In 2019, Disney removed a scene from all new releases of Toy Story 2. The scene in question was a fake blooper during the credits, which made a joke of showing a man using his position of power to proposition women. It’s easy to see it in an even worse light given the film’s director John Lasseter’s departure from Disney after his own record of harassment was revealed.
This was not the first time that a version of Toy Story 2 had changes made to remove gross and offensive elements. In 1999, American high school students, supported by others including the Mexican American Legal Defence and Educational Fund, led a protest against the video game version at the offices of its publisher, Activision. This was because of the inclusion of a bandit enemy with a big black moustache and a sombrero on his back, a character based completely on negative stereotypes who wasn’t present in the film. Disney apologised and promised to change future versions of the game. The PlayStation version released in the UK months later has a blond cowboy instead.
Like contemporary reviews pointing out the sexist tropes of OutRun, this is another useful reminder that the idea that people complaining about problematic elements of games is a recent thing is an ahistorical lie. It’s also interesting to think about in the context of British developers adapting to a changing landscape. Traveller’s Tales’s work on Pixar games made them one of our global successes. Had they been making Toy Story 2 only for a British audience, it wouldn’t have made the racially stereotyped bandit right, but it’s very unlikely that it would have sparked protests. This is supported by the fact that they didn’t bother making the change to the European N64 version, to no apparent issue.
It’s also interesting because they really didn’t need to take so many liberties with the source material. It’s much more obviously suitable source to begin with than for A Bug’s Life. Toys and video games are a natural fit, something the film itself made use of. One of the scenes from the movie that plays between levels is an action sequence with Buzz Lightyear which is eventually revealed to be part of a video game played by Rex the dinosaur. So we’re playing a video game, showing a film, showing a video game, presumably based on a (fictional) film. That’s fun to think about. Buzz Lightyear has an obviously video-gamey moveset, with spins and laser blasts, and controls very well. The camera can be a bit slow to keep up, but you always know where it’s going at least. The first person view in which you see a reflection of Buzz’s face on the inside of his helmet, Metroid Prime-style, is a nice touch.
Toy Story 2 makes the move from being a 3D version of an old point-to-point platformer with some token explorational trappings to being a Super Mario 64-style multiple-objective 3D platformer, and it’s a great move. Human-made structures lend themselves to a 3D platform game much better than trying to render the natural world angular, and moving around houses and building sites as a small toy it’s easy to be given lots of things to do. Breadcrumbed with coins everywhere, Traveller’s Tales build in lots of small challenges and secrets. And even if most of the objectives are ultimately just collecting stuff, their range and the fairly generous requirements to move on to new levels mean that the game can include meaningfully challenging bits while still being very approachable and child-friendly.
So we’re left with a British developer making a generally competent, up-to-date game out of their source material, but including racist elements that weren’t even there to begin with (it’s a while since I’ve linked to my post on the awful Frank Bruno’s Boxing, but there are parallels. Except in the competent part.). What happened next would say something about the games industry. Would the embarrassment they caused Activision and Disney mean that they wouldn’t be trusted with a global family property again? Or would it be insignificant and easily outweighed, barely a footnote in a career combining multiple such properties? See you in 2005 for Lego Star Wars: The Video Game!
Top of the charts for week ending 18 March 2000:
UK games: Toy Story 2 (Traveller’s Tales/Activision, PS1) 
Japan games: Ridge Racer V (Namco, PS2) 
UK films: Toy Story 2 
UK singles: Geri Halliwell – Bag It Up 
UK albums: Travis – The Man Who