Finding Nemo (GBA)

If you are ever curious as to why game publishers kept making video games based on licensed properties even after they had developed an enormously negative stigma, look no further than Finding Nemo on the Game Boy Advance. This tie-in to the 2003 Pixar animated film ended up being the 17th best-selling game on the enormously popular Game Boy Advance platform, selling over 1.8 million copies pretty much on name recognition alone. This means Finding Nemo sold better than any single Metroid, Donkey Kong, WarioWare, or Final Fantasy game on that platform with most of the games outselling it being things like Mario or Pokémon titles that would be hard for any game to beat. However, despite my shock at the incredibly high sales of this game, that isn’t a condemnation of Finding Nemo for GBA’s quality, and while it’s certainly not better than plenty of games it outsold, it is comforting to see some work was put into making this more than a game kids and parents would buy regardless of how well it played.

Finding Nemo for GBA is a 12 level adventure that rather closely follows the events of the film, although it does leave out the important context on why the clownfish Marlin is so overprotective in raising his son Nemo and moments later in the film like riding in Nigel the pelican’s beak or fighting against a fishing net surprisingly make no appearance despite their potential for some action. When the game starts you take control of Nemo as the young fish starts to rebel against his father’s constant supervision only to be captured by a human diver. The rest of the game has you playing levels that either star Marlin journeying through the ocean in search of his son or feature Nemo trapped in a fish tank doing little tasks to try and break free, both father and son playing rather similarly but their different environments leading to gameplay portions that feel quite different. Along the way you will encounter familiar friends and foes like the forgetful blue tang Dory and the shark Bruce who tries and fails at suppressing his instinctual desire to eat fish, and while you do miss out on some pretty iconic elements of the film, the narrative in the game’s context still provides trips to places with some unique gameplay applications like the abyssal depths and a jellyfish swarm.

Marlin and Nemo are both able to freely swim around the 2D sidescrolling environments that make up most levels, rocky surfaces or human objects like pipes and sunken ships boxing you in some so that only rarely does it feel like you’re given too much open water to explore. Finding Nemo for GBA is able to keep you pretty focused on your tasks by keeping the scope of its stages reined in, much of Marlin’s adventure and Nemo’s early stages involving exploring little areas, avoiding aggressive sea life, and opening up new paths with the objects you can carry or smack away with your tail. Singular enemies like larger fish, whipping tentacles, or strange picks like a fish with a whip-like tongue aren’t too dangerous or difficult to avoid on their own, but Finding Nemo for GBA does restrict your opportunities for healing a bit and a few mistakes can add up to a bit of tension in getting around foes you previously thought you didn’t have to take all that seriously.

In certain levels though, there are more present dangers that can actually be difficult to avoid. When Bruce lets loose there is a chase level where outpacing him as he tears through a sunken vessel often barely leaves you out of the range of his teeth, especially if you don’t react to the upcoming barriers properly and lose some ground. However, the few other levels that could be considered chases aren’t quite as difficult or exciting. At three different points the game will shift away from 2D play and have Marlin either swimming away from or into the screen to mimic 3D depth, one time being a survival challenge where an anglerfish is trying to catch you but isn’t very good at even getting close. However, when Marlin is instead following Dory or the sea turtle Crush it actually becomes a matter of trying to keep up, the player needing to remain actively pushing forward constantly and swimming in the rings behind those characters to maintain enough speed. This also isn’t too difficult ultimately but does require focused participation to complete, the activity just involved enough to be a nice break from the sidescrolling stages.

Those sidescrolling stages do stumble a little in terms of hegemonic design. A fair few seem to be going for a maze concept rather than the mild openness of the more interesting and varied stages. In these you’ll often have very limited channels to swim through and will need to briefly divert from them to hit a switch to open up a new channel to move through, the challenge of the maze not finding your way or dealing with dangers within so much as just putting in the time to hit switches. Usually the mazes aren’t too long and the game does diversify them some such as one where Nemo is fighting against currents in one but riding them to get where he needs to be in another, but tight spaces like the lever puzzle in the sunken ship don’t push enough against the player to make it anything more than busywork. However, the jellyfish maze is perhaps the most interesting, an already beautiful stage turned into an anxious navigational challenge as their stinging tentacles hang over so much of the space you need to navigate. In the normal levels of the game it handles branching paths a bit better than most of the mazes though, some containing extra goodies to find or the game actually diversifying the dangers or tasks better as you need to open up the way you need to go.

