Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum Review

Garbage Pail Kids were a popular series of sticker trading cards in the 1980s and a parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. Unlike those lovable dolls, Garbage Pail Kids were disgusting characters with comical abnormality, deformity, and/or suffering a terrible painful fate/death. While these were highly popular back then, it was surprising that there never was a game for the NES. Until now. Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum was actually developed mainly as a fully functional new NES game, but it also made its way to current and last-gen platforms.

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum tells the story of four Garbage Pail Kids: Luke Puke, Mad Mike, Patty Putty, and Leaky Lindsay as they travel through time to find the elusive stale gum. Each character has their own unique skills that will allow them to find the item they are hunting.

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is a 2D action platformer where players, using the four protagonists, go from point A to point B and clear each level. The game allows players to play levels in whatever order they wish; similar to Mega Man where you can select which robot master to tackle in what order. So if a level is problematic, you can also try another and come back later. You can pick up cards from trash cans that will complete the word TRASH next to your health. Once you have all letters, you can activate a temporary invincibility mode.

Each of the characters can be selected at any time during gameplay and is heavily encouraged in order to use each of their unique skills. You *can* try to force yourself through with a single character, but that’s just making things harder on yourself. So Mike can use an axe, Luke uses short-range projectile vomit that can kill enemies or be used as a trap, Lindsay fires long-range snots and Patty has a useless bounce jump but jumps slightly higher than the other 3.

The characters also act as your lives. If all 4 die, it’s game over. There’s also a fun card game mechanic. During every stage, you’ll come across an NPC with whom you’ll be able to trade cards with an NPC if you want. Cards represent other non-playable Garbage Pail Kids that can be used for a temporary perk; for example, Mad Max can revive a dead kid, and Buggy Betty will make you fly. There are a few more you can collect and use. Each card is a one-time use. If you’re stuck, you can always watch the game play itself.

While having four uniquely skilled characters can provide some variety, it’s also a frustrating mechanic. Luke’s puke shoots downward so it can be helpful when you’re on a platform that’s higher than the enemy’s position, so it can be used to kill it. But if Luke is dead, none of the other three has a similar skill so it’ll either try to avoid the enemy or try to kill it without being pushed to your death. In general, losing a specific character can pretty much kill a playthrough of the game.

Level design is absolutely horrendous as well. You’ll end up going around in a circle always wondering where you have to go. It’s quite tedious. Some levels will require you to jump down; without being able to see if there’s a platform or not; meaning you can fall to your death or on spikes. If you fall on the latter and you don’t have Patty, you might not be able to jump high enough to get out. Levels also feel too long; especially if you don’t know the path to take in certain levels such as the Tokyo 1985 level.

I can understand that a game with NES 8-bit aesthetic will not be perfect; personally, I love the 8-bit pixelated visuals, but good lord Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is absolutely horrible for an NES game. Level design makes no sense, the colors of the levels literally look like someone threw up (maybe it was done on purpose?) and they used those colors for each level. I cannot recall an NES-like game that looks that horrible. The soundtrack doesn’t fare much better as well; it is pretty mediocre; not the best usage of chiptune technology.

While Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is a mediocre platformer at best; the mix and matching of the four characters is pretty much the game’s saving grace as it encourages players to make use of a bit of strategy when approaching a new level or area inside a level. The overall presentation is just horrible, the levels are poorly designed with no clear idea in mind. Unless you’re a diehard fan of the Garbage Pail Kids franchise and use it to collect the cards, this game is a full-on fan service. If don’t know what Garbage Pail Kids are, then I highly recommend you pass on this. There are a handful of much better platformers than this.