Overview: One Piece, one of the greatest animes ever (when it hasn't been butchered by 4-Kids, that is) has also been released in a video game format on most of the major systems. This one for GBA is very different from the ones that came out for PS2 and GameCube.
Overview: You play as Monkey D. Luffy in a standard platformer-style game in his quest to become the Pirate King. You'll encounter all of the key locations and villains up through the Loguetown portion of the anime.
Graphics: Very colorful and very well-detailed. Everything looks great!
Sound: Here's where I think the game did better than its higher-bittage counterparts. The music is nicely done and sounds terrific. In addition, there's no horrible dub voice-overs to worry about.
Gameplay: There are a total of 6 main areas, each with three levels, making a total of 18. As said before, you play as Luffy, who has an assortment of moves, bestowed by his Gomu-Gomu fruit. He earns points for beating enemies, which give him new abilities when he earns enough, much like an EXP system. Plus, finding the other members of his crew; Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji, allow him to call them to perform a support move (It's kind of a drag though, that you don't actually get to play them).
Challenge: A pretty tough game, I think. There are lots of tough areas, but also plenty of opportunites to earn extra lives (you can return to boss levels and play a mini-game to earn 1-ups). Still, challenge isn't too insane.
Final Rating: 9.5/10 My only grip is that 4-Shit got their hooks into the making of this game a little, resulting in the horrid sight of Sanji's lollypops, "Zolo", and "Chaser" (but thankfully, guns still look like guns, and Krieg's spikes weren't turned into suction cups). But overall, it wasn't that bad. At least the game script stayed faithful to the original anime. This is a game that any One Piece fan with a GBA should get.
