Elmo in Grouchland

"Elmo needs to find his blanket..."

Of all the insane plots a movie could possible have, one of the most insane is that of 'Elmo in Grouchland'. Elmo, a furry character from the Sesame Street franchise, has dropped his blanket into a bin, that leads to the mystical land of Grouchland. Grouchland is a horrible place built mainly from old garbage and Elmo must trek across fast food wrapper mountains, and plastic bottle forests in order to get his blanket back. Despite the film being a relative flop at the box office, a game was produced loosely following the events of the film, and it wasn't much better.

There are six short side scrolling platform levels in Elmo in Grouchland, and each one is incredibly simple and above all, short. You generally spend each level hopping over fire hydrants, and avoiding sprays of water emerging at periodic intervals from the ground. It's a major disappointment when you discover that each level takes less that one minute to complete and that each one lacks so much difficulty, someone who's never laid a finger to a video game would find it easy. Perhaps non gamers serve as the target audience for this title, but still, it is a complete failure in terms of how the game plays. Interspersed with the eight platforming levels are two gimmicky style levels, each one different. In one, you are sitting in a mine cart and you have to duck the low ceilings as the mine cart slides onwards at a meager pace. The other is mildly fun, and involves Elmo falling into Grouchland. You move Elmo left and right, helping him to avoid stray tin cans and old rags.

The difficulty level, as I mentioned before, is extremely low. There is no save feature, but this isn't a huge problem seeing as the game is so short that you would barely need it. If, at any time, you should fail a level, the game resumes play from the beginning of that level, allowing you as many continues as you'd like. Child non-gamers would find the lack of a challenge helpful when learning how to play a platform game, and the game succeeds in being simple enough for a three year old to play.

It's not all bad news though. The sound quality is above average for a Gameboy game, and the game doesn't last long enough for the soundtrack to become annoying. The game features tracks from the film, remixed to suit the Gameboy's small single speaker. The visual representation of Grouchland is again, top notch and you really feel immersed in the garbage lover's heaven. Elmo is one of the only bright objects in the game, and his sprite is detailed enough that you can make out all of his limbs, even though he's rather small on the screen.

Basically, Elmo in Grouchland is an accurate representation of what the original film is like. It looks good, sounds good, plays relatively well, but is too repetitive for it's own good, and just scrapes a three out of ten.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/09/07, Updated 09/04/07

Game Release: Elmo in Grouchland (EU, 2001)