VeggieTales: Larry-Boy and the Bad Apple - Remember Him This Easter

01/04/24

As a part of my ever-ongoing quest to conquer the Game Boy Abyss, few things give me more drive than just finding funny ways to correlate holidays and events to the various games. Hell, not only is today’s one of those, so is next weeks (for a *very* different reason). Either way, it’s Easter, everyone's favorite religious holiday where we all give into temptation and gorge ourselves on far, far too much chocolate… which, somehow, is relevant to one of the few religious games on the Game Boy Advance. That’s right, this week, we’re taking a look at Veggietales: Larry-Boy and the Bad Apple, a game that I had rock bottom expectations for, but actually blew me away how engagingly fun it was. Seriously, *Veggietales* as a licensed title blew me away. Crazy. Also, due to how I’ve lined up the next few reviews, I won’t have a funny April Fool’s review this year; then again, considering how hilarious the concept of Larry-Boy is, I think it’s close enough.

Whilst I wouldn’t say the direct household I grew up in was heavily religious, I spent a lot of time at my grandma’s house, who’s still heavily Christian, along with many of my aunts and uncle. Of course, as a kid, they only wanted me to watch child-friendly television, with good messages and all that jazz… Even if all I ever wanted to do was watch Doctor Who on repeat, really. Anyways, the perfect overlap of that venn diagram was VeggieTales, which for those accursed enough to now know of, was a Christian animated comedy series about talking fruits and veggies that reenacted events and messages from the Bible with an entirely irreverent, but respectful tone. Honestly, it’s been years since I've watched any of them, but I’d say, religious or not, they really are decent programming for the time. Anyway, at some point, VeggieTales got a spin-off featuring one of it’s lead characters, Larry, as a superhero called Larry-Boy, which somehow seemed popular enough to result in this game. Even if I do have some very warm memories for VeggieTales, it didn’t mean I expected much from a video-game adaptation of it, foreseeing something little more than the bog-standard 2d platformer… but man, did I have the wrong number there.

Y’see, whilst it *is* a 2D platformer, rather than being a generic scroller, Larry-Boy is a puzzle platformer, feeling very akin to something like Mario Vs. Donkey Kong; in each stage, Larry must navigate a variety of enemies and mechanics to reach a ticket that’ll let him move on. Whilst enemies can’t take you down directly, the real danger you’ll be facing is the timer, as each stage has a stringent clock you must best to move on. The game has three difficulty modes, each of which give you less and less time to work with, perfecting suiting pretty much anyone tackling this game, from young to old. I went with Expert, which gives you a single minute for each stage, which might be more brutal for less tested games, but felt great to me, as it really forced me to learn and understand how to optimize my movement in this weird little game.

Whilst the mechanics are never too complicated, the challenge comes from dealing with a number of them in quick succession - for an example, touching an onion will cause you to slow down, but it’s hard to dodge; do you divert for a moment, wasting precious time, to grab an armour powerup, or do you go for the hail mary and dodge the enemy? Moving platforms, enemies who’ll unflip switches you need flip, enemies who’ll invert your controls, pipes that drop immobilizing slime… like I said, they’re all very basic in practice, but once chained together, and especially when coupled with the strict time limit of Expert mode, there’s genuine delight to be found in working exactly how you get from point A to B with the least amount of fuss. Honestly, I’d say it almost feels like an early 2010s mobile game in that regard - stuff in the kind of area of quality Angry Birds or Cut The Rope were. Little, pick up and play puzzles. Damn, didn’t know I had nostalgia for those things…

Sadly, the game just doesn’t have lasting power; even on Expert, my time with this game clocked in at just over an hour, and whilst I know that wouldn’t apply to everyone (I’m not your average gamer, after all ;) ), it’s still a sadly brief game with how solid the core gameplay loop is; I easily could’ve played another few hours of it, with even just a handful of new mechanics to sprinkle in piecemeal to keep it feeling fresh enough. Ah well - I’m not playing these games to review a ‘Time compared to price’ mindset, but it’s still disappointing when an actually decent game clocks in a little short.

It’s also a surprisingly funny game; whilst dialogue is kind of sparse, only really popping up in the start and end of each stage, Larry and co.’s dialogue is chock full of clever puns, entendres and just flat out dumb humour, perfect for the kiddies, or my stupid, undeveloped caveman cranium. Besides, hearing Larry call himself a gamer is something that transcends the game as a whole. Overall, it’s plot is pretty basic - from what I remember, it’s a very rough adaptation of one of the Larry-Boy episodes, where Larry-Boy has to defeat the Bad Apple from letting the various veggies of Bumblyburg from giving in to their various temptations. It includes a lot of the moral messages that were ever-present in Veggietales cartoons, though without any mention of God or any real religious ideology, just the message of avoiding temptation, which I think is fine, since it’s a message that resonates beyond just Christianity.

Beyond the puzzling, though, there are two diversions. One is the boss fights that cap off each level which are… different, but fine. They usually take a sort of mini-game format, usually related to whatever temptation Larry is attempting to help someone with, like having a sort of Space Invaders-like battle, or Pong (which is atrocious). Beyond that, there are a couple of bonus stages where Larry must repeat notes on a piano, which I believe are generally ode to a recurring segment in VeggieTales, ‘Silly Songs with Larry’, which is a cute idea that flops like a fish from just how *boring* it is. They just go on and on, with such a slow pace, with only a single life for a reward. Honestly, lives are pretty much irrelevant, as if you’re going to fail an attempt, just opening the menu and clicking Retry won’t cost you a life, so really if you’re in the know, you have infinite lives. Anyway, with how good the core gameplay loop of this game is, the boss fights really aren’t that bad, they’re just so stunningly average that I just want to get back to the actually engaging puzzles.

Released in 2006, which was the last ‘big’ year for the GBA, Larry-Boy looks the part, balancing the fact that this is a seemingly cheapy made game with having a very bouncy, endearingly cute art style that fits the series perfectly. It’s the first hint that this game sticks out a bit from the crowd, having a sort of doughy, bouncy animation style that is just delightful to look at. The art itself is fairly basic, but the way it moves mops up any imperfections. The music is of a similar quality, though it never feels quite balanced, volume-wise, with the gameplay. I can appreciate the fact that most of the songs seem to be remixes of previous VeggieTales themes, especially drawing inspiration from the aforementioned ‘Silly Songs with Larry’. Great stuff.

Larry-Boy and the Bad Apple isn’t anything too amazing, but the sheer gulf between my expectations and the actual results genuinely might make it an early contender for Surprise of the Year. With a short, yet genuinely engaging and enjoyable puzzle gameplay loop, Larry-Boy rarely stumbles beyond its ancillary moments and wraps it all in a genuinely adorable art direction that helps it punch above its weight. I just wish there was more of it, and then this could’ve been something really, really special. Ah well.

Thank you so much for reading my review of VeggieTales: Larry-Boy and the Bad Apple! Great little, quick, surprise this week! Next week, we’ll be playing a game that also relates to a big event… Let’s just say, my review will probably be a day later than normal. Either way, you can find me over on Twitter @Lemmy7003, email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com, or find me on Twitch under GameBoyAbyss. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!