Originating as a fully CG-rendered movie from Pixar and Disney, A Bug’s Life then began life as a PlayStation 3D-platform game from Traveller’s Tales. When released a few months back, it wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of the PlayStation’s line-up, but it wasn’t too shabby either. There were some problems with the camera, pixelated visuals, and the normal like that is associated with the current generation of 32-bit platformers. However, with the announcement of Activision acquiring the rights to bring A Bug’s Life to the Nintendo 64, it was hoped that some of the problems in the PlayStation version would be fixed up. That didn’t happen. Activision only made it worse.

While not terribly important, the basic story behind A Bug’s Life is that a multitude of evil grasshoppers relies on the peaceful ants to collect food and give it to them. The grasshoppers continually threaten that if they do not get their food they’ll kill off the colony. So, to avoid destruction, the ants have complied for the past years. You take control of Flik, a hopeful, ambitious little guy who always seems to have bad luck at the worst possible time. Following him, you'll see how his luck comes into play and what happens because of it.

Something that I always try to stress with people is that if a game doesn’t have pretty visuals, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. A Bug’s Life is a different case entirely, though. Instead of just being plain ugly, the graphics are slow and choppy as well. There’s not a point in the game where you can be just clipping along without any choppiness hurting the gameplay, as one or two enemies will bog down the engine. Sometimes this could be tossed aside and not worried about, but there are other contributing factors that also bring down A Bug’s Life.

Activision somehow slapped in a whole bag of grainy graphics and used so many Nintendo 64-specific filters that it blurs out the game so much it almost becomes incomprehensible at times. In other words, Activision took what was slightly bad about the PlayStation version and went ahead with making it ten times worse.

So maybe the visuals are despicable, does that mean the rest of it is going to be so bad? No, but in this case the game still isn’t very good. Sporting a total of 15 main levels (not including some secret ones, that you’ll probably want to avoid playing because it would only force you to spend more time on the game), A Bug’s Life has a lengthy amount of playtime. There is also a neat thing included called ‘challenges’ that have to be earned by collecting various items in each of the stages.

The idea behind A Bug’s Life is the standard platforming fare. You collect items to gain secret areas, items, and lives, along with jumping from area to area in an attempt to finish the level. Another problem pops up when going through the worlds, though. This time it is that you can blaze through nearly every single one of them by just running as fast as possible and dodging all the enemies. There’s rarely ever a puzzle spot that needs to be solved in order to pass an area, except for the occasional occurrence where a seed will need to be planted so that an area higher above can be reached.

I’ll be blunt. A Bug’s Life is a bad game through and through. You can taunt me with e-mails about how ‘graphics aren’t everything’ and that ‘I hate Nintendo 64,’ but I don’t. This conversion from Activision is simply a dud. They put no work into it and ported it to the console just to make a quick buck. All in all, the industry doesn’t need something like this to continue growing.