The Ripping Friends: The World's Manliest Men! - I hate men, actually

19/08/25

Continuing this accidental trend of playing Game Boy Advance games I, and likely for most people as well, have never heard of, I’ve stumbled upon the perfect storm of a game. A game Today, my good friends, we’re taking a look at the awfully titled The Ripping Friends: The World’s Most Manliest Men! And by god, there are few games that I’ve had a first glance at and just thought… Yeah, I don’t think this is gonna be a winner. It’s the special kind of game that, less than ten minutes in, my fiance asked me what I thought of it so far (her attention was probably drawn by its abhorrent sound design). I simply turned to her and said, “The Ripping Friends is like if a beat’em up just decided to be terrible in pretty much every way”. Maybe that statement was harsh and perhaps a little hasty, but the fact of the matter is that beyond occasionally serviceable combat, The Ripping Friends is a mess from start to finish, with elements ranging from merely the boring, such as its more open level structure, to the most abhorrent, such as its atrocious soundtrack. Strap in, folks - your mileage may vary, but I found myself wanting to rip my copy of The Ripping Friends clean in half.

As a kid, I’d spend a lot of time home alone on a Friday or Saturday night, and that would inevitably lead to me watching a lot of cartoons, usually on Nickelodeon. Now, in this era, late night Nick would generally show the 90s classics all night. And as someone who’d watched those classics during the day when I was very, very small, I ate it up. But as the time would tick towards and past midnight, they’d inevitably switch over to some real, ‘vintage’ stuff. Normally I could deal with it, but when Ren and Stimpy came on, I was done. Despite its acclaim as a classic, I’ve never liked Ren and Stimpy. It always just creeped me out, grossed me out, or bored me, usually all in tandem. All this to say, when my time with The Ripping Friends came to an end, I had to dive into what the hell this game actually was, and the fact that it came from an animated series created by Ren and Stimpy’s creator made it all fall together.

The Ripping Friends is a stage-based beat ‘em up where you take control of one of the members of the Ripping Friends in their fight against the evil forces of… Stinkybutt The Foul (and friends? I think?), a menace who weaponizes his own… flatulence. Really not beating the gross-out allegations. Anyway, the majority of stages feature surprisingly sprawling, multi-area stages with a surprising amount of verticality, but very little is actually done interestingly with these locales; pretty much the only thing you do through any of them is just take down the masses of enemies hell-bent on stopping the crusade of The Ripping Friends. Occasionally you’ll find a key here and there to go back to where you started, unlock a door to head to another sterile zone with more of the same enemies to kill. It might’ve done something to making the game feel bigger and more dynamic going to and fro, clearing cities and locales from Stinybutt’s forces, but all I could ever think was that I probably would be marginally (and I want to underline the word marginally) having a better time if it was just a more traditional side-scrolling beat’em up.

These interesting elements don’t apply to the game’s fourth stage, Meteor, and the final stage, Core. The former is a frustrating, yet doable experience, filled with instant death pits that’ll drain one of your lives in an instant if you screw up your platforming. Platforming in a beat’em up is already working on shaky grounds, at least in my relative experience, but jumping about in Ripping Friends is nothing short of abhorrent. Tiny jumps to gap-spanning boulders become moments of life and death, but at the very least, Meteor gives you a decent idea of where you’re meant to be going. This criticisms go double for Core, one of the genuinely worst levels I’ve played in a game in some time; not only does touching the lava more than twice evaporate your health bar, you’re constantly wandering a near-labyrinth of rock and magma, with the game giving you almost no indication on where to go next. Hell, they don’t even give you the full map to wander; you’ll have to kill certain enemies to expand the ‘room’ your in, making it even harder to judge the path of progression, and you’ve got to make some number of leaps of faith that’ll more than likely result in your death to boot. Ripping Friends level design starts mediocre and goes nowhere but down, culminating in some of the most boneheaded decisions I’d see in a genuine platformer; the fact this is an issue in a BEAT’EM UP is insanity. These genres just do not work well together.

But back to the actual meat and potatoes of the game - the moment to moment combat. Combat is the sole element of the game that I think is serviceable at best; it has no real sauce to it, no real complexity (especially amongst the entire playable roster feeling essentially the same), with most enemies being dispatched by just simply spamming the attack button over and over again. There are a handful of other movies - hitting L and and Attack will do a heavier blow, but it’s slower and opens you up to counterattacks, and with how quickly some enemies can drain your health, you’re better off just slapping them a few times, retreating, then repeating. The only real exception to this I found was if you’re fighting a squad of enemies that aren’t perpetually honing in on you, you can charge up The Ripping Friends, uh, Ripping meter - leaving you vulnerable for a few seconds - and then delivering a special move that is the sole notable, differentiating ability of the Ripping Friends. My character of choice, Crag, had a pretty decent AOE super ability that would kill squishy enemies outright, whilst another Ripping Friend could heal small amounts of health at a time. Overall, the moveset of the Ripping Friends works well enough in a vacuum, and whilst I hesitate to call it good, I’d maybe be able to do just that if the rest of the game served to support it. Shame.

