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Staff
System:
Game Boy Advance
Publisher:
THQ
Developer:
Software Creations
UPC: 785138320946

Released: 9-01-02
Players: 1-4
ESRB: E

Game Genre:
Action
Game Perspective:
Top-Down

Price Guide (USD):
Loose:  $8.50
Complete:  $1.99
New:  $9.69
Rarity:  10/10

External Websites:
Play.Rom.Online
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The Ripping Friends (GBA) - Game Boy Advance

The Ripping Friends is an Action game developed by Software Creations and published by THQ in 2002 for the Game Boy Advance.

The Ripping Friends

The Ripping Friends Title ScreenThe Ripping Friends Screenshot 1
Ripping Friends, The Box Art FrontRipping Friends, The Box Art BackThe Ripping Friends Screenthot 2
Rating: 2 (2 votes)

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The Ripping Friends Featured Review

The Ripping Friends Review by: Singelli - 2/10

Game for Children....? Maybe if you like tantrums...
OVERALL RATING : (2)

Looking at a few screen shots from this game, I started playing it with the mindset that it was a cheap rip off of the many fighting games out there like the Aladdin game for the Sega Game Gear (fight, scroll, fight).  I also came across many advertisements which continually introduced the game as one which was designed for children.

After playing the game for a few hours, I have to wonder.... why on earth would any child want to play this???

After my many frustrations with this game, I did a bit of research and discovered that this game was based off some show (by Spumco) of the same name.  The show, however, received such low ratings that it was quickly cancelled, leaving me to wonder why Creations even thought it was worth their time and capital to make a game based off the failure.

During the game, you take control of one of four characters and you hit, kick, jump, and roll your way through seven levels.  (That's right... SEVEN levels.)

GRAPHICS (5):
I found myself a little surprised at the graphics, especially after viewing some images of the show from a Google search.  The game was so frustrating that it was difficult to appreciate the graphics, but once you take the time to.... you truly can.  The cartoon-y feel of the game is completely effective and causes you to eel as though you are actually controlling a cartoon.  They weren't reminiscent of typical gameboy games; they were colorful, smooth, clear- cut.  For someone who watches the show, the characters are easily recognizable and even the little symbols on their outfits are visible.

The game is played with a two dimensional, top view perspective which does destroy some opportunity for better graphics, however.  This being said, animations are poorly done, and past the first level, backgrounds come off as very uninspired.   The first level consisted of a flying ship complete with spinning propellers and a city scrolling by underneath.  You could even fall off the side of the ship and watch your character spin into non- existence before it re- spawned back onto the ship. However, once you move past the first level, the backgrounds are just... BLAND.  Well drawn, but very, very bland.  

The second level, for example, contained a purplish background with a few detail- less walls of three buildings.  You can move to the rooftop by going through the door, but even the roof tops were lackluster.  Another level consisted of blaze' golden sand and a few rocks.  It's almost as though the designers wanted to suck young children in with great graphics in the first level, and then after that they figured children would keep playing no matter how poor the following levels were.    In some levels, the backgrounds contain such similar colors that objects seem to blend into each other, creating a hindrance to your game play.

Some of the backgrounds are layered into each other so that your character appears to be 'in between' the layers.    This causes difficulty in the fights since you can only see half of your character, the other half being buried by strips of background.

There were also very few enemy caricatures.  There were many bosses, but all general enemies were clones and had no individuality whatsoever.  Even the enemies within the level looked alike in color, in suit, and in movement.

SOUND (3):
The music in this game is quite clear cut, but I -hated- the music anyways.  The same ten seconds of sound loop repetitively and create a desire to burst your own eardrums.  While there were no animated scenes, there were some cut- shots which still managed to display the same beats... a large disappointment for sure when you're expecting a break from the pitiful action music.

The same score played throughout the WHOLE game and is supposed to be comical, but really only ends up being a huge irritation and annoyance.

Music aside, the sound effects are even worse.  Your character grunts when he throws punches, bombs make a short generic booming sound, and bad guys make one sound when they are struck.  The sound of each bad guy is different, but even they don't meet any good expectations.  For example, the sheep bad guy gives a short 'baa!' sound... and that's it. They don't even sound like they are in pain.  No one in this game EVER sounds like they are in pain.

ADDICTIVENESS (1):
Never ever ever would I play this game again.  As I said earlier, I believe it's supposed to be humorous, yet I found it anything but.  Even the bad guys' names made me cringe.  The toilet humor simply went too far, with names like Indigestible Wad and Evil Pooperman.    There is nothing aside from this review that would have kept me playing through level 2.  The reason for this can be seen in the section of this review that discusses the difficulty of the game.

STORY (1):
I'm guessing that the story was inspired by the show, but not having seen the show, I can't say for sure. However, the story was very stereotypical and uninteresting to follow.  You play one of the four main characters from the show, battling bad guys who work for a character called Citracett.  This character and his minions have plans to destroy some company called R.I.P.C.O.T. and it's your job to put a dent in those plans.

Each level, though huge, seems to follow the same pattern of play: you beat up a bunch of villains, find keys to unlock doors, beat up more bad guys, find more keys, and eventually fight a boss.  It gets repetitive very quickly, and the only way to break the monotony is buy using a different hero to gain an advantage during different points of play.  Although each stage begins with a short sentence explaining the situation, there really is no more to the story.

DEPTH (1):
This game is about as shallow as they come.  I understand that the humor is intended for little kids, but I don't even think most kids would find even a giggle motivated by this game.  The redundancy of the enemies is just one of the low points, but there is a lack of variety in other areas as well.  For example, there are only three types of moves, and I couldn't even discover any combos of the moves.  You could power up to pack a more powerful punch, but that was about as far as fighting differentiation extended.  Since each of the main characters you can control has their own ability, some levels are more easily progressed through by using a different 'hero'.  That being said, you can achieve the same results (as far as I noticed) using ANY hero of the game.  This made the varying abilities almost pointless.

