By the mid-1990s, Astérix had reached a point of fatigue. The comics were no longer selling as well as they once were, and the cartoons were rarely produced, with Astérix et les Indiens (Astérix Conquers America) being the only cartoon released during the decade, direct to video. It seemed that the small framed hero needed some kind of kick in the rear end to soar him back into public view, but to do this one has to do something that has not been done before with the character. So what can you do with a hero that has traveled across the world in 9 animated movies and 30 books over a period of near 40 years? Well, you make him real.

Astérix et Obélix contre Caesar (Astérix & Obélix Take On Caesar) was the very first live-action adventure to star the two bumbling heroes on their never ending assigment of defending their little village. Though numerous attempts had been made throughout the years to start up production on a live action Astérix movie, it had always seen challenges between the changes wanted by the movie studios and the strict hold Uderzo and Goscinny had on their property. Astérix as a name still had potential and value, so new attempts to reach agreements with the creators were made and after agreeing on having control over casting and plot, the movie could finally begin production. In early 1999, it was released all over Europe and ended up being the most expensive in France's cinema history. In the lead roles, worldwide renowned actor Géard Depardieu was cast as Obélix and Christian Clavier played Astérix. It had a massive promotion campaign, and like the books, it was translated into near every language imaginable. Astérix was once again back and on top as the movie was a gigantic success and led to skyrocketing sales of all Astérix merchandise. Like any summer blockbuster, a video game tie-in was made and released around the time of the movie.

The movie based itself on many different stories to form a unique adventure with many familiar moments to recognize. While the most obvious inspiration for the movie is Astérix The Gaul, it also contains elements taken from Astérix The Legionary and Astérix and the Soothsayer. So clearly there's a lot of great material to turn into a game. The movie is action packed, the amount of original source material near endless and fanbase out there hungry for some Roman pummeling. Cryo seemed to have a very easy task at their hands of just making a quick action game to satisfy the crowds after seeing the movie. Well, "easy" would definitely be the one word that sums this game up.

Think back to playing Earthworm Jim 2, or if you are an elderly reader, think back to Donald Duck's Playground. Remember those stages in EWJ2 where you would have to catch and guide puppies and prevent them from falling on the floor? Or Donald Duck having to catch fruit being thrown off the back of a truck and put it in the right basket? "Sure!" you might say. "Those were bonus stages/minigames, quite fun too". Yeah they sure were fun, now imagine a whole game completely based on running and fetching objects. That is Astérix & Obélix Take On Caesar. Yes, you rarely even meet the Romans at all, and instead spend your time serving wild boars to village people (not the band, even though these guys dress quite similarly) or fetching misteltoes from trees. It's an absolutely baffling choice of gameplay, one that grows old pretty quickly and never starts being fun to begin with.

Astérix & Obélix Contre César (PlayStation)

The game claims to take place during the key scenes of the movie, though this claim is a stretch, to put it mildly. You have the choice of playing Astérix or Obélix in single player or both in 2 player mode. Each stage pits you in a closed location. The goal of these stages is to run and fetch\punch\eat the objects thrown from the background into the foreground. Tapping left or right will make your character run to a pre-determined spot on the playfield. The objects are thrown to these spots in random order at random speeds. You can also jump, though this is only used on one level, it can be ignored for the rest of game. If you fail to reach the spot the object is thrown at in time, you will be knocked out for a few seconds which often leads you to miss out on another object or two thrown. Before each level a goal will be displayed which most often ask you to fetch 50-60 objects out of a total of 80. Once you reach your goal, a dance will break out and a clip from the movie starts playing. On a few of the levels, there are obstactles on the playfield like Romans or crocodiles. You can dispose of them by picking up some magic potions or wild boars, which gives you extra speed and power for a limited amount of time.

Cryo really had faith in this gameplay, cause 60 out of 80 objects takes quite a bit of time to achieve. It's never any fun either, you'll grow so tired of running around like a bafoon after the 10th object. The controls are extremely simplistic and you only really use the D-Pad, but the speed is quite fast, and the camera can't quite keep up, not to mention that your natural instinct is to hold down the direction you run, leading you to run straight past your intended spot. There's a lack of defined animation when your character moves as well, leading your eyes to be decieved of any movement which just makes it hard to adjust to just tapping the button. All the levels play mostly the same, though a few try to change things up from knocking rotten fish or boulders. One level asks you to catch mistletoes falling ever so slowly from trees which is as fun as going outside and catching rain in a butterfly net. One level in particular catched my attention.

