Reviews from

in the past


This game is essentially Shrek the fighting game, and while it may not be the highest quality release, i honestly really love it. the music and graphics really feel signature to the game boy colour and makes for a really nostalgic experience, but with Shrek, and once you figure out the controls for the game, it honestly doesn't play too bad.

I never knew how to do any of the moves as a child

I played this for 15 minutes and beat it on normal mode.

Shrek: Fairy Tale Freakdown is an attempt at a fighting game for the GBC. You can select a character from a roster of the more notable characters in the first film. There are three modes of difficulty: easy, medium and hard.

Unfortunately, Shrek: Fairy Tale Freakdown fails in every aspect of its design. I am going to chalk this up to a similar issue with IP licensed titles and assume the dev team had to rush this one out asap to coincide with the release window of one of the film's.

At the outset, the game asks you to select your preferred language and there is both "English" and "American" amongst other languages. So we are off to an interesting start.

The readability of the artwork is a complete disaster. A Lot of the time, it's difficult to understand what is and isn't a platform, where a platform ends and a death pit starts. Furthermore, what is in the background or foreground blends together because the artist(s) weren't able to define the art elements related to each design element and separate them out. This lack of readability results in infuriating falls into death pits while fighting, for example. Black outlines are your friend when designing pixel art elements in games. As is the use of dropping the saturation of colors to make the background recede, separating it from mid and foreground elements. Both of these additions would have made my experience at least a little more tolerable.

The characters are slow and lumbering to control if you want to move them around without jumping. The AI is baffling. At one point I was fighting Shrek and he just decided to jump right into a death pit after farting on me, killing himself instantly.

Some of the fighting moves are interesting enough, as I said Shrek can fart on his opponents, for example. But there really isn't any strategy to found here. The best course of action is spamming a simple punch or kick attack until you win. That's how I beat the game actually. I managed to pin Lord Farquad (the final Boss) into a corner by stun-locking him with repeated kicks.

There are some characters you can unlock by beating them in tournament mode. The Ginger Bread Man runs around on candy cane sticks and his head-butt animation is great in a good-bad way.

I actually kind of love the title screen because it's a crusty looking Shrek about to thunderclap some guys head to smithereens. And the Champion Plaque is absolute gold if you manage to make it to the single player modes end screen as the titular Shrek. So that's legit worth 10 mins of your time.

Trying to make a good fighting game on the Game Boy or Game Boy Color is no easy task. I think it's best left to the consoles where you can hold a controller rather than the handheld itself. I would love to be proven wrong...


It's not terrible but man was it a pain to play. This was just not meant to be a gbc game lol. Has way too many issues and the ai is dumb. The music is kinda nice and the selection of characters are nice at least. It tried to be something it just couldn't be and wouldve been better on console instead. Still a bad game

Select Language: English, American

I want the shrek achievement :(

I can't beat Gingy, it's literally imposible beat Gingy.

Barely functional

I remember this game even as a kid being extremely difficult and cheesy as hell. I spent like 30 minutes playing around and beating the game like twice which isn't long at all which is to say the game isn't fun at all.

The concept of the characters of Shrek duking it out in a fighting game is a cool idea. I can't really think of any positives here.

The whole game is clunky as hell to play. The AI is really bad too and the music is below average. You can pretty much cheese the hell out of this game with just spamming Shrek's kick move like I did. Not even much point replaying it either unless you want to play the game again with some new characters you unlocked but that would involve playing the game again.

If you really want to play Shrek on the go, I'm sure there are better games out there to fill that niche. A very clunky Shrek fighting game.

Licensed Shrek games will be the downfall of my braincells.

Gameplay - ★
Roster - ★
Graphics - ★
Sound - ★★

So, I'm not even really sure why 2024 has started me off here, but it has.

This game is. Bad. Like, very bad. Roster is small, the graphics leave a lot to be desired, the game has remarkably less frames of animation than the original street fighter on the DOS that came out 20 years earlier than this, Donkey has meth teeth. Overall, just miserable.

No story, but there is a practice mode, which is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard considering there are only two buttons, so not a particularly hard game to master. There are hadouken inputs for each character though. Actually you could argue these are the only inputs worth using, as even the AI thinks so, spamming them a lot faster than you can, so good luck with that.

So most games I touch on the mechanics, so here's the rundown. Two buttons. Punch and more punch. Motion inputs, and a special bar that just, doesn't work - I pressed every button combo I could think of but just couldn't find the combination that worked. Also weirdly there's death pits - Holes in the map that act as insta death. Yeah, these are traps just for the player, because the AI sure as shit isn't falling in them.

This game has no redeeming qualities. I could have played absolutely anything else. Tekken 8 is out for fuck sake. What on earth am I doing with my time. But instead I got to stare at all 3 frames of animation each barely recognisable character had. Do not bother, this game is miserable.

what possessed them to create this

Short, barebones with very few, if any, redeeming qualities as a GBC fighting game, but as the first video game I ever played, it holds a special place in my heart

Nowhere near as bad as most of the reviews here say, but still not good, y'know? There's a grotesque charm to the grotty little sprites where each character gets their own filthy-nasty Hadouken knockoff. There was actually enough nuance to the controls here that my wins felt earned, I couldn't get through by just spamming attacks. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they're right in the middle of a Venn diagram between "Shrek Superfan" and "GBC Enthusiast", but I didn't mind it!

I think I beat this game?

I got through the single-player, so I think that counts.

I don't have a rating, though. All I can say is that it's ass.

The greatest competitive game ever made.

Highly recommended for Bdsm users

Típico juego de lucha a medio cocer.