Blue's Big Musical
As it was designed with kids in mind, Blue's Big Musical is unsurprisingly pretty simple. You are granted control of Blue as she and Steve work together to set up a musical in their back yard. Other than the mini-games, most of what you are doing is moving Blue to the left and right and interacting with the characters and objects behind her. Thankfully, the game gave enough tasks to accomplish using this framework that my daughter always had something to look for and point out.
You have access to the whole of Blue's house and yard, as well as a little downtown area with locations to visit, like the present store. You'll need to explore most of those locations multiple times throughout the game in order to accomplish all of the objectives, which are given to you in waves. Delivered in tandem with the story, you'll need to solve multiple problems that arise when prepping for the musical. Each of these issues are handled by completing an in-universe game of Blue's Clues. Blue will hide three clues throughout the entire map, and you'll usually need to complete a mini-game or help a character solve their own little issue before one of them will appear. After you find all three clues, Steve will take you to the thinking chair where you figure out what they mean and resolve the problem with the musical. After that, something else will come up and you'll have to find another three clues on repeat until the musical finally happens.
My daughter loved pointing out each of the clues she saw and pressing the button to collect them, but she was definitely still too young to handle any of the mini-games, so I took care of that part. She also thought it was so hilarious to guess the wrong solution in the thinking chair, so we spent a lot of time hearing Steve tell us why we couldn't be right. Both of us forgot about the game's other objective for a little bit, so I don't think it was required, but my daughter had even more fun once we remembered.
Every time you start a new round of Blue's Clues, you'll also be given a set of three tickets to the musical. In parallel, there are three extra characters hanging out somewhere within the explorable area that will gladly accept those tickets. While we missed giving away a few during our playthrough, I didn't notice any potential differences in the ending, so I think they just acted as a little extra padding to give kids more stuff to do. Nonetheless, my daughter enjoyed finding the ticket recipients, and they usually waited in areas we'd be passing through anyways, so I would consider it a net positive.
I was impressed at how similar playing Blue's Big Musical felt to watching the show itself. I know the game is supposed to tie into a movie of the same name, but I've never seen it, so the game instead felt like an extended episode of Blue's Clues to me. As soon as we had finished it, my daughter asked if we could play again, so I know she was a big fan, and I would have to agree. Despite my nostalgia with the show, I don't think I would have had a ton of fun with this game on my own. This is not because it's bad, but because it is just too simple for my fully-developed adult brain. However, playing alongside my daughter was a true delight. She was so excited to find the clues, listen to the songs, and see the familiar characters, and it was such a joy to help facilitate that for her. As I'm writing this review, we've already started our next game together, and it's looking like another good one, but I'm glad to have started our adventure together with Blue's Big Musical.
Although the game is no longer being distributed, you can learn more about it here (as of 5/26/25): https://psxdatacenter.com/games/U/B/SLUS-01198.html
