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For those not familiar with the Disney/Pixar movie upon which this game is based, Flik, the main character of A Bug's Life, is an ant. In an effort to increase his colony's grain production, he invents a grain harvester, which unfortunately runs amok and destroys a food offering that the ants were preparing to placate the Mafioso grasshoppers. Upon discovering this lack of an offering, the head grasshopper, Hopper, demands twice the food by the end of the season. After a trial, Flik is sent away from the colony to bring back bigger bugs to help fend off the grasshoppers.

Thus begins the movie, and the game. A Bug's Life allows you to lead Flik through roughly the same sequence of events as the movie, in a pure 3D platform environment. It is your job to take Flik through 15 levels by throwing seeds and navigating the world.

Movie licenses are more often than not a huge disappointment. How does A Bug's Life fare?

A Bug's Life takes place across five lands, each composed of three levels. The first two levels of each land are usually typical platform fare, and involve finding your way to the exit while optionally picking up as much grain and dispatching as many bad bugs as possible. The third level is usually a boss level. It is usually not necessary to collect any amount of grain to get to the exit, although some levels have barriers with grain quotas to pass.

Flik has a limited repertoire of moves, limited to jumping, throwing berries, and butt sliding/stomping. There are, however, many items to manipulate that make up for this simplistic control scheme. Large seeds can be carried and thrown to create climbable leaves, mushrooms to bounce on, and other plants that can help you get to places that are otherwise inaccessible.

There are two types of levels. Outdoor levels allow more or less free space in which to travel, and there are also indoor cave levels that require more thought to open up all areas. Sometimes completing a level can be as simple as running straight for the exit, whereas others may require you to collect grain or certain colors of berries before getting to the exit.

There are also some special stages, such as Flik flying on a dandelion across the riverbed, that are quite different from the rest of the game.

In this area, A Bug's Life has had some thought. Getting through any one level is usually quite easy, but there are three optional Success Tokens to be earned per level. These tokens are used to open up Challenge Modes. Previously beaten levels can be re-visited to earn tokens that were missed the first time around. This gives incentive to go back and re-play prior levels in order to get a perfect score.

Controlling Flik is as you would expect for this type of game. Many of the moves are familiar, including a butt stomp and a butt slide, reminiscent of Mario 64, and the A button for throwing objects, a la Banjo Kazooie. Every button on the control pad is used for some function, with the yellow buttons being used for camera control, historically typical of N64 3D platform games.

One problem in this area is that control seems, for lack of a better word, floppy. Flik has quite a bit of air control while jumping, and while airborne defies conventional laws of physics. This is a very important aspect of any platform game, and more attention should have been given to making Flik move realistically.

Characters from the movie are represented polygonally as accurately as possible. Most of the bugs from the movie make at least a cameo appearance, but the majority of the time you will be looking at Flik. The game environment concepts are taken directly from the movie and are represented fairly well.

The game has an overall blurry feel, though, that pales in comparison to the movie. Of course, nobody could reasonably expect the game graphics to match the Pixar-produced movie, but a direct comparison is obvious, as both the game and the movie are computer produced.

Sound effects are nicely varied, and many of the celebrity voices from the movie are carried over into the game. One confusing aspect is that the in-game voice that makes comments while you are playing ("nice shot!") is decidedly unlike that of Flik in the movie, although the credits list News Radio's Dave Foley as the source of Flik's voice. There is the possibility that this is a third unseen party calling commentary while you play. In either case, the voice doesn't seem to fit the onscreen character's actions well.

The music is charming, and although somewhat repetitive, fits in well with the environments in the game.

Just plug it in and go! Okay, so Installation isn't really applicable, but rumble pack and memory cartridges are supported.

One must feel at least a morsel of pity for anyone trying to create a 3D platform game for the Nintendo 64. This is the system that has Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, two of the defining 3D platformers, one of which was available when the machine launched.

The absence of cut scenes (present in the Playstation version) is glaringly obvious, and a real disappointment from a game based on such a visually rich movie as A Bug's Life. Some of this is no doubt based on the limited storage space inside a typical N64 cartridge, but the slideshow methods used to indicate plot that happens between gameplay segments are too brief and static to be a valid replacement.

Overall, A Bug's Life is a mediocre movie license that has had some corners cut to fit onto a cartridge. Fans of the movie may enjoy it, but as a game it is strictly middle of the road.