Beauty and the Beast: A Board Game Adventure
Beauty and the Beast: A Board Game Adventure | ||||||||||||||||||
Game Boy Color - USA - 1st edition. |
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Beauty and the Beast: A Board Game Adventure is a video board game developed by Left Field Productions and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Color on 1999-10-25. The game is based on the 1991 Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast.
The game simulates a board game where, each time a player lands on a square, they play a corresponding mini game. There are 10 mini games in total, each with different mechanics, and each based on a character from the film. The game includes several play options including:
- Story Game - Play three boards racing against Gaston to warn Beast before he arrives.
- Board Game - Play any one of the unlocked boards with up to four players.
- Practice Game - Play any of the mini games. Finish all of them in a difficulty level to unlock additional boards.
- Challenge Mode - Play any mini game in endless mode.
Contents
Personal
Own? | No. |
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Won? | Yes. Beat story mode and all practice games on hard difficulty. |
Finished | 2022-09-15. |
I played this game to better expand my familiarity with the Game Boy Color catalog, and because I like Beauty and the Beast.
Review
5 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 5 |
Best Version: Game Boy Color
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- You're given several play options which give more enjoyment to the game.
- The art is drawn very well.
- Most of the mini games include a star that can be collected if you go a little out of your way, and, if you collect three stars, you'll get an extra roll.
- The game auto-saves your progress and high scores.
- Being able to play with friends is a fun addition, even if it's just hot seat.
- It's a little thing, but the game includes a sound test.
- Hard mode is hard, but not ridiculously so. It took me about a dozen attempts to finish the story game on hard difficulty.
Bad
- Even though you'll know how to play each game after a single play through, you're still forced to read the instructions of every game every time you play it. You can speed through them by pressing buttons, but it's still annoying. There is an options menu, and it would have been great if they let you turn them off.
- Like most multi-genre games, the mini games are all too simplistic to be very interesting, and they're all based on older games, there isn't anything new. I was bored of them after my first couple play-throughs. Also, the hard mode is the exact same game, just played at a faster rate, which isn't interesting. Games like Mario Party are able to get away with this by having scores of different games and pitting players against each other, but this one only has 10, and they're all single-player.
- The mini games range pretty wildly in difficulty. Even in hard difficulty, I never lost Where's Chip?, but I frequently lost Beast's Battle even on easy difficulty. They also vary wildly in duration. Some only take a few seconds, like Cogsworth's Trivia and Matching Doors, while some take several minutes, like Le Fou's Gallery and Lumiere's Leaks.
- As board games go, this one isn't very interesting.
- Since the game ends when the first player reaches the finish, whoever goes first is at a strong advantage, especially on the shorter boards.
- There is no strategy at all. You have no control over shortcuts or alternate routes, you can't affect other players, etc. Really, there isn't even a point to have a board. The game would function as well using a point system, where the first person to reach a specific score wins.
- The reward for finishing a mini game flawlessly and barely scraping by in round three is the same.
- The music is pretty bland. It has some nice structure, but the timbre of the audio driver is quite flat.
Ugly
- While there isn't anything really wrong with the game, it has a lot of little problems which prevent it from being that great.
Media
Box Art
All regions use the same art, just with minor layout changes. The cover depicts a scene from the movie where Beast is protecting Belle from wolves. This is a good choice for the cover since it is also seen in two of the mini games.
Documentation
Videos
Play Online
Game Boy Color (Europe), Game Boy Color (USA)
Representation
Strong female character? | Pass | Belle is a strong character, often solving her own problems. Mrs. Potts as well. |
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Bechdel test? | Fail | There are several named women, but they never talk to each other. |
Strong person of color character? | Fail | There are no non-white characters. |
Queer character? | Fail | There are no queer characters. |
Credits
Roles | Staff |
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Programming | David Ashley, John Brandwood |
Lead Artist | Robert Hemphill |
Lead Animator | Roger Hardy Jr. |
Producer | James Maxwell |
Designer | James Maxwell |
Additional Design | Robert Hemphill, Roger Hardy Jr. |
Sound FX and Music | Chris Lamb |
Disney Interactive Senior Producer | Dan Winters |
Disney Interactive Assistant Producer | Renée Johnson |
Nintendo of America Producer | Erich Waas |
Testing | Teresa Lillygren, Brent Clearman, Dougall Campbell |
Special Thanks | Minoru Arakawa, Howard Lincoln, Manabu Fukuda, Gail Tilden, Ken Lobb |
Links
- Video Games
- 1999 Video Games
- Video games developed by Left Field Productions
- Video games published by Nintendo
- Game Boy Color Games
- Video Game Genre - Board game
- Video Game Genre - Licensed
- Video Game Genre - Multi-genre
- Media Theme - Cartoon
- Multiplayer
- Multiplayer Alternating versus
- Software Distribution Model - Commercial
- Video Games I Don't Own
- Video Games I've Beaten
- Video Game Rating - 5
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 6
- Video Game Sound Rating - 4
- Video games which can be played online
- Video games with a strong female character
- Video games that fail the Bechdel test
- Video games without a strong person of color character
- Video games without a queer character
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Strategy, Adventure
- Game Mechanic - Playable Female Character
- Game Mechanic - Unlockable Content
- Board Games