Thanks to Limited Run Games for the review code
Title: Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 05/22/2026
Prelude
Hey, we actually have an IP i’m familiar with for one of these collections! Yes, Rugrats was a Nicktoon from the 90s, and despite airing early in the decade, it stretched a ridiculously long time, and could even be argued as being the most popular Nicktoon before Spongebob came along. Around the time I got into TV, and before I settled in the Cartoon Network camp, I did watch some shows on Nick and grew fond of several of em, and Rugrats was up there with Jimmy Neutron as one of my favorites on the channel.
Naturally, there were a lot of video games, especially after the theatrical movie came out and did quite well, (and introduced the world to CatDog in the process) and this retro compilation includes a good chunk of GBC/PS1 games from that era. Not all of them mind you, since there were a few really bad duds that offered little of value, (Totally Angelica has some hilarious cutscenes, but the actual gameplay is dire) so you just get six of the games here; three from the PS1, and 4 from GB-GBA.
Of course if you’re new you might be thinking, “Connor, why the hell would a show about babies be remotely interesting and not filled with constant grossout humor? What the heck could this show even be about?” and I think at least two of the games capture the vibe of the show itself quite well. Essentially these babies (and a young girl who likes to bully them) go on a variety of goofy adventures, usually with the babies taking a pretty mundane situation and using their imagination to go wild with it, leading to all sorts of goofy adventures with some pretty strong moral messages. The adult characters in the show are surprisingly relatable too, and anyone else who’s seen the show has increasingly felt like Stu Pickles and gotten rather tired dealing with the stressors of workaholic life the more they age, and I generally think the original show holds up quite well. So how about the games?
Presentation
The collection itself is yet another Carbon Engine joint, and goes for a similar routine as a lot of the recent compilations to come out of it. You have scanned manuals/cases with lots of redactions, a music player, and simple screen size/filter options for all six games. The menu plays a song from Studio Tour, which fits fine since a lot of the songs in the PS1 games are almost the same, if not damn near identical to songs in the actual show. Yes, that means the weird “bah” vocals are in the show’s background music too. It’s fine, you’ll get used to them.
The GB-GBA games all scale pretty well and have a dot matrix filter that works fine. Audio sounds accurate, but that ain’t saying much since the sound in the handheld games are atrocious; Time Travelers and The Movie share the same OST by and large, and it’s incredibly annoying. Castle Capers is a very early GBA game, and so as a result the sound has a lot of the same sorts of flaws GBA audio was infamous for, with nothing memorable in the slightest. Not even the weird minigame collection of Paris on GBC sounds that great, or even like the show hardly at all.
Thankfully, the PS1 games have a much better presentation, more fitting of the show. All three games bring back the original voice cast, sounding just as they would in an actual episode. Search for Reptar in particular goes for an OST that’s just like the show too, meaning this one is the game with the most bahs and ridiculously catchy music. If you’ve never seen a second of the show in your life, the soundtrack can come off as outright demented as if someone was deliberately trying to annoy you, but that fits the goofball nature of the show, so I’m glad it was done pretty accurately here and in Studio Tour. The PS1 Paris game was developed by a different studio, which shows in a lot of ways but also does in the music too. It still feels like the show more than the handheld games, but to a much lesser degree, and lacks the cute touches the N-Scape games had in them.
Gameplay
For these seven games, you have your typical save state and rewind features available, and yet again the PS1 Memory Card support is bizarrely missing, only now replaced with the in-game save feature making a save state for you or loading it in-game, rather than just via the menu. So thus, it’s still a pretty clunky save system in the PS1 games, but just fine for the password heavy handheld titles.
Rugrats: The Movie- In The Rugrats Movie, Tommy Pickles almost leaves his newborn baby brother to die in the wilderness. In The Rugrats Movie game, Tommy Pickles and his friends go across a variety of boring stages from the movie with barely anything worth noting here. The main gist here is that you have to collect a bunch of items from throughout various stages, and then reach the goal at the end of the level. The random enemies that jump around and can deal damage will knock items away from you if they come into contact, and you can’t really fight back.
While Zool at least had fun levels and cool action when doing the same thing, Rugrats the Movie is just otherwise pure torture to go through. Grating music, backwards jumping, (B is jump, yes, even on GBC) and boring level designs make this one an obvious “uh-oh, we gotta make this in time for the movie!” tie-in that was all too common from back in the day. You won’t miss anything by skipping this.
Rugrats: Time Travelers– In Rugrats Time Travelers, the gang go back in time, so much so that the game plays almost the exact same as the last one. I’m not kidding, this is another platformer like Rugrats Movie where you have to collect items and reach the exit, only now each world is themed around different time periods.
There’s a few minigames here to play around with, but they don’t save this one from being literally more of the same and without any enjoyable level designs. I grew bored with this one quicker than the last one! Yet another game following the licensed norm at the time, and little else to note here.
Rugrats in Paris (GBC)– In Rugrats in Paris the Movie, Tommy Pickles encounters the legendary creature known as Spewpa.
