The Retro Critic

Fisher-Price: Perfect Fit

The words “classic” and “awesome” are tossed around a lot when people speak about their favourite retro games.

Super Mario World this, Legend Of Zelda that.

How “awesome” is Tetris?

Pac-Man is a true “classic”!

Yeah well all that may be true but it appears that some games are just too good, too special to be mentioned in top 100 lists (or top 1000 lists) of greatest games ever. And that’s just wrong, sad and wrong.

Games like Fisher-Price: Perfect Fit always get left out and I’m personally saddened by that thought on a level so high that Donkey Kong only dreams of ever reaching that kind of vertical distance.

This game’s so good, you guys.

First up, it knows how challenging it is so it includes instructions so as not to confuse gamers, just in case they are unclear about what kind of experience they are about to feel and be a part of.

Already these instructions set the tone: clear and varied.

Two seconds and BAM!, now you know that Perfect Fit’s first level is a simple match-and-fit game with no flips, that there is no time limit to solve three puzzles AND that you can press button A for more help.

Yes: more help!

The game not only repeats things twice for you but it offers more assistance, just to make sure you’re not lost. Is that a considerate retro game or what?

Now, when you get to the actual gameplay…

You’ll notice its abstract charm and class straight away.

You ever watch a Monet painting from really, really close up with one eye closed and the other eye catching reality through a kaleidoscope dipped in honey and three different types of cheese?

Then you know what you’re looking at right now.

The 8-bit garbage chute on the top left of the screen dispenses big letters and objects and it’s your job to direct it to the appropriate silhouette under three minutes. Except when there’s no time limit, obviously. On the bottom left, you have options to flip the image in different ways, which definitely helps. The real challenge, however, lies in trying to tell what the shapes actually are.

See that thing at the top?

Guess what: that’s a telephone.

With eyes, a nose, a mouth and wheels.

Bet you thought you knew everything about everything, huh? Well Fisher-Price: Perfect Fit is here to tell you that there is MORE out there. Beings, creations beyond your imagination, beyond what we can taste and smell.

Look at this guy:

Oh sure there’s a picnic basket on the right but all I can see on the left is a pickle wearing nothing but a gold medal he won at the pickle Olympics (the Picklympics, if you will) waving his arms in the air as if to ask “what’s in the basket?!”. It’s a situation we’ve all been in so anyone can relate.

Especially pickles.

Fisher-Price: Perfect Fit, like all greatest works of art, lets the viewer interpret whatever he’s looking at. You see a pickle? It’s a pickle. An angry pickle? So be it.

As helpful as the game is, it still does throw you some curveballs so do stay on your toes!

One of these letters is the wrong way around.

One of those letters is a yellow and green cube.

One of those letters I don’t think is a letter.

Come to think of it, I’m not so sure about that cube anymore…

There are also sly Da Vinci Code-style clues peppered all over the game. Fisher-Price may be mostly known for toys, this gaming gem, of course, and whatever this abomination is:

But they are mostly known to government agencies specifically as a top secret branch of Mattel, who are, it has long been believed (by a madman I once met/spoke to under a bridge), quite possibly in charge of whatever’s in Area 51.

Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist BUT I’m thinking Fisher-Price made this game as some kind of brain-washing tool to lure in people of all ages to their shady corporate bosom. At first, I thought that all these “FP” stamps on every object in the game meant “Perfect Fit” backwards, since so many letters are fed to us backwards.

But then I realised: “FP” stands for Fisher-Price!

:O

Fisher-Price and Perfect Fit are therefore interchangeable and one and the same. By extension, the game is not just a game: it’s a game game.

Then that truck showed up:

With “FD” written on it.

And I started thinking that maybe all this stuff I just said probably wasn’t true and was actually a very silly theory put together by someone who did not think any of it through properly.

While the game’s controls are awkward at first, I am willing to bet that this is your fault as a gamer and not the game’s fault. I have literally nothing to back this up but the game’s great and that’s that.

I do, of course, recommend it and I also recommend you get rid of any other NES game you might own because, clearly, Fisher-Price: Perfect Fit is enough pixelated perfection for anyone to own. I mean, Color A Dinosaur may be amazing but, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s no Fisher-Price: Perfect Fit.

Wait-

What if I want to play alone against the computer?

…

*head explodes*