Moronic, banal, sexist - and a lot of fun, too

By Peter Eley

Beavis and Butt-head ****

Do U

GT Interactive

$109.95

PC MA15+

America's favourite losers make the trip from MTV to computer game successfully in an adventure-style romp that captures the anarchic humour of the television show.

It's time to go to college and Beavis and Butt-head are drooling at the prospect of, as they put it, "doing it with college sluts as no one as done it before."

And your job is to help. Sadly, it's not easy. These guys have never heard of flowers, chocolates and dinner dates and rely on pick-up lines such as: "Hey, baby, let's like go and do it somewhere."

Their best chance is at a college party. But before they can go they have to complete a series of assignments involving biology, figure drawing, and agriculture - the teacher's a stud with a huge cattle prod. Get the picture?

Moronic, banal, and appallingly sexist, perhaps - but it's a lot of fun.

And it's not a bad game. The puzzles are tough but logical. I got stuck in the first scene, the dean's induction speech, and it took more time than I care to admit to before I cracked it.

The Australia-New Zealand rating is a fairly tough MA15+ on the basis of "low-level animated violence", while the United States rating is Teen 13+ "comic mischief, mild language and suggestive themes."

The interface is a breeze, strictly point and click, and learning to navigate takes around a minute, or about four times our anti-heroes' attention span.

Graphically, Beavis and Butt-head's cartoon characters translate seamlessly to the PC. There's no 3D stuff here and the game runs on a standard machine.

We got it going on a 120 with 24Mb Ram although a 133 with 32Mb Ram is probably a realistic minimum. On a Pentium 2 266 it rocked.

Beavis and Butt-head **

Bunghole in One

$89.95

PC M15+

Again, comic mischief, suggestive themes and low-level animated violence (to a golf ball).

Bunghole in One is a game you'll buy if you fit the following criteria: (a) you're president of your local branch of the Beavis and Butthead fan club; (b) when not attending meetings, you haven't got anything better to do than play crazy golf on a computer.

Bunghole in One is OK and the holes are a hoot, and pretty challenging.

But there are better fun golf games around - notably Links Extreme although that's lacking a bit in the suggestive themes department.

* Send your comments e-mail peter_eley@herald.co.nz

Pictured: Beavis and Butt-head put a new slant on a college education.