Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! SNES Review

Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! Review (SNES) (Retro WedNESday #15)
Developer: Imagineering
Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
Released: 1994

Growing up as a kid in the ’90s, one of my absolute favorite shows to watch was Home Improvement. In fact, I still watch it today, both on cable TV and sometimes on its 24/7 Home Improvement channel on Roku. It was my first introduction to Pamela Anderson, and then it was Heidi Time!

While I enjoyed the show a ton, and also loved gaming, at no point watching it did I ever think… damn, there needs to be a video game about this. It’s a family sitcom. There’s really nothing to base a game around. So of course, someone made it anyway. Because in the 1990s, if something was popular, you better believe it was going to be licensed to hell.

The same thing happens today, of course, but to a lesser degree in gaming, which is actually a blessing and a curse. At least Home Improvement the game was made in a time where it could exist as just a bad game. If it were made today, it would be a bad game AND have some woke agenda attached to it.

You’d have to play as a character assigned woman at birth but could really be anything. The villain would actually be Tim Taylor, because he’s a misogynist, and also Heidi because she’s a hot, fit woman. You’d probably be a Body Type B fat disabled person fighting to become not just the new Tool Time girl (or whatever), but also the host of the show. And so now you’d have a game that sucked on every level, not just gameplay.

Thankfully this trash wasn’t produced today, though, so I guess instead of talking about how bad a hypothetical 2026 Home Improvement game would be, I can talk a little about how bad the 1994 Home Improvement game is.

Unlike The Lion King, which I knew existed and just didn’t care about as a kid, little me had no idea there even was a Home Improvement video game. It’s possible, and probably likely, that I saw a commercial for it while watching the show. It’s not like I didn’t see commercials because I was looking at a phone, but I don’t remember.

Had I seen it at Movie Gallery, sheer curiosity over how the hell you make an action platformer out of this sitcom probably would have led to it being a rental. But I didn’t rent it, so therefore I must never have seen it, and thus I stand by my statement that I didn’t even know it existed.

Potential commercials be damned.

That’s not a commercial. I looked, couldn’t find one on YouTube, and I’m going to assume there wasn’t one. That’s why I didn’t know about it.

Now because, as I’ve established, I didn’t know the game existed as a kid, I can’t review it through the lens of, “Well, this is how I remember it. Oh, I remember having a blast with it, but now it kinda sucks and doesn’t have the same impact.” None of that. I remember it very well because I didn’t play it 30 years ago; I played it last night. And my memory isn’t bad, so I know for a fact that it sucked terribly.

So yes, much like The Lion King, this is yet another retro review of a game I didn’t play as a kid, have no long-term memory of or nostalgia for, and couldn’t be bothered to beat.

“You can’t review a game you didn’t beat! You’re not a real reviewer if you didn’t beat the game! Git good or be quiet!”

All true, but this is Titanquisitor, and these Halls are mine, and I can do as I damn well please within them. I don’t need a full hour-long torture session of having my balls kicked in to understand that if I didn’t enjoy the first kick, the next 50 probably wouldn’t change my mind.

For example, a professional reviewer wouldn’t be this far into a review and have said absolutely nothing about the game supposedly being reviewed. They would’ve said even less in more words because you need to know their triggers and where they’re coming from politically. I’ve wasted all these words talking about Pamela Anderson (not nearly enough, trust me—you don’t want me to get that distracted, else we end up with a 5,000-word tome on the gloriousness that was ’90s Pamela Anderson and totally forget this was even a game review), Movie Gallery and whether I may or may not have seen a commercial in 1994. There’s a difference.

If you have survived all of that, congratulations, you don’t have ADD. I may, but you don’t. So we can finally, and smoothly, transition into actually talking about Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! as a video game.

Yes, stick with me. I know that it’s still completely stupid that there actually was a Home Improvement video game, which only exists because someone, somewhere, sat around a table and pitched, “Hey, we should make a game out of Home Improvement.”

And that’s my kind of stupid. And the game shown in the featured banner is obviously AI… it looks way better than what this game actually is.

So how do you make a video game out of a TV show within a TV show? A collection of minigames where you’re doing different things, like steering a flying grill into space while dodging obstacles? Running some electrical wires while trying to avoid being electrocuted? Grab ass with Heidi?

