The story in Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped feels like it was taken right out of the animated series. The story of the game is that Sabrina conjures a spell that would make her fellow classmates attending her magic show go wild for her. But what ends up happening is that the spell turns all of the audience in attendance into wild animals. It’s now up to Sabrina with her cat Salem to round up all of the audience and zap them back to normal before they destroy the school.
I was a huge fan of the animated series back when it was on the air and I even enjoyed a bit of the live action show too. They both had some great stories and plot points. It was fun and as silly as it sounds, magical (pun totally intended).
Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped is a side-scrolling platformer at its core. You play as both Sabrina and her cat Salem. You go around each level jumping on the animals to stun them. Once they are stunned, you can then zap them with your magic to turn them human again, the students will then become human and levitate up and out of the stage. The stage ends once all of the students have been transformed, the exit opens up, and then you move onto the next level, rinse and repeat. That really is the core of the game, however there is a bit more to it than that.
During the course of a level, you have the ability to use Salem to help get through obstacles so that Sabrina can move forward toward the goal of returning all of her fellow students back to normal. Once you move on from the school, there are three additional worlds you can explore which are Beach Festival, Town Center Mall, and City Zoo. Each of these worlds have their own set of levels and various animal students to rescue.
During the course of visiting these worlds, you can obtain spells that will help you traverse each set of levels throughout the world. The spells you get are Hover Jump, Crush, Bubble, and Teleport. The Hover Jump Spell lets you perform mid-air jumps after your initial jump, Crush lets you do a down smash to break cracked bricks, bubble lets you do a bit of a levitation ability letting you get up to higher elevation using a bubble, and Teleport as its name implies, lets you teleport, but only through certain designated blocks. While these spells are fun and unique to use, they can only be used for the levels of which they are featured. So you can’t obtain a spell and use them across multiple levels.
Now I won’t fault the game for not allowing you to use the spells across multiple levels or worlds as this game is a re-release and a product of it’s time, but it would have been nice to have something similar to a menu system or even an option to use the “Select” button to swap through the different spells. I am not sure why this wasn’t implemented as even a game like Batman on the NES has the ability to do this and the Gameboy Color is a slightly more powerful system.
If I had to guess, I would say this was done to add a bit of challenge to the game overall, which I am totally ok with. I just feel that having an option to cycle through the spells would be a nice feature to have been implemented and maybe even a bit more fun, albeit less of a challenge.
When it comes to graphics and performance, I never really have a whole lot to say in the realm of performance; usually. Well let’s go over the graphics first, then we can address performance. Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped is a very impressive game graphically. Each world you visit is very bright and colorful. All of the in game characters are very well animated with some really cool expressions given to both Sabrina and Salem.
In addition to expressions, both characters have some fun idle animations. Aside from animation, the character models themselves look really good and come very close to the animated TV show counterpart. Now to be fair, Salem looks more like how he does in the show, but I think that comes down to him being an animal and not a human character. The human characters in this game have a very pixelated look to them. Ok, I guess they really all do, but the sharpness of the pixels on the character models are less noticeable with Salem as opposed to Sabrina.
Coming back to the performance of this game. Well normally I would say that the game performs as well as every other Gameboy platformer out there, but this is slightly different. What I mean by this is that the way the screen scrolls and the character movement is smoother than I was expecting. I was expecting there to be a bit of a slowness to it, or maybe even a bit of jitter, but there is none. The smooth scrolling feels like a solid 30 FPS or maybe even higher. While I know from a hardware standpoint that this is completely unrealistic and not likely possible, the performance of this game just goes to show you how well it was programmed.
WayForward are the ones that developed this game originally and if you’re familiar with the Shante games, this game should feel familiar to you as it plays rather similar to that. But even with those games on the Gameboy Color, you can feel the game not being as smooth as one would like, at least that’s the way I felt playing them back in the day.
But with Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped, it’s like it told Shante to hold Shante to hold their drink while they show her how it’s done. Boy does this game ever deliver on the performance aspect. I mean it really is a performance marvel on the Gameboy Color.
Just like with the graphics, Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped does its best to capture the magic of the animated series counterpart and it does so really well when it comes to audio. The music is upbeat and sounds really good overall. It has a cartoon-like vibe that really captures the animated series of which the game is based on very well.
Sound effects are just as good as the music. Each of the sound effects have a cartoon-like sound and quality to them. My only real issue with the audio is with the specific sound effect of the zapping mechanic. I feel like it’s too sharp of a sound if that makes sense. I wish it was slightly softened instead of the sharp sound effect that the developers went with.
Aside from this, really nothing to complain about. The music is fantastic and the sound effects are a great compliment and really help hold the whole thing together.
Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped is one of those games that is right up there with the pinnacle of platformers on the Gameboy platform. I mean it’s not just a cash grab, but rather a showcase to prove that a video game can capture the magic of a TV show and be a great game and not just a gimmick or extension of the media in which it’s based.
I have really enjoyed this game and am glad to see this classic game get a re-release for those that want to recapture the magic of the game or experience it for the first time ever, like myself.
I really hope that this means we will get to see more of WayForward’s games come to the ModRetro Chromatic. For now though, Sabrina The Animated Series Zapped is a great first entry. I would highly recommend picking up this game if you’re a fan of WayForward, or platforming games in general.
Those interested in checking out the game can do so here.
Disclaimer: We were provided with a review unit
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.