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Remember back on the SNES when everywhere you looked there was a 2D side scroller with some kind of crappy cartoon license attached to it? Those days are upon us again. Just instead of 2D side scrollers we have 3D platformers. THQ brings us their latest multi-platform game with the fresh new Rocket Power license. To those without kids or those who don’t watch cartoons, Rocket Power draws on the extreme sports craze with 4 youngsters from Ocean Shores. You’ve got the brother/sister duo of Reggie and Otto Rocket whose dad owns the Shore Shack, the café on the boardwalk. You’ve got Twister the Latino surfer and Sammy the new kid in town (who they like to call squid). With a theme park, a beach, a mountain, a skate park and surf bum parents these kids have quite a life. The show has a lot of heart and gives the kids good morals instead of just being about extreme sports. So all in all the show isn’t half bad and with the extreme sports idea the show offers THQ a lot to work with in making this game. Too bad they didn’t use the license more effectively.

We start the story off with the kids trying to go surfing only to find that the sand is missing from their precious beach. Moments later a man from Golem industries offers his help in restoring the sand for the people of Ocean Shores. The kids sense something is up and what follows is a pretty straightforward story involving the kids plot to return Ocean Shores back to its peak and save the Shore Shack (the boardwalk café) from going under. You get to pick any of the 4 kids and at times are given the choice of walking, skating or blading your way around the different zones from the pier to inside a volcano. It’s no Tony Hawk Pro Skater with a primitive skateboard control and trick setup that can make it quite difficult to pull off grinds and tricks outside of the bowls or half-pipe, but it was a nice touch to have the option in there. You’ll guide your people around trying to figure out just what Golem industries are up too and meet many characters from the show along the way such as Officer Shirley, the local police officer, or Lars, Twisters mean older brother. Most of the tasks you’ll be given will be the “go talk to this person” or “collect so many coins” style, but the real fun comes in the form of mini-games. Some of the mini-games involve skating a half-pipe, shooting down targets in a carnival game, or hover boarding down a pipe. Although nothing extraordinary the mini-games offer a nice diversion from the standard platform gameplay. Since the game is pretty easy experienced gamers will be beating the game in a day or two, and thankfully little ones won’t need too much help to get themselves through it in a few days or weeks. So that means less work for Mom or Dad.

All is not good about the game though. The graphics are nothing to write home about. The bright colors and cartoony look help, its just there’s really no layer of polish with lots of rough edges and a real lack of detail. The sound is atrocious and I found that thankfully there is an option to turn it off in the menu. It just kept playing these horrible tunes that were really out of place for a game like this. The voices of the characters are slightly off also, which to fans of the show may be a big disappointment. The game doesn’t seem to have been given the A+ treatment and looks more like a rush job then anything else. Yet I still had a lot of fun playing the game and for fans of the show it plays out like an extended episode with some nice mini-games for variation. If you go in with low expectations you might be surprised. The PS2 and GC versions are identical except that the PS2 has 2 full episodes of the show included on the disk. For parents this might be a good purchase if their kids are fans of the show and for older fans it’d make a better rental. So in the end its not as bad as those old licensed side scrollers, but let’s hope in the future that they give the Rocket Power license a little more spit and shine.