On the level titled Race for Unicorn Milk, the druid asks you to drink 10 drops of unicorn milk. This druid is in the top of a tree, and spewing this liquid down at whoever is beneath, be it you or a Roman. Now if an old man in a tree asked me to stand beneath a tree with my mouth open wide while he slowly lets white-blue-ish liquid slowly run its way down to me, that would be the last thing I would ever do. But for the people who cried out for a proper 3D remake of Beat Em & Eat Em on Atari 2600... well, this is it.

The graphics and sound leave a lot to be desired. It uses scans of the actors who portrayed our heroes in the movie, who actually recorded all the dialogue for this game. Graphically it looks like a mess, with textures being smeared unevenly on blocky fields and flat 2D objects sticking out sorely creating a jagged, ridged mess. There's little music to note outside of the main menu, and what is present sounds like stock music from any game set in mediavel times with no sense of humor or personality, very much in tune with what the game overall lacks. It's also remarkably easy with only 8 levels total. When playing single player you might find yourself losing a few times due to tripping too much but during 2 players, there's zero challenge, you got it covered at all times.

It might have some bragging rights in the world of video games, because it is quite possible this is the most localized game on the PSX. Seemingly every region in Europe had their own version of this game with them all having dialogue recorded by the voice artists that dubbed the movie (The movie was released in both French and the native languages of the country it was playing in). English, French, German, Spanish and even Norwegian, they all got their own version completely translated. A version for Windows computers was released a bit later on, though it has no improvements, just increased resulotion. A Game Boy Color version was also produced and is near unplayable. It's the same run and fetch game, but with the added danger of Assurancetourix's dangerous musical notes.

With the massive hype and anticipation set for the release of the live-action Astérix movie, Infogrames decided it was a good time to develop a new game of their own to be released around the same time that the movie would take the continent by storm. Infogrames held (and still does to this very day) the license to the comic book likeness of Astérix to be used in video games, so it was an excellent oppurtunity for them to make something different. They looked into their own library of past titles and eventually found one particular game that could use an update and a new take. The name of the game this time, is war.

Astérix: La Bataille Des Gaules (Astérix: The Gallic Wars) is a reimagining of Infogrames's classic title North & South, released on home computers and consoles in 1989. It was itself based on a Belgian comic book by Willy Lambillotte and Raoul Cauvin called Les Tuniques Bleues and shared many similarities with Astérix. They both featured a backdrop of war, in this case the American Civil War, and dealt with this topic with humor, social satire and parodies mixed with accurate history, though sometimes altered to fit storylines. The comic book of Les Tuniques Bleues would not have much impact outside of its own territory (the first true widespread English release came in 2008, under the name The Bluecoats) but the game it spawned would become a worldwide hit. North & South was a lighthearted war strategy game where you could play as either The North or The South with the ability for you to change the historic outcome, a feature which surely warmed the hearts of several rednecks. Astérix: The Gallic Wars plays very similar to this board game interface, though also relies on more elements seen in Risk to flesh out the game more.

There is no choice of what side you will take, here you fight for the Gauls to take back their country. The game takes place on a simplified map which includes several keypoints of the Roman Empire. As you start the game you will notice several things. In the Gaul village, you see a big cauldron with a number on it, and surrounding it are Roman camps which also display a number as the pointer hovers over it. These numbers indicate how many troopers are stationed in that section. The higher the number, the bigger the cauldron or camp. The goal of the game is to retrieve seven ingridients for Panoramix's new secret potion. The ingridients he needs include a branch of mistletoe, a Roman standard, an amphora of wine, an edelweiss flower, a baby menhir, pirate gold and bath salts. I wonder if bringing these items together through customs today would cause any suspicion? Once you get a good look at the map and map out your strategy, it's time for warfare. There are three actions to take on the map screen, all represented by a character:

