Fido Dido

Fido Dido bounces across the screen with everything important stripped away. The graphics are clumsy, the sounds like flickering, and you're trying to get the dog from the beginning on the left to the end on the right. A classic platformer on Mega Drive from the nineties, where the developers were thrilled to have a license for a cartoon character and thought that would be enough.

It's a linear action jumper. Fido moves forward and backward, jumps, occasionally has to collect something or avoid enemies. You're given levels, you have to survive them and reach the goal. That's all there is to it. The game doesn't even have so much as treacherous platforms, just boring sequences that feel like a punishment for turning it on.

The controls are basic, but unpleasant. Fido falls, jumps, and responds with little willingness. When should you stop? When should you jump? You have no idea. Timing in these games is usually the thing—here it just looks like the game wasn't properly finished. Encounters with enemies are chaotic and unfair. It's not difficult in a "I need to practice" way, it's just broken.

Fido Dido was nothing special in its day. The game rode on the character's name and that was that. While Sonic, Aladdin, or even Midnight Resistance on Mega Drive showed what the hardware could squeeze out, here you see what happens when you have a license and no ideas. It's aged surprisingly poorly—not because it's retro, but because it was never good to begin with.

You don't need to play it today. That's exactly why these games exist on emulators—so you know what it was like when someone tells you they remember this. Only pick it up deliberately if you're collecting every Mega Drive platformer, and even then without any great expectations. Everyone else should see it as a memento—that even in the eighties and nineties, games existed that were just there and nothing more.