Actually no, that didn’t happen, because I have never seen the movie, or if I did I completely memory holed it unlike the first one. Either way, this is another tie-in based off a movie, and this is yet another platformer, only this time with a lot more minigames given you’re at a carnival this time around. Collect tickets, complete platforming challenges and make your way further into the park. I didn’t find the platforming here as obnoxious as in the prior two games, but it still feels pretty sluggish. Still, the minigame focus plus rewind helps make this one a lot more tolerable to play, but it still isn’t a good video game. You could do a lot worse, as the last two games showed.
Rugrats: Castle Capers– Now this is more like it. In Rugrats Castle Capers, the Babies use their imagination to fight off Queen Angelica’s evil forces, and thus each world is themed around a fairy tale with Angelica as the big bad of that story. This is yet another platformer only this one controls much better and doesn’t have as strict of a focus on item collecting as the other games; I actually had fun picking up stuff in the stages here, and the levels are enjoyable enough I could see myself liking this one back when I grew up with the GBA.
It feels a bit weird going into a “boss fight” and only being able to wait around for Angelica to get bored and give up, almost like timing out a Shmup boss, but outside of that this is easily the best of the platformer games, and the one I had some decent fun with. Worth checking out if you like the show.
Rugrats: Search for Reptar– This PS1 title by N-Scape is easily the game that nails the show pretty much the best it could. You have a recreation of the show’s intro, a bunch of songs incorporating those bahs I mentioned earlier, and a pretty reasonable replica of the Pickles house to run around in as your main hub. The main goal here is to gather enough items to unlock more Puzzle Pieces to finish Tommy’s missing Reptar puzzle, which you do by clearing mini scenarios that often change up the genre or task you with a new thing to do.
You might go to Ice Cream Mountain and play a pretty competent minigolf game, do a cookie race and watch the framerate crater trying to outrun Angelica, or even try to fumble around as Chuckie because his glasses got stolen and he needs to get them back. It leads to a decent variety of gameplay mechanics and the VAs from the show returning really help make this one feel right at home for fans of the show.
The writing being on point was pretty funny, too. Of all the games in this set, this is by far the best of the bunch, but if you’re completely unfamiliar with the IP you might wonder who on earth allowed such insane music to play in the background.
Rugrats: Studio Tour– Another N-Scape game, reusing the same engine from Search for Reptar. Here you go through various adventures to try and recover missing keys in a movie studio, since Dil got locked behind a door that has a kajillion keyholes for some reason. The plot is stupid, the game’s aware of it, and it has fun doing so. Yet again you have returning activities like Minigolf from last time, along with other fun activities like playing tag and racing in karts.
It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and some of the minigames are pretty boring, but I still found this one to be a fairly solid one for fans of the show and even the worst minigames here are miles better than what we dealt with for most of those handheld games. N-Scape had a formula, and did it pretty decently.
Rugrats in Paris (PS1)- So thus, THQ decided to bring over Avalanche Software to make another game. This is another adaptation of Rugrats in Paris, and is again focused on collecting tickets and playing minigames. Unfortunately, the minigames are far more boring here than in the prior two PS1 games, and even the ones that are similar to ones from the N-Scape duology are just worse versions of those games.
At least the show VAs all come back for a third time, but at this point they can’t save a game that’s just a mediocre minigame collection, and considering the last two games managed to avoid the usual licensed game trap of making every one of them a bore, it’s rather disappointing this third one decided to break that trend with a thud. I’d rather play Castle Capers than this and maybe even the GBC version of this game since at least those minigames are quicker.
Conclusion
Rugrats might have been a case of me knowing the IP pretty well from my youth, but nostalgia for the show doesn’t really translate to nostalgia for a lot of middling platformers. The handheld games in particular range from dreadfully boring to decent, and while Search for Reptar is the highlight of the set by far for representing the show as well as you could at the time, the same can’t be said for the other two PS1 games, with Rugrats in Paris being a huge step back from the N-Scape games, and Studio Tour being a safe more of the same experience close to Reptar.
This is still probably going to be the best way to play any of these games for the foreseeable future, and I couldn’t think of much else they could add to make this better besides wishing these original games were better to begin with. Sure, some Rugrats games are missing here, but none of the ones skipped over are all that great, and I think Totally Angelica would crater this collection’s score by a lot, so we were spared from that menace. That hilarious intro FMV would not be worth experiencing the rest of the game.
Nevertheless, if you’re a Rugrats superfan and don’t mind a lot of these games being middling, this is a fine set to have. More than likely you’re just here for Search for Reptar and not much else to live the show, and outside of the weird lack of the normal in-game saving, that was done justice here, I’m happy to say. Such is the nature of these old licensed games; a lot of them were dull and bad, but some of them might be gems that surprise you, or at the very least satisfy the need of a fan to play something akin to the show that honors the source material quite well.
I give Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection a 5 out of 10.