Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King - This is Halloween!

31/10/23

Okay, listen up. I can forgive you guys for not letting me know about the Samurai Jack Game Boy Advance game. Seriously, who even knew Samurai Jack got a GBA release, let alone a Metroidvania. But I *know* some of you knew about Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King (Awful, awful name) - a bonafide metroidvania starring everyone’s favorite, most dapper skeleton, and I was not informed. I’m disappointed in you, Game Boy Abyss reader. For shame. Either way, it’s Halloween, and this week on the Game Boy Abyss, we’ll be taking a look at The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King, an oft forgotten adventure-platformer for the GBA that effectively captures the charm and beauty of its source material, whilst not consistently hitting the mark on what constitutes a really great game.

Also, whilst I'm Australian and it's not a huge thing around here... Happy Halloween!

I’m not gonna write a spiel about my love of Metroidvanias or The Nightmare Before Christmas; readers already know how much I adore the genre, and seriously, who doesn’t love The Nightmare Before Christmas? Let’s just dive in. The Pumpkin King takes place an indeterminate amount of time before the events of the titular movie, shortly after Jack Skellington became the king of Halloween Town. Oogie Boogie, the good ‘ol sad sack that he is, isn’t particularly happy with this series of events (for some reason - why didn’t he just take over Halloween Town before Jack turned up!?), kidnapping and assaulting members of the town, all before unleashing a literal plague of insects. The narrative is incredibly ancillary, as the structure of the game will have you meeting the major constituents of Halloween Town one by one, helping them out or having them assist you in reaching your next target. But at the same time, it would’ve been very easy just to slap any old story a’la EVERY Disney direct-to-video movie sequel, but The Pumpkin King’s nature as a prequel really fits the game, giving us a little look into some of Jack’s origins for the film’s many, many fans, whilst not deviating it’s focus from the core gameplay.

I think there are fewer more beautiful sights in gaming then the square, grid-based maps endemic to the metroidvania subgenre; seriously, if I ever see a map like that, I instantly know I’ll find *something* to like about it. But yes, The Pumpkin King is a bonafide metroidvania, one of the very few squeezed between the quintessential Metroids and Castlevanias present on the system. You’ll be doing everything you expect from the subgenre - navigating variously themed locales, platforming about, and locating new tools and abilities to unlock more of the world of Halloween Town. Jack’s suite of abilities is on the more basic side, but work for the smaller-natured game. Beginning with a Frog Gun - no, it doesn’t shoot frogs - to defend himself, Jack quicky obtains a weapon that fires Battrang-like projectiles to fight and hit switches, Pumpkin Bombs, and the titular Pumpkin King ability, that puts him into an invincible, flaming state that’ll burn through anything and allow him to dash long distances. Combat itself is a pretty basic part of the game; shoot enemies, throw bombs, etc. It does exactly what it needs to, but honestly, combat is never the priority in adventure games like this.

Now, as compared to the subgenre’s namesake, The Pumpkin King is a little more linear. Not as linear and single-focussed as Samurai Jack was, as there’s a decent amount of wiggle room where you can explore totally optional, previously inaccessible sections of the variety of zones you’ll be navigating. And whilst you’ll be popping back into most areas twice or thrice, you’ll have the opportunity to explore otherwise unvisited areas as you travel from zone to zone. Whilst most areas have relatively similar aesthetics - I mean, it’s a spooky Halloween town, how much can you do with that? - the game throws a decently varied squad of enemies for Jack to deal with, most requiring a particular strategy or weapon to duel with them efficently. New mechanics are doled out at a pretty decent rate, especially part from enemies; the ability to summon ghosts to stretch Jack out, or leeches that allow him to melt and crawl into smaller passages. There’s nothing too crazy - besides the titular Pumpkin King ability - but it’s a nice suite of skills that’ll keep the game from growing stale. I think what’s more entertaining is how these abilities display the game’s wondrous sense of personality; pretty much every attack, ability, or even basic moves like crouching has a genuinely hilarious animation attached to it. Jack firing his Frog Gun like a madman, or crouching like a spider ready to leap at its prey. The animation itself might not be anything to write home about, but the poses and expressions Jack displays are nothing short of fantastic.

Back to the structure of the game, though. Strangely enough, the game frequently eschews the stock-standard shortcuts that are a staple of the genre; frequently you’ll be dancing your way through a linear, gauntlet of foes and challenges… only to have to navigate them all once more as you return with your goal in hand. For the most part, it’s just an annoyance, but it’s just a really odd choice that I feel exists just to pad out the game or double down on a notable brand of challenge. The only time I legitimately felt annoyed with this decision was with the stealth section, where you have to hide beneath mushrooms from bugs that’ll intermitally be looking for you. This section is *incredibly* miserable to traverse, with a near glacial pace and to make matters worse, the return journey amps up the frustration with no save points and a goddamn time limit!

