One of the most coveted franchises on the Sony PSP makes its way onto the Nintendo DS with Death Jr. and The Science Fair of Doom. This game is not a port, but a completely original design made by Backbone Entertainment that is custom built around the Nintendo DS hardware. Will Death Jr.’s adventure on Nintendo’s dual screen portable be memorable, or ultimately a death sentence for the franchise? Read on to find out and beware, there are worse puns ahead. You have been warned.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, in case you haven’t played Death Jr. on the Sony PSP, or don’t know anything about the franchise, Death Jr. is the son of the Grim Reaper. Yeah, bet you didn’t see that one coming did you? Well, just like most kids, Death Jr., or DJ as his friends call him, has to go to school. But unlike us, he attends a weird strange supernatural infused educational system where his fellow classmates include Pandora and a pair of conjoined twins known as Smith and Weston.

Even though this supernatural school sounds completely abnormal, the students do partake in similar events, and activities that a normal school would offer. One of which is the setting for our story, a science fair. When students of this supernatural school begin to bring in their projects for the fair, chaos ensues. Before the dust is cleared, a demonic rabbit is on the loose and a portal rips and twists the school into a demon realm. Worse yet, Moloch, a former nemesis of Death Jr., returns to exact his revenge on him and his friends. Now Death Jr. must join forces with his best friend Pandora to rescue his friends and stop Moloch yet again.

With a setting that is obviously inspired by movies like Nightmare Before Christmas, you would think the developers would have a plethora of ideas, and elements to pull from to make a entertaining and involving story. However, the story and setting never really quite reaches its potential, but what is here works for the most part. The story in The Science Fair of Doom is told through static images, unlike the CGI movies of the Sony PSP games. This does hurt the game, but the storytelling and progression is so linear that even with full blown cinema movies on every level, it would still be a very boring affair.

As far as gameplay goes, you play most of the game as Death Jr. while you traverse the different areas of the school and rescue your fellow students. Death Jr. accomplishes this with a variety of weapons, most notable, his trademark scythe. The scythe is a truly multi-use weapon in the Science Fair of Doom. Players can use it not just to dispatch their foes, but also to twirl it to slow their descent, and even to swing to various platforms. As players progress through the game, you can unlock even more abilities, and upgrade your armaments with cash.

Death Jr. isn’t alone in his fight to reclaim his school from the clutches of Moloch. Pandora, Death Jr.’s best friend (maybe love interest?) plays an integral role in The Science Fair of Doom. Even if that role unfortunately does feel tacked on at times. At certain points in the game you will come across checkpoints or puzzles that require a specific type of soul to unlock. This is where Pandora comes in. She can find and capture souls courtesy of the touch screen. She can carry up to three souls at any time, but in order to find souls, Death Jr. has to defeat enemies who leave – yeah, you guessed it - soul jars. If you don’t have the required soul to progress, you must backtrack and fight more enemies until the right one is found. This aspect just feels unnecessary, and if used sparingly could have been interesting, but switching control back and forth from Death Jr. to Pandora gets tiresome. Making things worse is the fact that your control over Pandora is timed, and when the timer runs out, control is returned to Death Jr. So, if you haven’t completed the task with Pandora, you have to repeat it until you are successful.

One of the few redeeming facets of Death Jr. is its platforming. Make no mistake, this game is chock full of both 2D and 3D action. You will be maneuvering around mutated mousetraps and crazed demons, all the while making hair-raising jumps. Yet even with its quality of design, the game is bogged down with some truly bad collision detection. Death Jr. can use his scythe to grab onto platforms, but this is extremely tricky to pull off and if it occurs, it feels more accidental than intended. Even worse, Jr. has a variety of weapons and maneuvers (ten in all) at his disposal, but you will do far better to just whack enemies aimlessly with your scythe.

Backbone Entertainment may be new to developing for the Nintendo DS, but they have sure made a nice looking game. Death Jr. and his enemies are fully rendered, and look fantastic. Each area of the school looks decent, but more importantly bends and twists so some areas are simple side scrollers, and others are modeled in a extremely eye pleasing pseudo-3D format. Even the static images used to tell the story are highly detailed, and look great on the Nintendo DS.

When it comes to extras, DJ and the Science Fair of Doom has the typical multiplayer aspect, but that's about it. The multiplayer modes number in two, and they range from a break out clone with the catchy title “Reaper Ricochet” to the oddly barren title of “War.” This particular game is a “destroy your competition” slugfest. Both games support up to four players, and each one comes with variety of options to make things interesting. Unfortunately, there is no single cart multiplayer mode. So unless your friends all have copies of this game, you’re out of luck.

This Scythe for You?
When it comes to potential, this game had it in spades. However, in almost every area with the exception of its graphics, Death Jr. and The Science Fair of Doom misses the mark. This is a very painful realization for me. What time I did spend with DJ, I really enjoyed. If only the developers knew how close they came to creating a magnificent game instead of a mediocre one.