Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights

Scooby-Doo is one of the most endearing cartoon characters of all time, continuing to pump out new TV series and movies to this day. With such a wide portfolio, you'd have to expect video games to grace the franchise as well. Night of 100 Frights is certainly not the first Scooby-Doo video game. That honor would go to a game simply titled Scooby-Doo for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. Night of 100 Frights may be the most popular title, though, reaching Greatest Hits status on Playstation 2, and selling 1.8 million units total across all consoles.

The game itself is an incredibly simple platformer, with a small dash of metroidvania sprinkled in. You run through basic corridors in various spooky environments, dispatching enemies and collecting hundreds upon hundreds of Scooby Snacks. Various gadget unlocks open up new areas of the game for you, some of which are optional, and some that are mandatory. This aspect of the game gives it the only real semblance of depth to speak of. Most of your time will be spent following literal lines of Scooby Snacks leading you to your next destination, punctuated by long periods of aimlessly wandering around trying to find the next gadget or secret path that you missed.

It starts inoffensively enough. Collecting Scooby Snacks is initially a fun feeling, with levels being completely covered in them. However, as you begin to keep playing, the realization dawns on you that there's very little else to do here. Combat is as simple as either jumping on or charging into enemies, and the most complex platforming you'll be doing is swinging from hook to hook. This is made more tedious by the difficulty curve. The majority of the game is a cakewalk, leading up to some absolutely frustrating screens in the late game, leaving very little developmental space in the middle to prepare you. On top of all this, the completely static camera occasionally works against you. However, most levels are too basic for this to be too frequent of a problem. Mercifully, this game does not utilize an extra life system, so you can redo a screen over and over.

The environments themselves are thematically sound enough. Spooky mansions, hedge mazes, graveyards, fishing canneries, your typical horror fare. It's a fun homage to horror tropes the first time you go through these areas, but eventually after wandering around grinding for Scooby Snacks to progress, they lose their luster. They're also broken up into very small pieces, with loading screens constantly interrupting the experience. Sometimes you can walk down a hall for fifteen seconds, just to be greeted with another loading screen. Compare this to other platformers of this generation such as Jak and Daxter, and it's not impressive.

Presentation a mixed bag, and one of the most tragic topics to touch on. When this game gets it right, it gets it so right. The entire voice cast features voice overs from Scooby-Doo alumni, including the omnipresent Frank Welker as Fred, and guest voices from Tim Curry and Don Knotts, the latter even appearing in game with their likeness. The intro is a shot for shot recreation of the original title theme for the cartoon, and the cutscenes even feature a campy laugh track. When the game pulls this off right, it feels great. The downside is, though, the pacing of this is completely off. You'll have a few of these moments at the very start of the game, and then go hours wandering around without any break in the monotony. The worst part are the repeated voice lines from Scooby himself, pointedly noting every single encounter on your way. It gets old incredibly fast.

The music is similarly mixed. On one hand, there are many themes pulled directly from the cartoons, which of course fit wonderfully. Some of the original compositions from Tommy Tallarico feel slightly less in place, though. Going from a classic spooky mansion audio track to a lighthearted, almost airy bonus stage track without even being a bonus stage is weird. The boss music is similarly odd. Old 60's styled pop rock tracks, complete with full sets of lyrics. On one hand, the camp of it all makes it endearing, but on the other hand, they make unfitting boss themes.

Overall, it's easy to get caught up in nostalgia for a title like this. With hundreds of thousands of kids having played it, I'm sure many remember it more fondly than I. In retrospect, the game is marred with too many pacing issues and an oversimplistic nature that puts it behind dozens of other platforming choices. For Scooby-Doo super fans, you could certainly do worse. It's not an outright bad game. It's just not remarkable enough to reach the pedestal of a true great.