Now, as I was saying, whilst the game features a relatively linear ‘main path’, there is a decent enough chunk of the game that just begs you to search out its secrets. It’s just a little bit of a shame that the rewards for exploring the world are pretty much a huge let-down. Secret items take two forms - shrunken heads that work much like E-Tanks in Metroid, giving Jack a full extra health bar. The other are various items and belongings of the denizens of Halloween Town. Now, the former is fine - whilst the game isn’t incredibly challenging, later zones hit hard enough that you’ll want more than a couple of health bars, but tracking all ten down isn’t really needed as a good half of them are pretty much on the game’s main path, and are easily enough to finish most of the game without worry. But when it comes to the belongings of Halloween Town’s citizens… I dunno, I just can’t see a point to them at all. Ostensibly collecting enough of them does have a reward. What is that reward, you ask? A new weapon? Infinite Health? Why, no, dear reader, nothing like that! It’s… It’s concept art! But not just concept art! It’s four - singular - pieces of fairly basic concept art. Look, I don’t want to be ungrateful or anything, but this is a shocking reward for a genre that frequently rewards those diligent enough to hunt everything down. The rewards here are just so… lame, and nothing, that I can't recommend hunting everything down in this game unless you’re one of the people who just need to uncover every square like your life depends on it. And I’m *usually* that person. It’s a shame, really.

Also, small tangent, but this game commits a cardinal sin of game design. So, certain items in the game, mainly the Pumpkin Bombs and the fiery Pumpkin King abilities are consumables. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, especially with the latter case; the Pumpkin King is incredibly powerful, so it’s fair to have only a handful of charges. But there are walls - walls that respawn once you change screens - that can only be broken with these abilities. In Metroid games, if you need missiles to blow open a door, you can just run into a previous room over and over again, killing enemies until they drop missiles. But in The Pumpkin King, as far as I can tell, every individual enemy in each individual room has only a single drop, eventually leading to a half an hour chase around a zone as I desperately hunted down an enemy - ANY ENEMY - that dropped the Pumpkin King item. Absolute madness that could have been averted if they just used the same system Metroid did. Seriously, it’s not that hard, and it avoids situations like this that absolutely drive me insane. Okay. Tangent over.

It’s not just platforming action, though. Zero occasionally becomes playable, guiding Jack through narrow pipes and passages in auto-scrolling, obstacle dodging gauntlets to access new locations. There’s only a handful of them, but I really didn’t mind them - especially since several Shrunken Heads appear in them. But for the most part, breaking up the game are a decent variety of boss fights against Oogie Boogie’s suite of bug-based beasties. They’re… fine, I guess? I mean, they’re just a variety of bugs, sometimes twisted into some maddening form. But I’m not a bug guy - they look cool, I guess, but they aren’t that interesting to take on. Honestly, as the game progressed I grew less and less interested in taking on the bosses. They’re just… uninteresting to fight. Very few of them have any kind of mechanical complexity to them, being little more than phase-based Frog Gun sponges, but on the other hand, once they do actually put up any kind of technical fight, the game frequently devolves into sheer frustration. Yes, for those few who’ve potentially played this game, I’m talking about the two final Oogie Boogie fights. Both these encounters, whilst simple on the surface, throw frustrating caveats that turn the whole battle into nothing more than a slog. The former takes place on a constantly rotating conveyor belt, constantly pushing you towards a wall of spikes, making timing attacks on Oogie frustrating at best, and avoiding his counterattacks maddening at worst. But the latter fight - an overlong, brutally difficult nightmare that throws the entire kitchen sink that features moments where you can go *minutes* without being able to hit Oogie Boogie… I just don’t understand what they were trying to do. It took me half a dozen decent tries to finally bring him down, and I hated every single minute. The bosses are just… fine, for the most part, but these final encounters are just badly, frustratingly designed.

Now, whilst I enjoy a little Midi-drowned tune, The Pumpkin King takes this a little bit too far. The music quality isn’t great. Sure, it’s got good memorable tunes like ‘This is Halloween’ that are still toe-tappingly good even in their reduced state, but many of the songs are just a little bit annoying, sad to say, and I played much of this game with the sound off, watching wrestling, now that I think about it. And whilst they can be a little rough and hard to parse from time to time, I really like how The Pumpkin King *looks* for the most part. As I said, there’s a fantastic amount of personality baked into everything, and it really feels like a love letter to the beloved stop-motion film. The game’s opening and ending also features some really interestingly drawn cutscenes that I really wish were a bit more present across the game, but oh well. Occasionally ladders, as they have different looks depending on the zone, blended in with the platforms and left me befuddled as to where I’d go next, but these situations were few and far between.

Look, one thing I have to remind myself that these games aren’t designed primarily with lunatics like me in mind. This is a game made for the kids who adored, much like myself, The Nightmare Before Christmas. The fact that it’s a metroidvania-styled game is amazing, but that’s aside the fact that it *is* a tie-in licensed game; most people aren’t going to have the mixed, occasionally scathing reception I had to elements of the game. As a whole, The Pumpkin King is an engaging enough action-adventure, a fitting prequel and tribute to the film that birthed it. It struggles from time to time, especially in it’s boss fights and rewards for going the extra mile, but as it stands, it’ll do well to occupy for a good eight hours or so. It didn’t, and won’t be, winning any awards, but it’s fun. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Thank you so much for reading my review of The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King on the Game Boy Abyss! Not really sure how this review became a 2000+ word monstrosity; I’m just going to chalk it up to me being waaaay too critical of Metroidvanias. Either way, this was our Halloween review, but next week, we’ll be taking look at something following the same theme… in more ways then one! As always, you can find me over at Twitter @Lemmy7003, or you can email me at cckaiju@gmail.com or mgeorge7003@hotmail.com if you have any questions or requests. Again, thank you so much for reading my review, and I’ll see you next review!