Panoramix will be able to fill up the Gaul camps with more troopers to strengthen whatever territory you may wish, as long as it is in clear reach. If Roman camps surround a Gaul cauldron, you cannot deploy any troops to it unless you open up a trail for it by removing whatever Roman camp that stands in your way. Obélix takes charge of the battle and leads the troops to war. You have three turns to engage in battle, and you initiate this by clicking a cauldron. With each click you enlist a troop to your army (one must be left behind to guard the territory). You then choose what camp to attack and watch the battle unfold, which is displayed on the map by a bodies flying everywhere and leaving a cloud of dust behind very much in the spirit of Astérix comics. You can only attack camps that are in direct reach to the border of the territory you choose. Astérix takes care of the reinforcements and gives you 3 turns to send troops to neighbouring Gaul camps to strengthen them after battles. After your set of actions are done, it is the Roman's turn, and they have the same number of turns and actions as you do. While most territories will simply display a battle animation lasting five seconds, certain parts of the map will trigger an event. The first of these events to note are the mini-games.

The mini-games allow you to take over the land by simply accomplising the task given to you before the start of the round. There are 4 different ones to encounter alltogether with these being Whack-A-Roman, Barrel Break, Bowl-A-Roman and Throw-A-Roman.

Encountering these mini-games bypasses the battle completely in favor of you accomplishing to achieve the required point minimum. If you win, you gain some extra troops as a bonus. If you lose, you get nothing at all. Depending on the number of troops you send to begin with, you get extra amount of time based on the strength of your invading army.

The other events you trigger are the key points to this game. Like in North & South, landing on certain spots will toss you in an interactive level where you infiltrate the area and search for the ingridient that the locations holds. The first one you will encounter is Carnac, the menhir field near the Gaul village. Here you play as Obélix as he straddles along the grass fields beating up Roman soldiers. You'll see two counters near your life bar, one for a cauldron and the other for coins. There are always 100 coins to find and five cauldrons which, if you find them all, will give you a healthy bonus if you beat the level. These scenes makes use of three buttons - Attack, Run and Jump. The camera is fixed at a side view position and you have to navigate your way through the fields avoiding boulders, jumping over pits and finding hidden cauldrons and rooms. When there's any battle, the scrolling stops until you beat the incoming batch of enemies. The ingredient is always found at the end of the level. These seven locations are quite varied and you will either be assigned Astérix or Obélix depending on where you are. The places you visit include the Gaul forest, the hometown of the pirates, the French alps and a Roman bathhouse. Each section you can explore look unique and the level design is well done and varied between them. When you beat these stages and acquire the item, you will gain one extra troop to deploy, while the Romans lose one. Once all these items are found, you unlock the two last levels, a pirate ship and Rome.

The graphics are also quite well done. The map screen uses simple 2D sprites and the color palette look near identical to that used in the comics. During the exploration sections and mini-games, the game changes to 3D graphics, which uses an early attempt at cel-shaded style graphics. The models and details in the 3D sections can look a bit cheap in extreme closeups, but at the distance the camera is usually positioned, they look fine and instantly recognizable. There's also some exclusive animation drawn specifically for this game, done by Praxinos, who were also responsible for the animation on Wild Instinct, the cartoon about zoo animals who hide their intelligence from the guests at the zoo. These animations look great though heavily compressed in order to properly fit on the disc. These animations are only narrated and features no character voice overs.

The music though, is the absolute best part of the entire game, which will take players completely off guard. Composed by the duo of Doug Boyes and Dave Boardman under the psuedonym 2dB. A mixture of Celtic music and cinematic epics, the soundtrack includes the quirky lighthearted melodies that one would see fit Astérix along with some epic passages with a sequenced orchestra using some very high end samples. Throw some jazz into mix and you know you've got yourself a great score. It can even be argued if the soundtrack is so good that it makes the game worth it alone. 2dB would go on to do soundtracks for numerous games, most noteably Hogs of War and Looney Toons: Space Race, but nothing would touch their work on this particular title. The sound effects don't hold up as well, with most of them being stock effects and the voice effects sounds like seniors having heart attacks for the most part.

