You can jump and slam down on your opponent with a heavier attack, but it rarely connects due to the A.I.’s programming. You have a basic attack (pressing the A button) which is utterly pointless and does little to no damage, regardless of your selected character and whomever you’re fighting against, or a heavier attack (smashing the B button). Shrek’s Freakdown is as basic as a 2-D fighter can be. Sadly, not one single ounce of the charm and wit from the films carries over into the game. Shrek’s 2-D fighting game was developed by Prolific Publishing and published by TDK Mediactive in 2001 exclusively for the Nintendo Game Boy Color.
To put myself in Shrek’s shoes all I had to do was play Shrek Fairy Tale Freakdown for about thirty minutes. “Are we there yet? Are we there now? How about now?”, “Can I stay with you?…Can I stay with you…please? “, the famous talking Donkey can be as irritating as he is loveable. The developers still had to bump down the resolution to a paltry 112p, but even then, it was on the cutting edge of what the GBA could do.I now know how Shrek felt after listening to Donkey all these years.
SHREK GAME BOY MOVIE
For comparison, the average max storage on a normal ROM for the TV packs was around 32 MB, making the Shrek and Shark Tales movie combo pack the example of peak performance in the GBA generation. Nintendrew gets into the nitty gritty of the technology, but basically the movie combo pack had a proprietary 3D memory storage system that allowed the developers to expand the storage of a standard Game Boy Advance game, and allow for 64 MB of memory. And, while it’s funny to say, “You can watch Shrek on your GBA,” it was actually a bit of a technological feat of its time.
However, there was a special exception where a combo pack of Shark Tale and Shrek had roughly three hours of content on them. Most of the collections had a regular old ROM chip like you’d find in any other GBA game.
SHREK GAME BOY FULL
Nintedrew, a Nintendo enthusiast and retro games collector, posted a video sharing his full collection of the videos and did a breakdown of the tech inside the cartridges. However, looking at footage today of movies like Shrek, the low resolution was very visible as the pixels significantly blurred the 3D animation.
SHREK GAME BOY PORTABLE
It probably bothered everyone around me and it was portable entertainment for a kid at it’s very finest! Based on my memory, I would say that viewing 2D cartoons was bearable. There is nothing quite like the sheer thrill of watching Pokémon, out loud with no headphones, on a plane. Watching videos on your GBA in 160p wasn’t great, but in a pre-Netflix, pre-tablet era, beggars couldn’t be choosers. (I had Pokémon GBA Video: Johto Photo Finish, which featured two episodes of Ash and his battle with Gary at the Pokémon League.) Beyond the video game spin-offs and family cartoons, there were even some movies that came to it, like Shrek. The first Game Boy Advance Video collection from Cartoon Network has The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Johnny Bravo, Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy, and Courage the Cowardly Dog. Other times, collections would feature miscellaneous episodes from across multiple shows. Sometimes shows would get their own game cartridge, like the SpongeBob SquarePants Collection, with four episodes on it. There was a wide range of shows from across Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. You could watch them in full color and sound - although if you were using an SP you had to live with the lack of a headphone jack. They came in opaque white cartridges instead of the classic gray color typical to GBA games, and were released in 2004 by Majesco.
SHREK GAME BOY SERIES
The Game Boy Advance Video series allowed players to watch shows and some movies on their GBA. You might have forgotten about the Game Boy Advance Video series, but I am here to excavate it and remind you of it and all of its chunky, pixelated glory. I used to watch my cartoons on my Game Boy Advance.