The ‘Home Improvement’ Video Game Found Tim Allen Battling Dinosaurs With Power Tools
Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, no pop-culture property was immune from being turned into a quickie cash-grab video game. There was even a Commodore 64 game based on Paul McCartney’s movie/vanity project Give My Regards to Broad Street. Because what kid wouldn’t want to spend their free time running errands for a pixelated Beatle?
But the most baffling video game adaptation of all time just might be Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! Yes, in 1994 there was a Super Nintendo game based on the Tim Allen sitcom. Presumably the company was going after the “parents who don’t love their children enough to buy them Donkey Kong Country” demographic.
Don't Miss
The popularity of Home Improvement led to a number of odd pieces of branded merchandise, including a Home Improvement “six-piece tool set” for aspiring DIYers looking to emulate the most dangerously accident-prone handyman in TV history.
But how do you make a video game out of a family sitcom?
Well, they took a completely bonkers route, concocting a wild story in which Tim Taylor discovers that some brand new tools are missing during an episode of Tool Time. So he has to try and retrieve them by traversing various neighboring sound stages. Apparently the studio that houses this local home renovation program is also home to several big budget genre shows. The very first level features Tim battling dinosaurs in a jungle, using his trusty Binford tools to mow down the extinct animals.
Again, this is the very first level. They could have at least tried to make it fit the original show by having Tim, say, ask Wilson for advice about the best way to kill a pterodactyl with a nail gun.
Once he’s done in dino-land, Tim visits some kind of Ancient Egyptian world. Sixteen-bit avatar or not, it’s really weird to see Tim Allen taking down a mummy with a flamethrower. Then he fights off ghosts in a haunted house, naturally.
To reiterate, the premise of this game is that Tim is visiting the sets of other TV shows. Doesn’t that mean that he’s straight-up murdering actors with his power tools? Shouldn’t this game have ended with the Detroit PD shoving Tim into the back of a squad car?
Incidentally, one of the designers of this game was the legendary David Crane, who made classics like Pitfall! and co-founded Activision, one of the biggest video game companies in the world. In a 2023 interview, Crane admitted that Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! is “not a game I’ve always considered to be one of my best.”
The game ultimately ends with Tim being joined on the show by his sons Randy and Brad, who, come to think of it, may have hallucinated the entire game while zonked out on jazz cigarettes.