A number of issues keeps this title from being as great as it could have been. While the map is of a good size, it doesn't really offer enough to keep your interest for very long. The interactive sections offer some change, but with only two forces fighting eachother, you essentially just sit and wait for your turn and don't see much change to the map after the Romans are done. The battles on the map also can be frustrating. The outcome is randomly determined by the CPU and it can be cheap unlike any other. If, for instance, you send 10 troops into a camp of 1 Roman, there's nothing keeping that 1 guy taking out 5-6 guys out of your army. Likewise if you send 1 Gaul into a camp of 10 Romans, there's actually a slight chance you will beat them all. This can cause some frustrating losses, and when you lose one of the key territories, you have to replay the level to take it back, leading to a lot of replays. The mini-games can also lead to some cheapness both ways. Especially frustrating out of these is the Bowl-A-Roman game. Here, you have by default 1 minute to reach 30 points, Romans will pass with the maximum combo being 3. However Idéfix will at times pop up and if you hit him, it'll cost you a point. The Romans never sync up and lots of time is wasted waiting for chances to score points, leading you to lose. I had to send an army of 20 to this game in order to get another minute or so at my disposal to reach 30, and even then, I was near defeat. Equally frustrating are some of the jumps in the platforming sections. Because of the fixed camera, you often have to perform jumps inwards the screen, making it difficult to navigate where you will land and the distance you must travel. There are only a few of these that include deadly pits at least.

Despite some issues, it's still a fine game and a fresh take on Astérix. The gameplay works well for the story and it's challenging enough that both kids and veteran players can find some fun, though it's questionable if the fun holds up after several playthroughs. When first released on PlayStation, the game was only named Astérix, but in order to diffirenciate it from other games, it was given the added subtitle of The Gallic Wars when released on PC a few months later. The PC version is a direct port of the PSX version and even includes a lot of leftover graphics such as the PlayStation control icons. It supports the higher resolution of 640x480 compared to PSX's 320x320. There aren't any real changes made, other than slightly sped up Roman turns, as they removed the sequence of Roman deployment and only show the attacks. An added bonus on the PC version though is the inclusion of a lossless soundtrack. On the disc you will find wav files of the entire soundtrack, sounding much more powerful and clear than it does on PSX. If you can find it cheap, the PC version is worth getting just to have the soundtrack in its full quality and glory.

With the strong sales of Astérix merchandise across all Europe, it was only natural that we were now going to see a more steady flow of new video games being produced to take advantage of the revived interest the license was getting. While the movie license was owned by Cryo, who would do very little effort to capture any excitement with their products, Infogrames was developing and publishing a wide range of titles that all would play very differently. UK developer Rebellion was mostly in the business of making cross platform ports, but for Infogrames they developed an all new adventure. The game would see a release in Germany in late 1999 just in time for Christmas, but strangely was not released until May of 2000 for the majority of Europe.

Astérix: sur la trace d'Idéfix (Astérix: Search for Dogmatix) is a good ol' platformer. Idéfix is a fan favorite in the Astérix universe, and while his roles in the various adventures may be miniscule in terms of importance to the plot, he is featured in nearly all scenes, panels and merchandise. It was especially with young kids that the little dog had found a following so in the early 1970s, a line of Idéfix books starting coming out. These books were handled outside of the team of Goscinny and Uderzo and had therefore a much different style to them in terms of storytelling, dialogue and to some extent the art style. These books were not popular nor successful and are not given much attention by fans today, but one of them was Idéfix au cirque (Idéfix at the Circus), which serves at the storyline. With the news of a circus rolling into town, Idéfix becomes curious and befriends a dog from the circus which tells him of the exciting life that comes with it. Idéfix runs away from Obélix in order to pursue a life with the traveling act, and so the duo sets out to find their little companion. While not highly regarded, it's probably the best out of the Idéfix series. Like many other Astérix games, this one also takes bits and pieces from various adventures to mold a full game out of it, but the two main stories it uses are the Idéfix au cirque book and Astérix et la surprise de Caesar (Astérix versus Caesar) movie.

