0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Anastasia

       

Anastasia is a very budget title developed and published by Midas Interactive for the Playstation 1, the game was released exclusively in Europe on April the 12^th 2001. the game is a combination of cartoon, puzzle game and colouring game, calling it a game however is really stretching it.

Gameplay is very limited in this game starting with the visual novel part of the game which has no player input what so ever and is basically a cartoon you sit through. The colouring section of the game is basic with pictures from the aforementioned cartoon in uncoloured, with the player choosing from a colour palette at the bottom of the screen a total of 11 colours are available.

The colouring section does not give you the choice to paint the drawing the colour you want, you have to guess the correct colour for the various parts of the image if you click on a section with the wrong colour selected that section will not get painted.

Moving on to the puzzle section of the game which uses the exact same images as the colouring section, the player has the choice form playing a 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 or 6x6 diameters for the jigsaw puzzles.

If you are expecting the story to be similar to the animated movie you will be very disappointed, unlike the real story of Anastasia the daughter of the last Czar of Russia who is betrayed and killed by Rasputin along with the rest of Anastasia’s family. 

The cartoon section of the game the story is Anastasia loses her parents in a fire set by Rasputin, a revolution occurs with both Anastasia and Rasputin surviving, with Anastasia changing her name to Asha and quite happy living in communist Russia.

At this point Rasputin reappears and talks to his pet rat about another revolution (as you do), apparently Rasputin had blown up the palace in order to become the president however is told by an evil babushka that he can only rule when the last of the Romanov line is dead.

Throw in a granny as well who apparently survived because she was shopping in Paris, she puts up a reward for information on Anastasia, there is a pendent stolen by a guy called Boris, throw a dog called Sasha in as well, eventually Granny and Anastasia are reunited, that gave me a headache.

One other thing of note the cover image of Anastasia looking nothing like her in game counterpart with the cartoon version being blonde and talking with an American accent.

This clearly budget title has no critic reviews that I can find, I have found one user review on GameFAQs as well the usual GameFAQs users rating we will be using. First though the user review from Threetimes who’s review title reads, Anastasia was a princess with a pedigree, but this game is a bloody mongrel.

His score for the game was a 0.5/5 which equates to a 10/100, they would have probably received a higher score if they hadn’t made the game. His review conclusion reads, There is one redeeming feature of this game, since it suggests that maybe the developers knew it was rubbish all along, and inserted a profanity just for the hell of it.

Anastasia complains that Rasputin called Sasha a bloody mongrel. (Blow up my family and destroy my home, but don't you dare insult my dog!) It is an apt description of the game. There is no point saying do not play this game, because there is nothing to play, just don't waste any money buying it. And if someone offers to give it to you, say no, but be courteous and remind them that the real Anastasia was of royal blood.

Moving on to the GameFAQs user ratings with the game currently sitting at a 1.69/5 for its average rating from a total of 8 user ratings. A couple of not too bad ratings for the game with 1 user rating the game a 3.5/5 and a 2.5/5, however the remaining users were much more critical with a 2/5 and a couple of users each rating the game either a 1/5 or a 0.5/5.

On to the games difficulty with a total 6 users rating this category with 4 out then rating this game as having just the right difficulty, with the remaining 2 users rating the game as easy or simple. On to the games lifespan where just 4 users rated this category and as you have probably already expected the game is short. With 2 users each rating the games lifespan as 1 hour or less than 1 hour, the remaining users spent 4 hours with the game, averaging out at 1.4 hours for the game lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who unsurprisingly don’t stock this European only release likewise eStarland.com don’t stock this title either, Retrogames.co.uk do however with used copy in excellent condition with 9/10 for disc condition can be picked up for £5.

Heading to Amazon.com and like Gamedude and eStarland it is no surprise not see any copies available so we switch to the co.uk version where we find not a huge heap of copies but the ones that are available are pretty cheap, with a very good condition used copy which is complete will cost you £2.79 once shipping is added in. A new copy is almost as cheap with one priced at just a few pence over £3 once you add in the shipping costs.

Moving on to Ebay.com where we find a decent number of copies available, with a disc and manual only copy available for just short of $3 and comes with free international shipping. If you are looking for a more complete copy of the game it won’t cost you much more with a complete copy available for between $4 and $6. A new copy of the game is however much more pricey than Amazon, with the one new copy on sale on Ebay priced at $32.31 which converts to £24.94 in the UK and is a 731% increase in price.

Written by

P J Gibbon