Play with the Teletubbies
For a game claiming to be for children, Play with the Teletubbies is needlessly complicated. There's no way that I could see a kid playing this without constant intervention from a parent or older sibling. Something I appreciated about games like Dora the Explorer: Barnyard Buddies was the fact that my daughter could play independently if she wanted, relying on Dora's spoken word to know what to do. The same cannot be said for Teletubbies, unless my girl can figure out how to read by the next time we play.
The game's packaging boasts "11 different games and activities," each of which you find by exploring Telletubbyland and pressing the cross button near glowing objects. That's fine; that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is what you have to do to exit an activity once you're done. There's no on-screen indicators, no verbal instructions, nothing at all to help your child move to the next game. None of the activities verbally explain how they are played either, so if your kid wants to know what to do, you have to pause the game, read the full-screen of non-illustrated, written instructions to them, explain how that correlates to the controller in their hands, then un-pause.
When we played together, my daughter had to relinquish her controls whenever she was done with an experience so that I could follow the rabbit trail to get her out of it. First, you have to press the start button to pause it, then the select button to say you're finished, and then the cross button to confirm that you're really sure you're finished. But wait! Don't press that button more than once, even though it doesn't look like the game responded, because your Teletubby will spawn in the same place they were when you started the activity, meaning you just pressed the cross button to start it up again, and now you'll have to repeat all of those steps to quit once more. How is a child, especially one who can't read all of those menus yet, expected to do that?
My opinion might have been different if the games and activities had more than 30 seconds of content, but that simply isn't the case. Most of the "games" would just change the colors of objects on the screen or play a little sound when you hit the buttons on your controller. However, some were so minimal as to just be an animation that you could speed up or slow down. Save for the animation of the Noo-Noo cleaning up a mess of Tubby Custard, my daughter became bored with most of these in about a minute. That left me fiddling with menus for close to the same amount of time she spent playing the darn thing! The only activity that lasted longer than that was the one time we interacted with the windmill. Like in the show, it sent a cute video about kids playing with kites to Po's tummy. I really enjoyed this segment for its nostalgic time-capsule nature, but my daughter wanted it over as soon as it began. I guess watching a 27-year-old video of real-life kids isn't as fun as highlighting the cars of a virtual toy train.
While I was open to trying something entirely new going into Play with the Teletubbies, as the kid-focused PSone games I've already played have been fun enough, I'm now feeling a bit more cautious. It seems no popular console is free of shovelware and I've stumbled upon some again. My daughter remembers the game fondly enough, despite her feelings in the moment, but I think directing her towards something new will be worth the effort. Hopefully next time, the game we pick will better understand its audience. Unfortunately, I can't see Play with the Teletubbies being worth anyone's attention. Either you're too young to work the menus, or you're too old to have fun with anything else it offers.
Although the game is no longer being distributed, you can learn more about it here (as of 2/25/26): https://psxdatacenter.com/games/SLUS-00959
