Disney's Tarzan: Return to the Jungle [GBA]

Disney's Tarzan, one of the first Game Boy Color-exclusive games made, sold extremely well for Activision when it shipped almost three years ago. So it's no real surprise when the company announced that it would be bringing the sequel to the Game Boy Advance, or that the same development team, Digital Eclipse, would be the group to continue the handheld series. Disney's Tarzan: Return to the Jungle is a relatively solid platformer on the GBA, but if feels like the game was rushed out the door because of its awkward design issues.

Features

• 21 levels
• Play as young and adult Tarzan
• Cartridge save
• Only for Game Boy Advance

The original Disney's Tarzan for the Game Boy Color used the theatrical movie's storyline for the game's theme. The Game Boy Advance sequel begins with the film but continues through the situations of the recently-released direct-to-video feature. Much like the original GBC title, players start their vine-swinging life as the young Tarzan, whose abilities aren't quite as established...the early levels are just to get players accustomed to his abilities; Tarzan can run and leap through the trees, as well as swing, dangle, and bungie from vines to get deeper into the areas. Not everyone in the jungle's on the apeman's side, so it's a good thing that Tarzan can toss boomerangs to take out the hazards...like snakes, beehives, and wild hogs that look suspiciously like Puumba from The Lion King.

As players progress through the early levels, they'll earn an extra ability, and probably one of the coolest additions to the gameplay: tree surfing. If the "run" button's pressed, Tarzan can slide down any angled slope, gaining speed the longer the slope extends. Several levels take advantage of this feature by putting little jumps at the end for a long-distance leap. As Tarzan grows up into his adult form, he'll turn in his boomerangs for spears. And with age comes technique...the later levels put Tarzan's stronger leaping and running abilities to use, and there are even levels that require a lot of deep water swimming. There's definitely a lot of variety to what players can do in this side-scrolling platformer.

But as cool as the game was on the Game Boy Color, the sequel's not quite as "classic" as the original. The overall theme hasn't really changed from the original title: collect bananas and get to the end of the area. The "collection" theme seems to be thought-out half-assed, because all players get by grabbing 100% of the fruit is an extra life. That's not such a special reward considering that most levels award one or two lives by default, just by finding the easily-spotted Tarzan heads. There are only a couple of areas in the game where exploration is encouraged: in one challenge, players must free eight caged monkeys, and in another, find four dinosaur eggs. Other than these two levels, there's no real reason to seek out every inch of a level, and without the incentive of exploration, the game is just a quick romp through. "Hidden" extras come in the form of compressed video lifted from the Disney's Tarzan and Jane DVD, but these are automatically awarded to players as they progress through the adventure. And the game just ends with almost no fanfare...the designers don't offer any ending that pats players on the back for a job well done.

Like most of Digital Eclipse's Disney titles on the GBA, the character animations in Tarzan are perfectly "Disney" in their fluid motions. But in this specific case, the background graphics seem a little too dithered in their colors for what the Game Boy Advance can dish out. Some of the level designs deeper in this adventure get a might cluttered as well, making some instances too difficult to figure out what's safe to walk on and what's deadly to the touch. And the end-of-game boss -- as impressive as it looks -- seems to have been thrown in at the last minute, because the technique required to beat him is, shall we say, sloppy at best.

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