Developed by KCE Nagoya and published by Konami in 2000, The Grinch is an action maze game for the Game Boy Color, based on the Dr. Seuss book, and the film (starring Jim Carrey), “How The Grinch Stole Christmas“. It is completely different – arguably even better – than the PlayStation and Dreamcast games that were also released to coincide with the film.

You control The Grinch and must walk around various connected mazes, stealing presents and avoiding being captured by patrolling people. The aim is collect all the presents before the timer runs down. The time limits are fairly tight, so some levels have ‘T’ tokens that you can collect to extend the clock.

If you’re spotted by someone, an alert is sounded and they’ll begin chasing after you. You can try to outrun them and eventually they’ll run out of breath and stop. Where it becomes more challenging are screens where more than one person is patrolling. With two people chasing you it becomes more difficult to avoid being caught, that is: unless you get lucky and the people collide into each other, knocking them both over. Another tactic to avoid capture is to run off-screen, into another screen, or through a door – if there’s an exit available. The chase sequences are comedic and the music changes to indicate the increase in tempo.

The Grinch does have an ‘offensive weapon’ available to him, to knock a person down. He can breathe his stinky foul breath at them, but this takes careful timing to get right. The Grinch can also duck down and crawl on the floor, which allows him to crawl through low gaps, but this makes him slow and therefore susceptible to capture, so his crawl must be used carefully.

A nice surprise, on level two, is that you get to control The Grinch‘s dog, Max, to collect items and avoid patrolling Doberman. Max can jump over chasing dogs to avoid them, as well as crawling under low openings, but he doesn’t have an ‘attack’ as such.

The graphics and animation in The Grinch are cute, colourful and effective and the music and sound effects are also excellent. Most importantly, though, the gameplay is very easy to get into. The Grinch on the Game Boy Color is simple but addictive, and gradually gets more difficult as you progress.

Overall this is a neat Christmas-themed game that is still well worth playing today. I played this after taking the PlayStation and Dreamcast games for a spin and thought that it was better. For a licensed game, The Grinch on the Game Boy Color is surprisingly good.

Merry Christmas from The King of Grabs!

More: The Grinch on Wikipedia