Finding Nemo also has a rather relaxing aquatic soundtrack to put you at ease as you play and a few minigame elements to break from the action focus. In the fish tank Nemo will engage with a few minigames, one that involves hitting pebbles into a decoration being a bit too easy if you figure out its trick but pushing a pufferfish through rings or trying to pop all the abundant bubbles becoming fairly challenging as you are made to retry them with harder goals for the stage’s main objective. There is one unusual element to the game though that isn’t exactly exceptional but a more interesting reward for collecting things in a stage. During normal level exploration there will be bubble rings floating about. If the player swims through them they’ll collect them, ten adding up to a star ring and certain corners of levels hiding full on star rings as a reward for exploring more deeply. These star rings contribute to an end of level memory game where you turn over two cards at a time from a small set and try to match the pictures on them. The star rings determine how many mistakes you can make before you get booted out, the player earning a piece of concept art if they can clear all the cards that cover it. Admittedly this is a very simple minigame, but it balances the collection incentive well, the player not likely to be bothered if they can’t finish Memory but also gaining extra tries in this simple amusement that occurs between stages.

THE VERDICT: While having so many maze-like levels in its small selection of 12 does hurt Finding Nemo for GBA somewhat, the majority of the adventure does provide a decent amount of play variety and some maze levels like the jellyfish-focused one still stand out as solid ideas. Finding Nemo’s GBA adaptation is never too difficult but can push against the player with some enemies who whittle you down if you aren’t careful, and having chase focused levels, minigames, and the relaxed approach to the value of the collectible bubble rings makes it a brisk but somewhat engaging playthrough. The film’s events were adapted into a decent spread of activities that aren’t lingered on overly long, this simple sidescroller certainly a solid pick for someone wanting a bite-sized game version of the fishy Pixar film.

And so, I give Finding Nemo for Game Boy Advance…

An OKAY rating. While those maze stages are certainly the obvious low points, they still manage a mild bit of variety in a game that doesn’t make too many mistakes elsewhere. Sure playing a game of Memory isn’t exactly riveting, but it gives the bubble rings an interesting angle, the player wanting to grab them to get more tries if they need them but also not likely to be upset if they realize they didn’t grab all the rings in a level since they’re not technically required to succeed. The chase levels probably could have involved a bit more peril or difficulty to make them more exciting, but Finding Nemo for GBA mostly does a good job of breaking up any one gameplay type so it doesn’t risk stagnating within its small design space. A few of the more unique stages like being chased by Bruce or playing the different minigames in the fish tank give the game a bit more life, the simple swimming pursuits and item movement puzzles definitely too shallow to support a game on their own but not needing to. It is a bit surprising flying in Nigel’s beak wasn’t made into one of the chase levels and the film’s climax could have probably been made into some sort of minigame, but otherwise Finding Nemo for GBA is a solid attempt to not just translate the movie’s action moments into a game format but one that tries to find a bit of room to iterate in that space so you won’t get bored and turn it off. Admittedly, the fact it elects to use a password system might discourage turning it off unless you want to make a note of where you left off, but being 12 somewhat short levels also makes it an easy game to play in a sitting.

Finding Nemo for GBA probably is still best reserved for a fan of the Pixar film rather than someone looking for an interesting aquatic adventure, but considering there are nearly 2 million of those who bought the game and Finding Nemo is a quality animated motion picture, it’s not like that qualification will turn away many interested players. It’s a harmless and serviceable video game adaptation that captures many of the moments fans of the film will want to see and does so in a few different gameplay formats so it doesn’t feel like a soulless cash grab. It’s still a shame that more deserving game likes The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap and Golden Sun failed to outsell it, but if this has to be the licensed game that achieved absurdly high sales on the Game Boy Advance, then at least it provided some decent action to make that truth easier to swallow.