I thought I would shift my attention back to a kids game this evening, especially since an upstart contributor is rocketing up the MobyGames charts by entering dozens of largely overlooked children-oriented entertainment software titles (hi DJP Mom! Keep up the good work). Tonight’s game is The Adventures of Little Miss Scatterbrain which is but one title in a series called “Mr. Men and Little Miss” games. Collect ’em all — and you know I probably will, eventually (I already have another one in the queue). If this opening card is any indicator, there are at least 10 of these titles:

I fear that this game is going to be juvenile, even by the standards of this blog, and my suspicions are quickly confirmed. Akin in animation style and target audience to Cheerios Play Time, I similarly hesitate to classify this game as “educational”. Your guide through this excursion is one Mojo the Mosquito. I keep thinking that he is speaking with an exaggerated stereotypical Italian accent until I realize that the creators were trying to conceptualize what an anthropomorphized talking mosquito would sound like (lots of buzzing and slurring of words). First, he asks you to click on an animal, advising you that the larger the animal, the tougher the game. I’m not so sure about that. The games seem to be the same whether I click the duck or the cow; the other three animals are cat, pig, and sheep. Then you are launched into the main town map:

The story goes like this: It’s morning time, but the sun is nowhere to be seen. Miss Magic calls up Miss Scatterbrain and expresses alarm at this development. Miss Magic would be able to rectify the solar situation except that her magic book was absent-mindedly swiped by Scatterbrain. It’s up to you to help her scour her kitchen cupboards in the dark in order to find the book strictly by the sound it makes when touched. That’s the first minigame.

When you retrieve the book and bring it to the town square where Miss Magic is waiting, the realization dawns that there isn’t enough light to read the book. So Miss Somersault — also present at the meeting — goes off to capture fireflies in a jar, thus commencing the second minigame. It’s essentially a point & click game of Whack-A-Mole where you try to click as many popping fireflies as possible before the moon waxes from a first quarter position to a full disc. I’m not sure how much sense that makes, but that’s what the creators used for a timer. My record was 49 fireflies in the allotted time period, though I later figured out that it is impossible to lose this game. Even on the “cow” setting — presumably the toughest — 0 fireflies was enough to succeed.

The story continues like this, leading into many more insipid, un-lose-able minigames. I wanted to be more thorough and explore the different animal options to validate whether there were any differences. However, the story sequences have no fast forward feature and I could only sit through the exposition so many times. The voice acting is tolerable, but clearly done in kids’ puppet show-style voices. I can’t say that I’m necessarily looking forward to logging the remaining items in this series.

At MobyGames:

• The Adventures of Little Miss Scatterbrain

See Also:

• The Adventures of Little Miss Scatterbrain Archived at Internet Archive