The game takes place over 6 different chapters, which take place at different places in the Roman empire, requiring you to visit the familiar locations like Egypt and Rome itself. Each chapter has a world map which will always offer the same different spots to visit. There are 3 stages, 1 boss stage, the inn and a minigame area. The game is progressed the same way on each map, you select the level of choice and search for a key. There is 1 key per stage, and the boss area requires 3 keys to be opened up. Each stage features one of three gameplay structures - run away from oncoming dangers in a chase sequence, explore a larger sized level or simply beat up the Romans and find items along the way. On the map, you can select either Astérix or Obélix, who each have their strengths and weaknesses. Astérix is fast and jumps high and far, but has very weak attacks while Obélix has tremendous strength but little mobility compared. Astérix can also crawl and reach places Obélix can't, and vice verca as Obélix lets you walk through walls. Your choice actually matters quite a bit depending on the stages and requires you to think a bit what is best on that particular level, the strength or the speed. The only stages where you have no choice are the chase stages, where the game forces you to select Astérix, as he is the only character fast enough to get away. As you progress in the game, you will find yourself encountering new kinds of stages in the last stretch of the game like the magic carpet ride or chariot race in the colosseum. You can do the stages in any order, giving you a bit on nonlinearity to mix.

The inn serves a different purpose. Here you will find the choice of 3 options - refill your energy, buy a password or get hints. The inns are run by Panoramix himself and you are often required to go back here after each stage to refill your life bar, as roasted boars are quite a rare find, nor do they replenish much health. Buying a password is also a must to keep your progress safe and storeable. The hints are generally quite mediocre and provide little to no help, with such insightful wisdom as "You need keys to unlock the door" being repeated quite often. On every stage you will find a variety of items. Golden coins are used at the inn so picking them up is essential, while you will also find red glowing letters scattered around. These letters are tied to the mini game stage you will find locked on the map. By finding all the letters to spell your character's name over the 3 stages on your current map, you will gain access to these mini-games. These range from simple memory games to a Duck Hunt clone. Winning these games will give you a nice coin bonus which comes handy after some difficult stages. After unlocking these mini-games, they can be accessed in the Instant Fun option at the title screen. There are also magic potions which Astérix can pick up for temporary star power which comes in handy. Interestingly enough, if Obélix picks these up, you will lose energy and he will get sick, which is a nice little detail. The level layout is in general quite strong, with plenty of secrets to be found in the skies and lots of inter activity, from balancing over logs to bouncing on ropes to reach new areas.

Being released generally late in the Game Boy Color's life, these game really takes use of every inch of power the handheld has to offer. The graphics look absolutely amazing in motion and is one of the prettiest games offered on Game Boy Color. The backgrounds are detailed, varied and filled with bright colors and the sprite work is second to none. Both Astérix and Obélix are animated with attention to detail, having them move very disticntly like their comic book and movie counterparts, and they are filled with details. They way they punch, walk, jump, even get hurt, are done with a lot of attention to details. As Astérix is generally weaker and has shorter reach with his punches, they have given him a long range attack where you can throw rocks from a distance, while Obélix can do a close range super punch which will even knock bosses away with just a couple of punches should you connect. Even though the sprites are at times massive, the layout of the level is always kept open while enemies are around so that you can clearly keep track on your surroundings, and not fall into any cheap death pits or other hazards because of the smaller screen. Graphically it shares a lot of simmilarities to Shantae, though that game would not see release until 2 years later. The cutscenes are all new and look fantastic and authentic despite being a 8-bit handheld title.

The music is another highlight to this title. Composed by Manfred Linzner, it owes a lot of its inspiration to the work Alberto Gonzales earlier provided to the other handheld offerings bearing the Astérix name. Linzner was a fairly well known demoscene member who would go on to slowly start composing music for commercial products. During his demoscene days he went under the alias Pink, and in the mid 90s he was one co-founders of Shin'en which is a German third party company. While they would at time develop their own games like Iridion, Nanostray and currently FAST on WiiWare, they acted as a sound developer for hire. Shin'en would code plenty of sound drivers for various consoles, and this game uses the GHX sound engine which allows for some very sophisticated sounds. Each area has their distinct themes, using upbeat and cheerful tunes for the more straightforward stroll areas and the hectic chases being accomponied with more frantic rhythms and desperate moods. Despite not being an very long game, there are tons of different songs and it always manages to reflect the game while on their own being strong melodies in composition. The sound effects are also really crisp and fitting of their intented action.

