Elf: The Movie (Game Boy Advance) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
118A playthrough of Crave's 2004 license-based, Christmas-themed action game for the Game Boy Advance, Elf: The Movie.
Elf: The Movie for the GBA was, to my knowledge, the only game ever released based on the absurdly stupid yet funny Will Ferrell Christmas comedy movie released way back in 2003.
You play as Buddy - or more specifically, a pretty hilariously animated digitized sprite of Will Ferrell in yellow tights - a guy who was raised by elves, as he searches for his place in the world. The game features a number of different game play styles across its ten levels, each of them equally festive and brain dead.
You jump around icy platforms looking for candy and items in the platforming and top-down stages, throw snowballs at douche-bag elves at a bridge, collect Christmas lights as you run across a busy street, "sort presents" (meaning you play a Pipe Dreams ripoff game, followed by Simon ripoff game), and match colored presents to the homes they go to.
The graphics certainly look nice and festive, and I got a kick out of the digitzed stills that you get as a reward for clearing various stages. Even though it lacks any voice samples (how could they not include Will Ferrell sound bites?!), the music is all hyper-upbeat and holiday-ish and uses some fairly good sounding samples considering it's a GBA game.
The gameplay is pretty damn uninspired though. It's insanely easy, and there's really nothing new, creative, or particularly interesting about it. However, I get the feeling that the game was mostly geared toward younger kids, so the lack of difficulty and complexity is probably perfect for the pre-teen crowd, and it also manages to be much more engaging than dreck like Santa Claus Saves the World.
If you're a fan of the movie or want a festive game to give to a little one, this is probably perfect. If you want a game that makes you think or provides any challenge whatsoever, there are plenty of other Christmas games that will fit the bill better.
I recorded this through Retroarch using a GBA LCD shader to make it look like the original machine's display - nostalgia ftw!
Happy Holidays, everybody!
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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