0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Bear in the Big Blue House

       

Bear in the Big Blue House also known as Jim Henson's Bear in the Big Blue House is a children’s game based on the Mitchell Kriegman created, and Jim Henson produced, popular TV show of the same name which ran from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s. The game was developed by DC Studios and published by Ubisoft, and released in North America and Europe on the 9^th and 13^th of December 2002 respectively.

Notable people who worked on this game, Mark Greenshields who worked as the Executive Producer on the game, a role that he would hold from games like 2002s Bratz, Charmed in 2003, and The Cat in The Hat in 2004. He would also take on the role of Managing director for the Production of 2008s GRID.

More recently though he formed Firebrand Games where he is the CEO, the studio specialises in Racing games, with titles in the Trackmania series, Need for Speed Nitro and Undercover as well as the Nascar Heat Mobile game in 2017 on their resume.

Oliver Sykes who worked as the Game Designer for Bear in the Big Blue House, moved mostly on to being a Creative Director, working on games such as State of Emergency 2, the 2006 Hanna Montana game, and more recently on various board game adaption’s, such as 2008s Scrabble, and 2010s Risk The Official Game.

Dominique Roussy also worked on 2002s Bratz as well as Charmed in 2003, and The Cat in The Hat in 2004 as the games Art Director. More recently back in 2011 her worked as Executive Producer on the adaption of the Wipeout gameshow Wipeout 2, the same year he was Senior Producer on the video game movie tie in of Rango.

Stéphane Roy has had a productive career since the early days of Bear In the Big Blue House, Bratz and The Cat in the Hat. Roy has mostly been involved in Ubisoft projects, working as a producer on Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas more recently however  he was a Senior Producer on 2014s Thief reboot and  has been an Executive Producer on the Deus Ex IP.

Bear in the Big Blue House is a game aimed at young children and is one of the few games rated by the ESRB as early childhood at the time of its release. The game features Bear and many of his friends from the Tv show including Tutter, Treelo, Pip and Pop, and Ojo.

The game is broken down into two main modes the first is Adventure mode, this is the main game mode and features eleven mini games for the young gamer to play, these various mini games are based around a main theme if it being OJ’s birthday the mini games on offer are Ojo attempting to find her hidden presents. The mini games includes games such as Dance with Bear, Bubbles with Treelo, Ojo's memory game, and the Birthday game.

When starting the Adventure mode you will have the choice of difficulty level, with either easy or hard mode available. Once chosen you will be taken to the Big Blue House, from here you use the directional buttons either up, left or right, these will lead you to other rooms of the house, in which you will find the various mini games. The Kitchen for example has the mini games Pip and Popcorn as well as Tag with Tutter.

When in one of these mini games the controls are very easy and basic, the D-Pad used for directional input while the face buttons are used when needed, the first game Pop and Popcorn is a simple collect falling popcorn mini game. Using the left and right on the D-Pad the player collects the falling popcorn in a basket, while trying to avoid the unpopped popcorn.

The second game in the kitchen is Tag with Tutter, this is a very basic matching game, Tutter has been playing hide and seek and has hidden in the Kitchen draws. He keeps popping out of the draw holding one of the Playstations face buttons, the aim of this mini game is to simply match the corresponding face button to the one he is holding.

Another mini game on offer is called painting with Ojo, again this is a simple and basic matching puzzle, appearing on an easel is a picture of part of the room, this area is highlight and all the player has to do is scroll through the available colour and press X to select the correct one.

With this being a late release in the Playstations life cycle, reviews for this game a highly limited with just one critic review available, this coming from German publication Feibel.de. With the review finding younger kids should have fun with it, but for everyone else this is a rather short and boring game.

With the lack of critic reviews we now head over to GameFAQs for their user rating, here we find the game currently sitting at an average rating of only 2.91/5 from a total of 16 user ratings. Taking a closer look at the user ratings breakdown we see a varied range of user ratings, the Playstation version on GameFAQs rated slightly high than the Game Boy Color version..

User ratings range from the lowest at 1/5 from one user, to the highest user rating which currently sits at a 5/5 from one other user. Going back to the lower end of the user ratings, we find another user rating the game at a 1.5/5.

Another couple of users rated the game at a below average 2/5, while a clear majority with over half of all the users who rated this game rating it at a 3/5. We see a jump up in user ratings here with a couple more users rating the game at a very respectable 4/5.

Heading to the games difficulty next, where we find a total of 12 users having rated this category. We see a very large percentage that found the game to be a simple challenge, with ten of the users rating it as such. The remaining two users are split between the game being easy or having just the right difficulty level, averaging out the game comes in at having a simple difficulty level.

Lastly we have the games lifespan, where we find a total of 12 users rating this category, with a majority of the twelve users spending very little time with the game, with just over half of them spending less than an hour with the game. A couple of the users managed to squeeze and hour out of the game, while one other user was able to get around 2 hours of game time in. The final couple of users spent the most time with the game clocking in around 4 hours with it, averaging out that comes to a lifespan of around 1.3 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four 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, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who will give you $2 if you are looking to trade in your copy of Bear in the Big Blue House. If on the other hand you are in the market for a copy of the game form Gamedude you will be looking at an outlay of $6 for a copy

Moving over to Retrogames.co.uk where we sadly don’t find the game in stock or even lists. So we will quickly head over to eStarland.com where we find both the Game Boy Color and Playstation versions listed, the former being currently out of stock.

The Playstation version is in stock however, with just one copy available at the time of writing, this copy is a used copy that comes complete with original case, manual and covers, and can be picked up for $6.50. A trade in is also offered with up to $2.75 paid for a complete copy of the Playstation version. The GBC version has a trade in value of $6.50 for a complete copy of the game.

 

Lastly we head over to Amazon.com where we find a decent supply of the game available with a like new copy of the game available for $7.59, not clear if the covers for the game are included however. A very good condition copy shipped by Amazon is available for $7.99 the free shipping only applies to price users and those spending over $25 though.

Another copy though for the same price is available, this copy is in very good condition as well and comes complete, another complete copy in very good condition can also be picked up for $8.73. In addition there are several new copies on the market as well.

The first one of these is priced up at only $8.44, however the shipping costs of $9.99 push it up to $18.43 and around the price of the next cheapest copy. You will find another four copies quite closely priced together between the $19 mark and $23 mark

Written by

P J Gibbon