The story of a boring day, turned to uncontrolled laughter, then back to boring. The story of Art Alive.
After the Sega logo, Buck sees the intro screen. "It's a game alright" Buck says with not much enthusiasm. The intro screen is simple letters with pictures around it, all in black and white, and then is colored in gradually, showcasing the fact that this game is about... coloring? If Buck were among his friends, he would've collapsed in embarrassment by now, but since he's alone, he admits the opening theme song is rather catchy. But then the game proper begins. Buck has only one thing on his mind as the game begins. "What the... pfft AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. And so on..."
The game seems awfully familiar to Buck. "This is Paint. A console version of Paint." Well if you don't know the specific joy of trying to move a Paint cursor with a D-pad instead of a mouse, and actually trying to draw something with this tool that doesn't look like a garbled mess or a disfigured protozoa, let me just sum it up. It's horrible. And that's what this game is.
Plain and simple, this game is about drawing. You draw pictures, or try to, with a program that's very similar to a program that comes standard on modern PCs, except you don't get to use a mouse, and you also can't save your creations. So even if you manage to make something nice, it's gone forever after the power is off. Your options are very limited. You get a choice of about 20 colors, and as for tools you get the basic pencil, eraser, paint bucket for filling in lines, spray paint can, and various pre-made shapes such as circles and straight lines. The best part about the program is you get sprites of various Sega characters like Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as Toejam & Earl, and a few others, to use in your pictures. You also get generic pictures you can add as well, such as a person, a dinosaur, a volcano and such. Also, instead of starting with a blank paper, you can also start with premade backgrounds you can color in and add stuff to. But it doesn't really amount to anything worth spending 10 minutes to an hour on a picture that disappears after the game shuts off. As for the graphics, well the look of the game is generally average or below for the Genesis, but also the pictures only look as good as you can make them, which is very difficult considering the controls and limited tools. However the premade sprites seem like they were ripped right out of other Genesis games and they look good. Overall though, the look of the game is bad. The frame rate holds up perfectly though, even when there's a million things on the screen. Still that's not good enough to save the simplistic look of the game.
Then there's the sound. Every time you use a tool, it makes a strange sound, which is annoying. There's no background music to speak of, but the intro theme, as I mentioned, was kinda catchy. Even though it's kinda kiddie. Overall, the sound in this game sucks.
So, what started as a boring day for TheBuck27, turned into a good laugh, followed by more boredom. "This game is so boring" said Buck, with a bored tone in his voice.
Luckily, Streets of Rage came and saved the day. Buck threw the evil Art Alive cartridge against the wall, smashing it into a million pieces. And then he played Streets of Rage with joy. Buck's boredom was no more. He lived to play another day. "Streets of Rage rules all!" Said Buck with utter enthusiasm. And he lived happily ever after.