Atomic Betty (GBA)

Atomic Betty is a cartoon beginning in 2004 that stars a 12-year old girl named Betty Barrett. While she lives a fairly typical life most of the time, she sometimes has to stop hanging out with her friends or going to school when she receives an important message from the Galactic Guardians to help them save the universe. Despite the often weighty jobs she must perform in space, the young girl often seems far more concerned about her social life and schoolwork than stopping galactic conquerors and saving star systems. Many episodes are built on the premise where the exciting action is a personal distraction from Betty’s regular life, and Betty is surprisingly more capable at unleashing kung fu on aliens than navigating the social climate of her school. When adapting such a premise to a video game it would be easy to expect them to solely focus on the outer space action, but to its credit, Atomic Betty on the Game Boy Advance actually splits the gameplay between her more mundane life and adventures in space. This does come at the cost of basing both segments more around puzzle platforming than action, but it is admirable they at least tried to hew close to the television show’s structure.

 

Across the 20 stages featured in this fairly short adventure, there are three main level types. Two of them are essentially the same but differ in their setting and principle characters, these two types of puzzle platforming stages actually making up most of the adventure. During the segments taking place during Betty’s every day life, she’ll find herself needing to navigate the backrooms of her school after losing her homework.  Betty isn’t alone during these portions though, joined by her good friend Noah and her friend Paloma who would actually debut in the game slightly before she did in the show thanks to Europe getting the game a month earlier than the season’s start. In these segments, the three children you can swap between all have different skills they bring to the table, Noah able to push crates around, Palooma able to slide through small gaps, and Betty can actually do the homework when you find the scattered pieces of notebook paper. The popular girl Penelope will be shown in cutscenes trying to tamper with Betty’s efforts by turning off the lights or lowering the temperature in the area, and if there is one thing to be said about the game it’s that it makes fairly decent use of content from the actual show like small animated clips, visual stills, and even the theme song despite being on the less than powerful Game Boy Advance.

 

Gameplay tends to alternate between the Earth and the galactic segments at a fairly regular pace, but when you go to space don’t expect the main form of gameplay to be too different. Here you once again control three characters you can swap between at any time, Atomic Betty this time joined by an alien associate named Sparky and a robot named X-5. X-5 isn’t very mobile so the other two characters are often clearing the way for him to reach computer consoles only he can interact with, Sparky’s jetpack letting him reach higher areas and Betty able to unleash kung fu to defeat enemies. Regular enemies aren’t actually a challenge to beat, often just sitting there and taking it as long as you mash the attack button quickly enough, but they aren’t really meant as combat challenges and play more into the management of your trio. Betty will at least get some level-specific tools like a hockey stick for pushing ice around and a grappling hook to up her usefulness and lead to some shifts in puzzle design, but a lot of the game’s focus is still on just taking characters to where their one skill can be used and opening up the path to the next character specific action.

The side-scrolling levels that both major halves of the game involve can actually be quite large with many little areas to leap around, but thankfully the game does try to keep every section of an area important so it doesn’t get confusing. Both Noah and X-5 have an extra feature that lets you move the camera around and you can check your map too, but the more annoying aspect of the stage design is its reliance on slow vertically moving platforms. X-5 especially can’t jump much so there is a fair bit of downtime as you wait for an elevator to grab you and carry you off, there being no challenge in just waiting for something that probably could have been handled much better with something like the air vents you can ride upwards that do actually serve as a minor challenge when they crop up since sometimes Betty must bubble her allies so they can ride across them safely. Moving your characters to the right areas is at least a task that does require a little figuring out at times, the difficulty of the puzzles low but they aren’t absolutely mindless trials.

 

What is a bit more mindless though are the third level type, a few rocket flying segments usually kicking off the outer space segments. In these you will be flying to planet where the galactic overlord Maximus I.Q. or one of his villainous associates is executing some diabolical plan, but getting there rarely puts up a fight. Early on when you’re up against space rocks you just need to mildly dodge with your ship, but even when the game starts adding enemy spacecraft, ice balls, or even what the game actually calls space rattles since they belong to an evil alien baby, these extra dangers can be handled by dodging with a little more purpose. While you do have options to shoot down the incoming hazards, there’s no incentive for doing so besides clearing away the dangers you could probably avoid with the same amount of input in moving instead of firing. At least near the very end things do require a bit more attention, but never enough to redeem these yawn-inducing space flights.

