''Around the World in 80 Days'' is a

platform video game A platform game (often simplified as platformer and sometimes called a jump 'n' run game) is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are charac ...

developed by Pick Up & Play for

Mobile phones A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while ...

, and Published by Saffire &

Disney Interactive Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversaw various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company. History 1995–1996: Formation and beginnings In December 1994, Disney announced that it wa ...

for

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...

, It is based on

Walt Disney Pictures Walt Disney Pictures is an American film production company and subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company. The studio is the flagship producer of live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Studios unit ...

and Walden Media's 2004 film of the same name starring

Jackie Chan Fang Shilong (born 7 April 1954), known professionally in English as Jackie Chan and in Chinese as Cheng Long ( zh, c=成龍, j=Sing4 Lung4; "becoming the dragon"), is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and stuntman known for ...

. The game features

pre-rendered Pre-rendering is the process in which video footage is not rendered in real-time by the hardware that is outputting or playing back the video. Instead, the video is a recording of footage that was previously rendered on different equipment (typic ...

characters and graphics, and a

password A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...

feature for returning to specific levels. Like the film, the game set in the 19th century, and the player assumes the role of Passepartout (portrayed by Jackie Chan), a Chinese

valet A valet or varlet is a male servant who serves as personal attendant to his employer. In the Middle Ages and Ancien Régime, valet de chambre was a role for junior courtiers and specialists such as artists in a royal court, but the term "valet ...

hired by an eccentric inventor

Phileas Fogg Phileas Fogg () is the protagonist in the 1872 Jules Verne novel ''Around the World in Eighty Days''. Inspirations for the character were the American entrepreneur George Francis Train and American writer and adventurer William Perry Fogg. ...

(

Steve Coogan Stephen John Coogan (; born 14 October 1965) is an English actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter. He is most known for creating original characters such as Alan Partridge, a socially inept and politically incorrect media personality, whi ...

) in efforts to

circumnavigate Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical body (e.g. a planet or moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth. The first recorded circumnavigation of the Earth was the Magel ...

the world in 80 days.

Gameplay

''Around the World in 80 Days'' is a side-scrolling

action-adventure The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a storyli ...

game. Set in the 19th century, it features

sprites, and follows almost the film's storyline and most of its locations. In the game, the player controls Passepartout, a Chinese

hired by an inventor

in attempts to

the world in 80 days. During gameplay, the player encounters various enemies along the way, including warriors sent by General Fang. There are four blue symbols scattered throughout each level; the player must collect all four of these symbols in order to advance to the next level. Collecting them also increases the length of the

health bar Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...

. The health bar depletes when being attacked by enemies or traps; when emptied, one of the remaining livesdubbed as "vials" in-gameis used automatically. An extra vial is granted if the player collects 80 golden coins scattered throughout the game. The Game Boy Advance's R, A and B buttons are used for kicking, punching and jumping, respectively. Pressing the Select button at any point will display the controls. Passepartout can perform various actions, such as sliding, jumping from wall to wall, and grabbing ledges. The player can also attack while jumping or crouching. The game uses a

function, which allows the player to return to a specific level in the game.

Development and release

A video game based on the film ''

Around the World in 80 Days ''Around the World in Eighty Days'' (french: link=no, Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employe ...

'' starring

was developed for the

by Saffire, a game studio based in

American Fork, Utah American Fork is a city in north-central Utah County, Utah, United States, at the foot of Mount Timpanogos in the Wasatch Range, north from Utah Lake. This city is thirty-two miles southeast of Salt Lake City. It is part of the Provo– ...

. It was designed by Jeremy Throckmorton, Alex Rushton and Brandon Harmon; and programmed by Hal Rushton, Deon McClung and Karren Willard. Saffire utilized a technique to render digitized sprites, as done on their video game adaptation of the 2004 film, ''

Van Helsing A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across ...

''. The game was announced by its

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

Hip Games in May 2004, stating that it would ship with the film's release in North America on June 22, 2004. The European version was released on October 15, 2004.

Reception

According to the review aggregation website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the Game Boy Advance version received "generally unfavorable reviews". Marc Nix of IGN described the gameplay as "a slobberknocker" and stated that fighting with boss characters are "just slugfests, some of which may prove too difficult to brawl through for young gamers even though the rest of the game is a cakewalk." However, Levi Buchanan of the same site said that the mobile version "isn't even close to being the worse movie game on cellphones, but it's a far shot from the best. Average to the core, and likely not worth your download dollars." Tim Ceradsky of GameZone wrote a positive review. He noted that the GBA version is "easy enough that kids will enjoy playing it", and praised its graphics, which "looks very good for the GBA".

References

Notes

* {{Around the World in 80 Days 2004 video games

Video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...

Action-adventure games Game Boy Advance games Mobile games Single-player video games Video games based on films Video games based on adaptations Video games based on works by Jules Verne Video games developed in the United States Video games set in the 19th century Side-scrolling video games Saffire games Video games set in China Video games set in India Video games set in London Video games set in New York City Video games set in Paris Video games set in Turkey Video games set in San Francisco