| Portal Runner | |
| Developer: | The 3DO Company (PlayStation 2) Handheld Games (Game Boy Color) |
| Publisher: | The 3DO Company |
| Series: | Army Men |
| Platforms: | PlayStation 2, Game Boy Color |
| Genre: | Platform |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
Portal Runner is a 2001 platform game published by The 3DO Company for PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Color.[1]
Portal Runner is a spin-off in the Army Men video game series, focusing on a conflict between characters Vikki Grimm and Brigitte Bleu.
In this game, Vikki Grimm embarks on an adventure after receiving a mysterious package. Her quest takes her through various toy worlds, including a prehistoric jungle and a medieval castle. Along the way, she befriends a lion named Leo and rescues a wizard, Merlin. The villain, Brigitte Bleu, manipulates Vikki's boyfriend, Sarge, and plans to marry him using a love gun acquired from Martians in a Space World. Vikki and Leo thwart the wedding, stop an inter-dimensional attack, and return home. Brigitte ends up imprisoned, sharing a cell with General Plastro.
The PlayStation 2 version received "mixed" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. The Game Boy Color version gave an earliest review from Nintendo Power, which gave it a score of two-and-a-half stars out of five, just nearly five months before the game was released.
The PS2 version gained notoriety when it was panned by GamePro, which was the first to review the game, saying that it "looks like a late-generation PlayStation title rather than a second-generation PS2 effort."[2] Trip Hawkins, then-president of 3DO and publisher of Portal Runner, sent an angry email to John Rousseau, who was president of GamePro. The email was published on the internet in its entirety. In the email, Hawkins told Rousseau that his customers were the advertisers, not the readers, and implied that the reviews should be written to keep the advertisers happy. Hawkins wrote: "...there is something wrong with (the reviewer), not with Portal Runner. If you disagree with me, you do so at your own peril.... I should mention in passing that 3DO has been one of your largest advertisers. Effective immediately, we are going to have to cut that back."[3]