The sun doesn't shine on all sides of the game despite its general high quality. The biggest gripe is the fact that if one loses during a stage, then you have to start over again on that map, which is quite annoying when you have already aquired 2 keys, and, for example, the chase stage takes you by surprise and kills you in an instant. A number of enemies cannot be defeated which means you have to avoid them completely, which is not always an easy task. In particular you'll find this problems with the birds, which fly in specific patterns and always fairly low and somehow your jump never really manages to reach over them completely. Sometimes the choice of character can really come back to bite you halfway, where an onslaught of Romans come towards you, and if you are Astérix, just murder you.

Still, this is one fine choice if you are looking for a platformer on Game Boy, and really one of the most solid titles in all of Astérix's long video game history. While the stages can sometimes feel repetetive, at least the game lets you select in which order you are to play them. Graphically and musically, you'll be hard pressed to find a better product than this in all of Game Boy Color's library.

Wanting to break the mold a bit from the usual platforming adventures through the world's many locations, Infogrames commisioned the Swedish branch of Unique Development Studios to develop a family friendly action sports game featuring the Gaulish cast. The Swedish name for the game is Astérix: Galenskap i Kvadrat, which translates into "Astérix: Squared Lunacy" (Kvadrat is the geometric measurement of a square). It was apparently even crazier than this so all other releases simply use a variation of Mega Madness. It uses the same engine and general look from the 3D sections of Astérix: La Bataille Des Gaules released the year prior.

Village chief Abraracourcix has set up a series of competetive events for the Gauls to participate in, with the winner being honored by sitting next to the village head at the banquet held in celebration of their long successful fight with the Roman Empire. At your disposal you have the choice of Astérix, Obélix, Assurancetourix and strangely Agecanonix's wife, with no Agecanonix in sight throughout the in game action. There are a total of 12 competitions to go through, with the main story taking place over 4 days with 3 events per day. In order to unlock the next day, you must rank number 1 between the 4 participants.

The events take form in the way of mini games, often inspired by other popular game genres or TV shows like American Gladiators or GUTS. Some of these events include Shield Bash, Recipe Run, Food Feast, Camp Crashing, Catapult Chase, Helmet Hoarding, Rowing Race and Boar Bash. The goal of each of these is to score the highest amount of points within a time limit and gain the highest combined score at the end of the day to go on in the festivities, failure to do so means you have to restart the day and try again.

Before each event, the controls will be displayed and are usually quite simple, using the directional buttons and the Square and X buttons but rarely any more. The game is quite family friendly in presentation and would work great for a family game to play on a Saturday night. It would work great if it was an actually good game, which sadly, it is not. The 12 games are for the most part rehashes of either each other or from other games, relying on the same basic layout masked under different names. Boar Bash and Recipe Run are the same games, with both pitting you on the same open field though with a slight adjustment of hitting boars instead of picking up ingridients. Food Feast uses an unresponsive rhythm game mechanic where you have to input the displayed directions to properly eat the food in front of you. There are some of these mini-games that uses some more originally designed ideas like the Shoot & Score, where one has to shoot to intercept enemy fire rapidly, but also here the game shows some serious flaws with an horrendous aiming system and limited field of view. Most of these games are devoid of any of the humor you would expect from Astérix. There are a few of these games that harbor some genuine fun gameplay like Shield Chase with its frantic mix of race and balancing that makes for some funny moments. Once these games are played a single time, they are unlocked in the Practice Mode with the ability to watch tutorial videos.

Graphically the game looks near identical to Astérix: La Bataille Des Gaules. The locations also have a similar look though feels more confined due to the nature of the game. Despite running on what seems to be the same engine, the controls are overly sensetive during the 3rd person controlled areas as if the characters sometimes are either on ice or underwater, and there is times of slowdown in the frame rate. There are some all new animated cutscenes done inhouse at UDS which look quite good and feature some of the signature humour from the Astérix franchise, though not enough to balance out the monotone feel of the rest of the game. The music has its moment though even this fails to live up to the excellent work of 2DB the year before. It was handled by Christian Bjöklund who also worked as the lead sound designer for Just Cause 2.

