Product: Danny Phantom: The Ultimate Enemy (GBA)
Approximate cost: $20.00
Rarity:
What it is: Gameboy Advance game based on the one-hour movie The Ultimate Enemy
Overall rating:
Reviewed by: Firefury Amahira

Commentary
Most fans of the show consider The Ultimate Enemy to be one of the best episodes in the series, and the idea of a video game based on it sounds appealing. Unfortunately, this game falls far short of expectations.

The game itself is fairly straightforward, set up as a side-scrolling "beat-em-up" in which Danny has to fight a veritable army of ghosts in between taking on the spooks from the show. The player, as Danny, can attack ghosts with a variety of kicks and punches, fly, turn invisible/intangible, use an assortment of ectoplasmic blasts, pick up health items with the Fenton Thermos, and devastate every enemy on screen with the Ghostly Wail. Along the way, Danny can find and use various weaponry including laser-goggles, the Fenton Bazooka, the "Fenton Light Blade" (which looks like a cross between the Anti-Creep Stick and Maddie's saber from Maternal Instinct), the Ghost Gauntlets, and the Specter Deflector.

The play control is fairly solid, and the story does follow the movie relatively well, but the gameplay becomes very repetitive very quickly, nor do the bosses present much of a challenge. In fact, it is entirely possible to play through the entire game without ever once using any of the ghost powers (excluding the two flying stages). Danny levels up throughout the game, but he doesn't reach the maximum level of 10 before the end of the game, meaning the player has to play around in mission mode in order to obtain the super-beam attack or the Ghostly Wail. (Though it is a nice touch in story mode- regardless of your level, after Danny arrives at Future-Vlad's cave, he can use the Ghostly Wail.)

The game does pack in a few extras that add a little to the replay value. After you beat the story mode, there's a second "story" with extra stages and bosses including Ember, Skulker, the Lunch Lady, Technus, and a final showdown with Vlad. Also, there are three special "missions" for each level that you can try to accomplish- restrictions such as no flying, or defeating a certain number of ghosts in ten seconds, and so on. Also, with passwords obtained from either the Burger King toys or from the internet, there are three minigames. While simple, they tend to be more challenging than the game itself: a one-button jumping game where the goal is to jump over Skulker's blasts; a spotlight "identify this ghost" game, and a shooting gallery game where the goal is the blast as many ghosts as possible.

My favorite aspect of the game though is the "Boss Rush" mode, activated with the password "RUSH". Basically it's all the bosses from the game, and your health carries over between battles (though a little is restored after each win.) You can play this as either Danny (and set his level from 1 to 10), or if you're feeling cheap, you can play it as evil Danny (or Dan Phantom, as the game calls him). I say that Dan is cheap because of one simple fact. In order to use ecto-beams or the Ghostly Wail, you need to charge the green energy meter. Danny cannot charge his meter in ghost form, the player has to make him transform to human form (via pressing the Select button, a fact the manual forgets to mention) or vaccuum up green goo with the Thermos. This is part of why the player generally will not get much mileage out of the ghost powers in the main game. On the other hand, Dan's energy meter recharges automatically, whenever he's not attacking. In Boss Rush mode, this means all the player really has to do is fly up above the ghost, let the meter charge to full, and blast away with the Ghostly Wail.

Overall, I would suggest the game only for diehard fanatics. It's fun, but not particularly challenging. I beat the game and completed all the "missions" in maybe two hours.

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