 

While the Earth and outer space puzzle platforming are pretty comparable for the most part, there is one major advantage space has over the terrestrial twist to its gameplay type. When X-5 reaches a computer in space or Betty reaches her homework on Earth a minigame will begin, and in space, the minigames you play change over the course of the adventure. Most of the planets all have a specific minigame type you’ll play when you access the terminal. These can include little challenges like trying to position yourself to line up with the single opening between moving electrified barriers, grabbing bouncing balls amidst dangerous hazards, or crossing circuits like a game of Frogger to deliver keys to each side. In subsequent minigame stages on a planet you’ll actually see the difficulty increase in these a little like the gap in the barrier minigame moving around before settling into place. However, on Earth, whenever Betty picks up a piece of homework, it’s time for a game of basketball.

Somehow, all of Betty’s homework pertains to an upcoming basketball game at school and Penelope wants to be the MVP in it so she tries to sabotage Betty’s ability to collect the notebook paper that somehow all ties to this. The minigame you play does present itself as being drawn on paper at least, but the actual challenge involves Betty trying to score a certain amount of baskets with a set amount of balls. The player needs to stop the power meter and angle arrow at the right time to shoot for the basket and actually get it in, the doodled version of Betty shifting position after every score. This is a fine enough concept for a bit, but it’s never really iterated upon except for the game expecting more points done with fewer balls. The consequence for losing is to just try the homework again, so when it does start to get more stringent it is likely to just lead to repeating something you’ve already done plenty of times over again, the requirements even getting demanding enough I can’t imagine a kid having much fun playing the homework over and over until it works.

 

The homework is definitely Atomic Betty at its weakest, but while the bosses aren’t probably the strongest part of it, they do introduce the only bit of real dangerous action to the adventure. The player actually has to move around to avoid and deal damage during these simple fights, but each of these does feature the specific item Atomic Betty had been using on the planet. The fight against Chameleon and Iciclia really is just using it repeatedly when it’s possible though, but the final boss at least has a decent chance of hitting you and the alien baby Infantor does require some timing so you can get in and attack the hover buggy he’s in. The forgiving design and short length means you’re not really in danger of losing progress, but if you are stifled by homework or a boss the password system is fairly simple, four symbols that are made up of character faces being an easy to remember means of getting back to where you left off. Having the face of a character like Minimus who appears nowhere else in the game might be a little confusing, and multiple generic enemy robot types appear in the selection too so it’s a little harder to identify them in any notes you take, but I won’t begrudge developer Big Blue Bubble for removing the need for a save battery in their budget children’s game.

THE VERDICT: While the spaceship sections don’t have enough danger to be compelling, most of Atomic Betty is made up of sound ideas executed mildly. The puzzle platforming segments aren’t terribly complicated but can sometimes require a little thought despite a few inconvenient aspects and the bosses are an injection of actual action to get involved in with some even fairly interactive. The minigames in space are a fine enough batch but the constant basketball homework really makes things drag, the simplicity of the rest of the game unable to give it the appeal it needs to overcome the toll of repeating boring or straightforward gameplay ideas.

 

And so, I give Atomic Betty for Game Boy Advance…

A BAD rating. The basketball minigame appearing again and again with its only alterations being ones that make it go on even longer really hurts the Earth segments of the adventure, so while being in space or school isn’t too difficult in terms of what the two trios can do to solve puzzles, the minigame portions vary wildly in quality. X-5 isn’t exactly playing masterpieces in his portion, but it does shift around enough that novelty can sustain them despite their basic design and the same can often be said of Betty’s planet-specific gadgets and the bosses she faces with them. Earth is just a drag to return to as it seems steeped in simpler puzzle gimmicks on top of its homework all being the same minigame. Betty really needed some trick besides just doing homework to keep up her end of the Earth missions, but space does have that unfortunate start where you go through an unexciting flight to the planet to ensure neither part is without its sins. I can see a fan of the show perhaps finding the puzzle platforming inoffensive enough to tolerate, a child especially more likely to find this three character puzzle solving format more inviting than more complex games with similar ideas like Trine and The Lost Vikings. However, even with the nice touches from the cartoon, the Atomic Betty video game doesn’t provide much besides a few moments where the puzzles come together in a slightly interesting way.

 

I will still give Atomic Betty credit for taking its source material’s concept and following through with it. Betty is more concerned about that small basketball game than Maximus I.Q. and his allies causing havoc around the galaxy and approaches those with a lot more confidence than collecting her scattered pieces of homework. The puzzle platforming approach of both major halves of the game focusing on characters with a specific utility even made it so that the game could mostly play the same across both halves without feeling like one was being contorted to be similar to the other. However, the execution could definitely use some work, the little problems and repetition adding up to a force that does more damage than the little successes can counterbalance.