So as promised at the end of my review for Oregon Trail 3rd edition I would review this game, and yes I have had better luck with the game. What 90s kid doesn't remember the Magic School Bus? I actually remember a time when PBS Kids didn't have a lot of animated fare on their block, the closest we had to animation on the network were the animated bits on Sesame street and Carmen and her VILE gang on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, but then all of a sudden I saw a promo for a new show that was about to come up next on Prairie Public TV's Kid Zone (that's what the Kids Block on the Prairie Public affiliates on PBS were called at the time, they still use the Prairie Public name, but KidZone is no longer a thing because I guess it went Defunct around the early 2000s) and thus started a renaissance, a majority of the shows on the block now are animated. They didn't add any more animated shows in their lineup until 1996 when they premiered the Adventures from the Book of Virtues and a little show based on the stories by Marc Brown, I don't know what it's called I think it might be Arthur or something (it's a joke people!)Maybe I'll review it one day. Anyway back to the Magic School Bus, I was happy that there was finally an animated show on the block but the show didn't really register with me, I was 3 when the show premiered so of course it didn't really click with me until I got older and better understood what they were saying. I'm actually kind of sorry that the Magic School Bus Rides Again didn't take off, I don't know if it's because people were turned off by someone other than Valerie Frizzle running things or perhaps they blew most of their funding having Lin Manuel Miranda doing the theme song.(So Guess which show based on a previous PBS property faired better!) Okay I think it's time I talked about the game (I need to learn to make shorter intros)

Gameplay and Story: Based on the book of the same name and on Magic School Bus pilot episode Gets Lost in Space, and like in the tv episode it's kind of the same plot considering that Ms.Frizzle gets separated from the class, though luckily the game spares us of the Students personality traits, therefore we don't need to do a drinking game every time Phoebe says "At My Old School..." or Arnold saying "I think I should have stayed home today" or Carlos telling a bad joke, or Ralphie saying "Is it Just me? or...." So we have the reports to look at to get an idea where the Friz might be and don't go straight to Pluto because even though *spoiler alert* Miss Frizzle was found on Pluto on the tv show she'll be on a random planet in this game. Basically the Kids have to conduct experiment and collect tokens in order to be able to call the Frizz to find out where she is. So why are they in Outer Space? well to shut up Janice of course, but don't worry unlike the tv show, she doesn't slow everyone down by taking something from every planet, girl just take a small sample but it into a microscope glass, send it to NASA and people will believe you.

Graphics: Don't you just love how NASA likes to collaborate with Education related content? yeah apparently this happens here with video footage as well as stuff from Hubble, oh btw can we talk about the CGI Bus? the backgrounds on the planets are CGI as well and they're pretty okay considering when they came out

Sound: So I don't know about all this, for some reason Ms.Frizzle sounds different did Lily Tomlin ask for too much money? (yeah for some reason she doesn't sound right) I couldn't find a credits page that would list the voice actors so I don't know who reprised their roles, but I guess they opted to have Liz do the talking so we would notice as little as possible.

Addictive: Well I can't say it's addictive because I didn't grow up with the Magic School Bus games, I think in my childhood I spent more time playing this storybook games (like the living books games because they had a point and click around for surprises thing going on) Maybe one of these days I'll play the other games, which is kind of my goal when it comes to a series I do gaming videos of.

Depth: well it depends on how long you play, you get to explore all the planets I don't think I got a chance to check out the sun though (remember this was before Pluto was demoted to Dwarf Planet) but I don't think we can go to the sun anyway (but I think MSBRA tried to do that)

Difficulty: The game teaches you about the planets, and I could compare this to an open book test since we have the report notes with us on the journey because it's not really that hard at all

Post Review Follow up: Wait a minute why is Liz talking? what's Janice doing in the class? (no seriously she even has a report on the wall, well let's be fair she was in the tv episode so of course she'll be here) I kind of wish they could have made new games when Magic School Bus Rides Again became a thing. I kind of wish they did games based on Gets Baked Inside a Cake or Going Batty, or Inside a Haunted House (because those were the episodes I probably remember most, mostly because the latter of the two were actually part of a very special Halloween episode that aired only once on PBS where three of the kids one of them played by Danny Tamborelli...makes sense since he was Arnold's voice actor)

This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review Oregon Trail 4th edition Pioneer Adventures