Disney-Pixar Monsters, Inc.

Scaring, in this telling, is a trade with a syllabus. The premise of the PS2 tie-in to Pixar's 2001 film is that Mike and Sulley are rookies working through a training academy, and every level is essentially a practical exam: sneak into a mocked-up bedroom, get into position, and land the scare without being spotted first. It is a strange and rather charming thing to build a children's platformer around, and it gives the game a shape most licensed cash-ins of the era never bothered to find.

The two-character structure carries most of the design weight. Sulley is the heavy one, able to climb and to roar; Mike is small and quick and fits through gaps the big monster cannot. You swap between them at set points rather than commanding a partner, which keeps the puzzles legible for the target audience while still asking a young player to think about which body suits the obstacle. Artificial Mind and Movement handled development, with Sony publishing, and the workmanlike competence shows: collect the scare points, clear the objective, unlock the next stage.

What holds up is the atmosphere of the environments. The training sets are cluttered domestic spaces seen from monster height, all overstuffed furniture and sightlines under beds, and the game understands that a child's bedroom is a good place to hide. What has not aged as well is the camera, which frequently sits where it wants rather than where you need it, and the platforming itself, which is forgiving to the point of being weightless.

There is no real difficulty curve and no reason for an adult to play it alone. But as an artefact it is a reminder that the film-to-console pipeline occasionally produced something with an idea in it. Turning fright into homework is a joke the movie would have appreciated, and the game tells it straight.