Real Women of Gaming

The spooky season is upon us! This means different things for everyone: slasher film marathons, haunted hayrides, Great Pumpkins, feasting on candy, yelling at the TV while watching bad Dracula adaptations…okay, that last one might just be a “me” thing.

I also think of Halloween as the perfect time to revisit all things Scooby-Doo. The many fake monsters that tried to scare Mystery Inc. fit perfectly with this time of year.

So, here I am, going back to a game that my brother and I loved to play as kids: Scooby-Doo Classic Creep Capers.

Capers came out in 2000 for the Nintendo 64 and GameBoy Color. I haven’t played the GameBoy Color version, so this will only be a review of the N64 game.

The premise of the game goes like this: you play as Shaggy, with Scooby as your companion. Together, the duo runs through levels based on three classic episodes from the original series: “What a Night for a Knight,” “That’s Snow Ghost,” and “A Tiki Scare Is No Fair!” Unique to the game, all three villains work for a mysterious criminal mastermind named R. Necros, who personally targets those meddling kids in the final level.

Throughout each mystery, Shaggy and Scooby hunt for clues and pieces to build a trap. Fred, Velma, and Daphne stand off to the side and occasionally help. Or sometimes one of them gets kidnapped by the monster and needs to be rescued.

If I’m brutally honest, this is not a great game. The camera controls are an absolute mess. Rather than follow Shaggy throughout the room, the camera remains stationary until Shaggy reaches a new area, where it abruptly shifts in another direction. This makes it hard to navigate, especially if you’re out of practice with using an N64 controller. And it makes the final chase sequences needlessly difficult. You’re trying to lure the monster into a trap and spend half the time trying not to bump into a wall.

As your companion, Scooby does nothing whatsoever. If anything, he can accidentally block you or push you into the wrong area. There are even segments where Shaggy leaves Scooby behind to explore a room. In better games, losing your companion provides a challenge: can you navigate the area without relying on their skills? Here, it means nothing, because Scooby doesn’t have any special skills.

Unlike the Nancy Drew games or Ace Attorney, it never feels like you’re solving a mystery. You’re just hunting for random objects. It isn’t until later that Fred, Velma, and Daphne explain their significance.

The Ghoul King, who serves as the final monster, has a cool design and great evil lair. But even the final case has its own flaws, not counting every other issue already mentioned. The Ghoul King kidnaps Mystery Inc. and locks them in his mansion. What does he plan to do next? Unclear. He also helpfully brings the Mystery Machine along, providing the gang with an escape vehicle if they succeeded in breaking out. Which they do. Thanks, Ghoul King.

And yet…I love this game to pieces. I bought it for nostalgia and I have no intention of letting it go.

When I’m not running into walls, it’s fun to play through the old cases that I remembered watching as a kid. I like the idea of a mastermind in the shadows, connecting all of the classic monsters together. The story arc works because there’s nothing convoluted about it. The men behind the masks are just part of the same crime ring. Sometimes simplicity can be refreshing.

More than anything else, it brings back fun memories of trying to beat this game with my brother as we worked up the nerve to go into the Egyptian Wing where we knew the Black Knight was hiding. Even now, as an adult, I find myself tensing up when I hear that familiar clank, clank, clank. 

Mostly because I know that if I don’t get Shaggy moving fast, I won’t have enough time to escape when Scooby inevitably blocks him at the wrong moment and he hits a wall.

I give this game ten out of ten Scooby snacks.

Do you remember this game? What did you think of it? And what are some of your favorite games from childhood that aged poorly?