Ultimately, this game falls into the category of cheap licensed tie-in, offering little new and stale ideas that would fail to entertain an Amish man even if it was his first video game experience. Apart from the exclusive cutscenes, there little reason to play at all, even for the most die hard fan of the French favorite.

Two versions were released, one for PlayStation and one for Windows. The Windows version features 4 player support, higher resolution graphics and cutscenes and seems to be lacking the slowdown that can be found on the PSX. As always, the cover illustration was done by Uderzo himself.

Bit Managers had been successful creating above average titles based on various European entertainment franchises, some of which included Astérix. Based on the Astérix et Cléopâtre story, Bit Managers also decided to go back in their catalog and include one more adventure for good measure. For the budget price of one game you got two full Astérix adventures, Astérix & Cleopatra and a port of Astérix & Obélix which was released on the SNES in 1995.

Following the events of the comic and cartoon closely, Astérix & Cleopatra features six levels of mayhem in a beat-em-up game similar to the one released in arcades in the early '90s. The levels range from the pirate ship in a stormy sea, a chase through Egypt to recover the sack Amonbofis has stolen from Panoramix, taking on the crocodiles in the Nile, exploring the pyramids, fighting your way out of an Egyptian jail and the final showdown defending Numéobis's palace from the terrorizing Romans. Each level holds a large number of enemies for Astérix to swing around and bash into oblivion. There are also coins to collect for eventual extra lives as well as magic potions and wild boar to help the heroes along the way. The game makes use of the usual beat-em-up conventions like elevators and surfing, although in this case the surfing is done on the sand dunes of Egypt. After each level the section is concluded with an animated cut scene and a mini game.

These mini games aren't exactly groundbreaking, nor do they offer too much to add between levels. There are seven in total, "Barrel Crisis", "Mummy Ball", "Slip Em All", "Shoot The Romans", "Stone Em All" and "Sculptoris". For the most part these are just the same, pressing a three button sequence as it flashes on screen as fast as possible. There are exceptions like throwing a mummy ball into a hole or breaking barrels, but they hardly make things more interesting. Probably the most interesting the secret mini game, a rhythm mini game called the Culture Club, taking place on the banquet table.

The graphics are very detailed with a lot of attention to detail on the backgrounds as well as the different characters to look as authentic as possible, despite the smaller screen of the Game Boy Advance. Many of the bosses as well as Astérix and Obélix move and look properly and feel responsive to the control input. However, the hit detection is very unresponsive, with the hit boxes being quite frustrating and loose. Similar to games like The Simpsons on arcade, the punches seem to simply float through the opponents without much of a reaction animation and the attacks feel light. In some of the timing based mini games, this becomes a bit of an issue.

The music is pretty damn good, which is not entirely surprising when you look at the creditis. Making his return is Alberto González who always manages to provide a rich sound experience on any platform he works with, and this is no exception. It's still not as captivating as his works on the Game Boy with the likes of Astérix and The Smurfs' Nightmare, but yet it manages to be one of the highlights of the entire game, and the game itself is by no means a bad one, it just follows the rulebook too closely and does nothing new to keep the player too interested.

Astérix & Obélix is a straight port of the SNES game and features the same music, graphics and controls as the SNES counterpart. While that game also failed to shake things up, it's hard to argue a free game even when it's a bit bland and to its credit, the game actually works a bit better as a handheld title. On the large TV screen it came off as a rather slow and uneventful game, but on the GBA the pacing is more fitting due to the smaller screen and portable platform. Both the games support 2 player modes by using the GBA link cable if 2 friends connect their carts together.

If 2 games weren't enough, it would become an even better deal for those who waited. With the release of XXL in 2004, Infogrames jumped in on the 2 in 1 series that saw launch on the GBA late in its lifespan by combining 2 titles into one cartridge under a budget price. This resulted in there being three Astérix games on a single cartridge along with the newly released XXL game, but in order to go along with the naming scheme, it still presents itself as a 2-in-1 deal.