookie-cutter and uninspired. Stage-specific items litter and spawn across the battlefield in each arena, though they only differ aesthetically, ultimately fitting the same categories of melee weapons, throwable items, or projectiles. There are one or two stage gimmicks to serve as hazards, and some pickups that are the same across all stages. A few different placements of platforms along the edges differentiate the design of each level, but every one of them is still the same basic square shape and size, most of which is still empty. Lastly, there are seven different characters in the game – Tom, Jerry, Butch, Duckling, Tuffy, Spike and Tyke – and while they do play with a slightly different feel, there are no combos, no abilities, no special moves of any kind to mark their individuality.

In short, the problem with Fists of Furry is just that it’s boring. It’s so incredibly boring and uninspired, and the idea that it’s supposed to be explained away by the fact that “it’s for kids” and “couldn’t be too complicated” just rings hollow to me. The inherent violence of a fighting game and of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, even as widely accepted as they have been, simply don’t translate to a game you’d bother to cater to an age group outright unlikely to be able to understand the genre at large. Mature-themed titles like Mortal Kombat and mechanically-deep efforts like Killer Instinct aside, a half-decent fighting game like so many mid-’90s Street Fighter clones isn’t inherently age-restrictive. Equipped with a decently-marketable license, in spite of its age, VIZ Kids does little with Tom and Jerry to turn in anything greater than the bulk standard effort. Just enough characters to fill out a bare minimum roster, okay animation in translating the classic visuals to a polygonal style. A serviceable effort in sound design, given the pre-packaged nature of the score and sound effects rounds out an otherwise bare-bones presentation with only your single and multiplayer modes.

Tom’s loss animation is to pound the dirt with his fists but I forgot this and thought this screenshot was basically him in the Family Guy death pose.

Multiplayer, of course, refers only to up to two combatants, as enough effort was only on tap to support two players in a style I would say inherently favors a four person free-for-all. Although the original Power Stone also only supported two players, this still strikes me as the key omission that could otherwise save Fists of Furry from being completely ignorable. I can imagine this doing just enough as a pick-up-and-play title, that it would be worth busting out at a party if it supported all four controller ports. Alas, I’m really just speculating as to what Fists of Furry could have done in the end, when all you’ve really got is about 45 minutes worth of play time before you’ve kind of seen everything and then some. Not unplayable, not broken, but simply not worth a pass, in spite of the altogether low population density in the genre.

Continuing Legacy

I keep bringing up Power Stone for the only real touchstone of the 3D arena fighter most folks will be aware of, and it pains me to say that there are neither any newer sequels to the series since Power Stone 2, nor any really notable titles in the same style. The only successors to the genre following Fists of Furry are, actually, more licensed games. The Looney Tunes had a go at the style with Loons: The Fight For Fame on the original Xbox, Godzilla licensed games starting with Destroy All Monsters Melee offer a much slower, but still enjoyable version of the genre, and Tom and Jerry: War of the Whiskers served as the next-gen follow-up to Fists of Furry on PS2, Xbox, and GameCube, still made by VIZ and published by NewKidCo

Additional Information

Saves: Cartridge

Compatible With: Rumble Pak

Players: 1-2

Print Guides: None

Aggregate Critical Reception (GameRankings): 72.33%, based on 3 reviews

Other Releases: EU, Fall 2000