Asterix & Obelix is a hugely prolific series of games that our American readers maybe haven’t heard of. Based on the French comic Asterix, created by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in the 70s, the games follow the same general premise: Two Gaulish warriors from an insurgent village make a mockery of Julius Caesar’s legions during the Gallic Wars. It’s equally highbrow in artistic and historical inspiration and lowbrow with unrelenting silliness, resulting in a perfectly off-center, ahistorical comedy romp that’s surprisingly fit for some great games - even a Tabletop RPG!
Yet none are quite as impressive as the GBA spin-off for Asterix & Obelix XXL (also known as Kick Buttix in a few regions - that’s not a typo).
Recently, the mainline console version of XXL received a “Romastered” re-release, but sadly its most technologically impressive entry is one you’d have to dig deep into the depths of the internet to find. Where many Game Boy Advance ‘ports’ were nothing more than 2D demakes of 3D games, this random tie-in to a French comic book you’ve probably never heard of declared “We’ll make 3D work on the GBA!”
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That’s right - a two-person development team made a fully functional 3D platformer for the GBA. Fernando Velez and Guillaume Dubail, were hired by Atari to make the game, and the pair managed to squeeze an impressive rendition of Asterix & Obelix onto a cartridge with less space than even some early mobile phones.
Just fitting the assets required into the cart doubtless took extensive efforts, and then they had to get this thing running at a stable framerate! XXLsprintsat ludicrously smooth speeds. Sure, modern emulators today can make it run even better, but the work here is nothing short of incredible. Due to the low resolution, Velez and Dubail could fake 3D with gorgeously drawn sprites for the characters, reserving 3D purely for the environment and key puzzle objects.
To be fair, when you rotate the camera, it’s more obvious that Asterix and Obelix are merely sprites - the same can be said for when an enemy sprite clips through something in the world geometry. Yet for all that, it looks and feels like a long-lost platforming gem of the PS1 era. I can’t overstate howwellthis game plays. Controls are smooth and responsive without analog sticks or even four face buttons. This game flows better than some games that have a modern controller, and it just has two buttons, two triggers, and a D-Pad to work with.
Of all the games to put in this much effort, no one was expecting this of a license tie-in. There was, oddly, a modicum of precedent thanks to the Ecks vs. Sever duology, spun out of a failed Antonio Bandares movie into two solid GBA shooters, but those at least had the benefit of needing less rapid 3D rendering than a platformer. XXL has swimming sections that handle like on-rails races, moving platforms, dozens of enemies rendered at once, two playable characters you can swap on the fly, breakable objects, and even streaming, moving textures when rendering water. This game is nothing short of pure wizardry.
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To be fair, not everything is roses and sunshine. There is a combat system, but it’s mostly just mashing the A button until you win, stun-locking a variety of Romans into oblivion. There’s arguably a combo system, but XXL isn’t in any hurry to let you execute those moves. Obelix also does slightly more damage than Asterix, so it’s the one area besides moving blocks that he’s really worth using. The rest of the time, Asterix is (rightfully) the hero of the journey.
Yet many of these factors are due to the platform more than anything. Considering the fight these two developers were up against, it’s incredible to see what’s essentially a 3D indie game utterly outclassing so many of its peers in both presentation and performance. It’s not simply unlikely - this port is on the verge of impossible, and yet it works, and it’s fun. Brainless fun, but it’s over five hours of platforming on the go! That might sound short by today’s standards but a fair number of Game Boy platformers would aim for maybe two hours.
So, yeah, Asterix & Obelix XXL might be one of the most handheldplatformersever developed. Why don’t we talk about this game more?! Well, it gets even weirder. As fate would have it, Velez and Dubail made a career out of stunningly impossible handheld ports, including Driv3r for GBA with a fully 3D sandbox featuring on-foot and driving gameplay, as well as true 3DGTA-style C.O.P.: The Recruit andGears of War-style cover shooter Iron Fall for DS and 3DS, respectively.
Their work might not have ever set the industry at large on fire, but there’s never been a duo quite like them. Sadly, Velez passed away in 2016, but the legacy of his and Dubail’s work lives on across all of Nintendo’s handhelds, with their last title together, Rise: Race The Future, landing on Switch as well as consoles and PC. An impressive legacy worth remembering, and some fun games worth tracking down if you’re a fan of retro handhelds!
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