Babe and Friends

Babe and Friends

Xbox One - World - Title card.

Developer Aqua Pacific, David A. Palmer Productions Publisher Crave Entertainment Published 1999-11-30 Platforms Game Boy Color Genres Licensed, Passive puzzle, Puzzle Themes Farm Series Babe Distribution Commercial

Babe and Friends is a puzzle video game themed on the film Babe: Pig in the City. It was developed by Aqua Pacific and David A. Palmer Productions and published by Crave Entertainment on 1999-11-30 for the Game Boy Color.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes.
Finished	2019-09-02.

I wanted to expand my knowledge of the Game Boy Color, and this game was listed as a popular title, so I tried it out. After starting the game and getting a feel for it, I checked to make sure it wasn't super long, then beat it in a couple hours in a single play-through.

Review

5	5	4	2	4

Best Version: Game Boy Color

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game creates an enjoyable challenge for an hour or two and nicely uses the characters and locations from the film, and gets right the theme of a pig herding sheep. For a film-tie-in game, it wasn't that bad.
• Some of the puzzles require you to think a little outside the box, but, since it's for kids, nothing is too difficult.

Bad

• The graphics are pretty awful. The general backgrounds are passable, but not great, the enemy sprites are pretty bad, and the portraits of the film's animals are awful.
• A couple of the game mechanics that are introduced later in the game — like the moveable arrow blocks and the control arrows — aren't used to their full potential.
• The hazards of the game are pretty uninspired. Why is the hospital full of runaway wheelchairs?
• Since there isn't any randomness to the game, every replay is identical.
• I would have liked it if the developers blocked off future maps rather than let you explore areas that aren't related to the current puzzle. This caused me a bit of frustration when I overlooked the goal flag and assumed a later one was the goal.
• The game uses Comic Sans as a font. For shame.
• The puzzle keys are always so easy to find they're just a pointless diversion. It would have been nicer if there was a challenge behind getting them.
• A lot of the dialogue is pointless affirmations rather than hints. I really don't need a duck telling me I've done a good job.

Ugly

• The game is easily forgettable. There just isn't anything very clever or interesting about it.
• The game is too short. If you're good at puzzle games you won't get much more than an hour of play out of it. But, honestly, it's so boring, I couldn't take much more of it.
• The music is repetitive and the same dull background tune plays throughout the entire game!

Media

Box Art

• 

  The North American box art uses the promotional photo of Babe that is used on the film poster with flat graphic backdrop. Babe is flanked by photos of his friends from the film and the same film logo it used. It's kind of dull, and doesn't describe the game at all.

• 

  The European box is even more basic eliminating the animals friends, which fits the game's subtitle even less!

Documentation

• 

  Manual - USA.

• 

  Ad - France.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

Game Boy Color (Europe), Game Boy Color (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	The only women are the sheep and Mrs. Esme Hoggett. Neither is strong.
Bechdel test?	Fail	The women never talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no human characters.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

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