I don’t think so, gamer. Dinosaurs and stolen power tools.

But these aren’t just any dinosaurs, they’re the new Binford 6100 fire-breathing mechanical T-Rexes. These bad boys will roast your balls and make you drop all your nuts and bolts.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What kind of stupid jackass associates Home Improvement/Tool Time with jungles overrun with dinosaurs? And that’s a reasonable question. Thankfully, the geniuses who made this were a step ahead of you. They weren’t completely gorged on special brownies.

These dinosaurs are all part of another television studio set where someone has hidden your stolen power tools. I’m not sure what happened to Cooking With Irma, or even why a low-rated tool show on a local, low-rated PBS-style cable channel suddenly shares a studio with Jurassic Park, but it is considerably less stupid than thinking they were real dinosaurs.

Of course they’re not real. It’s an SNES video game.

And let’s be real here. Jurassic Park came out in 1993. This game came out in 1994, despite Home Improvement starting in 1991. Developers didn’t work in molasses back then, so I see you, old Imagineering developers. You wanted the Jurassic Park license, didn’t get it, and said, “Screw it, we’ll make Home Improvement with dinosaurs.”

Respect for the vision. It’s the lack of execution I take personal offense to.

Because at the end of the day, a video game is supposed to be fun. And yes, the premise can be fun, and I think Power Tool Pursuit! is exactly the right kind of stupid fun, but the gameplay blows chunks and there’s no getting around that. It looks good, it sounds alright, but it plays like ass after spending money at Taco Bell.

That’s a rather crude way of saying it’s not fun.

I have a high tolerance for stupid. Anyone who frequents this site can clearly see I operate on a level of stupid far beyond the mainstream—in presentation, of course, not ideals. But I don’t have a high tolerance for crappy gameplay, and this game has that in abundance.

It’s the combination of terrible controls, horrible platforming, small flying insects, three lives with no continues, and disappearing enemies that can still attack you that made me smack my head to the table without concern for that instant super glue I just put on it.

It’s for that reason that, after a respectable 30 minutes of failing to get off the first level, I can safely say that this game is not very good. That’s not a skill issue. Well, it kinda is, but this game was busting my balls, and for a guy who has to have a cystoscopy tomorrow, I’d prefer to do something more relaxing. But it’s also a design issue.

They take the Sonic the Hedgehog approach to gaming—in fact, it kinda resembles Sonic, just with Tim Taylor, dinosaurs, a Tool Time aesthetic and none of the fun—in that you collect nuts and bolts instead of rings, and these are your health. Have nuts and bolts? Well, you can take a hit and have a brief moment to recover at least one to ensure you can take another hit.

But Sonic was kinda easy, and this game is heavy on using balls as a punching bag.

Figuratively, of course.

So like I said, I didn’t get off the first level. And I don’t care enough to even pull up YouTube to see what future levels looked like. I’m going to assume there was no level where you play Magic School Bus around Heidi, so who cares?

I’m going to Decree this one 2 stars, which is Mundane. That means either forgettable or decent. How can I give a game I called ass and terrible, and didn’t even get off the first level of, two stars? Because I enjoyed the rather lengthy opening. They did a good job building the Tool Time set, having Tim and Al talk while the Tool Time music played, and setting up the stupid story. That’s more than a lot of games at the time did, and it’s gotta count for something.

Plus, as I said, my Halls and I do as I please.

Did Home Improvement need to be a video game? No, but it is, and it sucked to play for a little bit. Now Baywatch, that would’ve made a sweet game. Back then, not today.

Slow-motion foot racing? Or picture this: a QTE game where you play as a drowning victim and have to get Pamela Anderson’s (or Yasmin Bleeth, Gena Lee Nolin, Brooke Burns, Carmen Electra, Traci Bingham, Donna D’Errico, Kelly Packard, Nancy Valen or Brande Roderick) attention before you drown. Then you have a series of increasingly difficult QTEs while getting mouth-to-mouth, where the longer you successfully press the buttons, the longer it takes to be resuscitated. So the goal would be to see how long you can be dead and continue getting mouth-to-mouth before you start breathing again.

My bad, that was pretty stupid.

Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! gets a two out of five: MUNDANE.