102. Tama (Time Warner Interactive, Saturn, 1994)

You know those wooden maze toys where you guide a ball through a maze manipulating the maze on 2 axes and avoiding holes? Tama: Adventurous Ball in Giddy Labyrinth, a release title for the Sega Saturn in Japan, is basically the video game version of that. Being a launch title, Tama is an anemic game, with no progress saving or modes outside of the main game. You can't even select levels, so you have to get good to see more.

You are presented with a series of 5 mazes (across several themed worlds) and have to get your ball to the goal in each maze within a time limit. This being a video game, the designers included a bunch of additional elements, so along with navigating your ball around walls and holes, there are also doors, inclines, springs, and even moving platforms. At one point there was even a bear, and after I bumped into it, it chased my ball around. That was about the most exciting thing that happened in my short time with Tama.

In addition to being able to tilt the maze with the d-pad, you can also rotate the maze with the left and right shoulder buttons. Once I figured this out, I started playing with the playfield titled as vertically as possible, only using the shoulder buttons to manipulate the maze, which I felt gave me better control, and kind of felt like Cameltry. I'm sure a game like this would fare better on a modern system, as the movement and physics never feel quite as precise as I would like them to. That said, I still had fun, though I'm biased in that I really dig those wooden labyrinth toys.

3/5, I love moving a ball around a maze