If there’s any real variety to be had in this game, it’s in the enemies you battle, and even then, variety may not in fact be the spice of life. For one, the designs of the enemies are abhorrent, almost looking like grown up versions of the Eraserhead Baby that have all declared their love for wearing trench coats. The majority of enemies really don’t, or shouldn’t, pose much threat if you’ve ever played a beat’em up, but the awkward hitboxes lead to a lot of whiffed hits from yourself, and a lot of cheap blows from them. But you’ll spend enough time in this game to be able to dodge and weave through these and get a good vibe of where to stand and whatnot. But there are also these creatures that look almost like… living spines or something? Either way fighting these creatures is an exercise in frustration, as even grazing their hitboxes will cause them to grapple your chosen Ripping Friend, draining your health so rapidly, a few grapples spell a death sentence. Honestly, by the end of the game I’d learnt that the best way to avoid being shoddy was just drop kick everything, since you can frequently knock them down long enough to escape their grasp.

During the first half of The Ripping Friends, I found the boss fights also lay on the marginally fine side of the game’s level of quality. At first. Even early on, they aren’t particularly good, to be sure, but they neither just sit there and take your basic attacks, nor do they hit you with cheesy moves that’ll drain your health in moments. They actually make you engage with the game in a somewhat non-frustrating way, such as having to keep up your movement as a ball-like (I think he’s a brain, but when it comes to fleshy balls…) creature bounces around with moments of vulnerability. They weren’t in-depth, but they were a bit more interesting than the rank and final. But the issue lies that when the developers decide to try and make something a little more unique, their reach rapidly exceeds their grasp, showcased mainly in the final two bosses. Already, the final boss is really two bosses glued together, which if you’re low on life is doubly annoying. Anyway, the first of these fights is one of the most baffling boss fights I’ve ever seen, as you have to perform a bomb mechanic whilst the enemy is flashing transparent. This is in direct opposition to the fact that an enemy flashing transparent implies they’re invincible, so I spent nearly ten minutes trying to work out how the hell I damage the boss. Baffling design. The second half isn’t quite as bad, being a simple affair where you bait in the fleeing boss by dispatching mooks. The sword of Damocles drops, however, when half the arena would randomly become a lava death-field, not only doing massive damage to you if you’re caught out, but also killing all the enemies you’re trying to deal with to bait in the boss! It’s a maddening experience dragged out by just how damn long the fight is, and coming off at the end of a nearly half-an-hour level, was simply the death knell for an already poor, poor game.

Whilst it’s not far and away the ugliest game I’ve played on the Game Boy Advance, it’s certainly amongst them when it comes to having the ugliest art style. The spritework is spotty and undetailed at best for all but the largest of enemies, and beyond that the base art direction of the Ripping Friends isn’t that great to start with. Their sole video game adaptation really isn’t making things much better. To make matters worse, since the game has you moving around in a lot more directions then the average beat’em up, the camera swings too and fro as you move in a way that’s almost nauseating - I genuinely almost dropped the game instantly in its opening level because the swinging camera made me feel sick. But whilst it’s not the ugliest game I’ve ever played, it’s on the very small shortlist for the worst soundtracks. Not only are the tracks bad as a baseline, but they feel like each and every one of them have loops of less than half a minute, and with some of these levels taking ten, fifteen minutes, you’ll quickly be cursing the existence of ears within mere moments. If there are any of you following along with this project, I’d say cut your losses, mute the game, and listen to anything - anything - else to get you through this shlockfest.

The Ripping Friends isn’t the worst thing I’ve played on the Game Boy Advance, but the disdain I hold it for, and the lack of really any ‘entertainingly’ poor elements easily makes it one of my most disliked. Outside of occasionally serviceable combat, there is almost nothing to like; even its most basic elements are fairly mediocre at best, and any attempts at carving out something even a little unique, such as its more open level design or complex bosses, are little but outright failures. I’m sorry, John Kricfaulsi - I genuinely think I’m just a born hater for everything you’ve ever attached your name to. Though considering the shit you’ve been up to, I’m sure some random writer is the least of your worries. All that to say - don’t play this game. Just love yourself. Please.

Thanks for reading my review of The Ripping Friends for the Game Boy Advance. I always tell myself I need to play a good game every now and then, so I’ve no clue why I picked this one up - seriously, you can tell this game is bad from the cover. In any case, as always you can email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com or cckaiju@gmail.com if you have any questions or requests. I’ll be back in two weeks with something… well, probably not amazing, but I’ve been wrong before! Many, many times. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.