Even enemy reactions to being pulverized were pretty disappointing.  An enemy that was hit simply blinked a few times before falling to the ground, and after a few seconds, the enemy would simply pop up again, ready to fight.  This made the story and lack of detail even more disappointing.

There was a unique aspect of the game which I haven't seen very often: a four player mode.  Obviously, I couldn't test this function in the emulators, but I wouldn't hold any high expectations of it anyways.

DIFFICULTY (8):
The difficulty of this game was MADDENING.  I can't -imagine- a young child having the patience to kill more than three bad guys; I as an adult barely had the nerve to keep trying.

First of all, the controls are almost impossible to figure.  You expect a fighting game to give the option of fighting combos, but after pressing every button like mad and trying insane combinations of buttons, you find that there ARE NO combinations.  Once you get over this irritation, you have to spend time trying to take the advice of first stage: use the turrets to your advantage.  The turrets will sometimes have a yellow arrow over them as though encouraging you to climb in, but it takes another 15 minutes to figure out how to get into them.  Once that secret is uncovered, frustration mounts as you realize how very pointless the turrets are.  They only shoot on the level of the ship despite the fact that the main enemy flies, and their only redeeming quality is that they seem to act as a shield and keep you from being harmed.  The invincibility however, is of course pointless since you can't move on through the level by using the turrets.

Once the uselessness of the turrets is discovered, you face the task of trying to beat the flying baddie.  If you wait for him to land, you end up dodging the turret's cannon balls with absolutely no results: he doesn't land.  You must jump in the air and kick him, but the real kicker is this: nothing signifies that your hits are landing.  I spent a good while jumping and kicking, but thinking nothing was taking place.  The bad guy doesn't blink, grunt, or show any sign of being damaged.  When the level ended, I was rather shocked and annoyed, not having realized my hits were having an effect and getting frustrated at my lack of success.

The annoying controls only continue throughout the game.  I tried to discover 'combo' moves throughout several levels, but the game doesn't seem to like you pressing so many buttons because too many efforts like these put temporary halts on my ability to jump.  I would have to wait several seconds until I regained the ability.

Controls aside, general game play was aggravating.  It seemed the both enemies and your character lose health at an alarming rate, and it's all too often that either are flat on their backs and unable to fight.  It doesn't take long to find characters in this state either: two or three hits are enough to knock anyone out.  Since it's almost impossible to hit without avoiding any fire, this means you must have a lot of patience to get through various fight and stages.  It seems easy to kill the bad guys, but it takes so much longer than a game designed for children should.  
You only have three lives, but when you lose all three, you get to continue the game anyways, causing death to have no meaning or real consequence.

Even powering up your punches takes forever, and in all honesty is not worth the time. While powering up, you still have to dodge other hits, or risk falling down and having to start the charge all over again.

Another downside to this game is that weapons are entirely over-powered, but make you walk ridiculously slow.  If you jump from one area of the game to another, you automatically drop the weapon and it becomes destroyed.

Also, the little graphics at the top of the screen are -completely- pointless.  The only one that made any kind of sense was to the upper left of the screen: a large number that shows you how many lives you have left.  However, with limitless replays, it serves no purpose.  In the middle is another graphic which has two health bars and three light bulb looking objects.  The health bars didn't seem to always reflect health accurately, and aren't labeled to distinguish your health from the enemy's health.  Furthermore, I NEVER figured out what the light bulbs were for.  At first I thought they displayed the number of lives you have left, but that would be a waste of space and though considering the figure to the upper left.

Finally, to the upper right was an arrow.  At first, I thought it pointed to the bad guy so that you could see where he was.... as though the image on the screen was not good enough.  However, I soon noticed that the arrow was meant to help you navigate through stages.  It was NOT helpful or by any means all that accurate.  If you had to defeat a bad guy and it was directing you that way, it always pointed to the enemy's location on the screen, versus the location the enemy would be on the stage.  I'm not sure how to explain that very well, but you need to consider that the game as a top-down perspective and that some enemies fly.  If the arrow is pointing to the pixels of the bad guy, and the bad guy happens to be in the middle of the screen, the arrow points there, versus ahead of your character which would be the place your character would need to aim.  If you can muscle your way through even the first level, you should quickly see what I mean.


Overall, this game was terrible.  Software Creations was already known for making games that frustrate younger kids, and so this game fit the reputation, I suppose.  However, don't hold your breath if you expect this game to placate a bored child.  In fact, I expect a kid would start screaming and crying before they defeat their first bad guy in the first stage. This game fails to impress me even despite the smooth graphics and bright colors that welcome a player at the start.

  Graphics 5   Sound 3   Addictive 1   Depth 1   Story 1   Difficulty 8

The Ripping Friends Reviews

Overall 2    Graphics 5    Sound 3    Addictive 1    Story 1    Depth 1    Difficulty 8


2
Game for Children....? Maybe if you like tantrums...   Singelli
OVERALL RATING : (2) Looking at a few screen shots from this game, I started playing it with the mi...
  Graphics 5   Sound 3   Addictive 1   Story 1   Depth 1   Difficulty 8

      Review Rating: 5/5     Submitted: 10-27-12     Review Replies: 1

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The Ripping Friends Cheat Codes

Unlock all levels: At the main menu, choose the password option and then press RIGHT, L, UP, DOWN, B, LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT to unlock all levels.

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Comments for The Ripping Friends

Jordanv78 12-19-12 - 06:54 PM
 I don't get why there has been such a run on reviews for crappy games lately when there are a TON of great classics that have never been reviewed...

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