0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar

Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar known as Astérix & Obélix contre César, Asterix & Obelix vs. Caesar in some regions is a movie tie to the 1999 film with the same name directed by Claude Zidi and starring Gérard Depardieu. 

The video game tie-in released in the same year as the film exclusively in Europe on the 1^st of June 2000 for the Playstation and Windows, developed by Tek 5 and published by Cryo Interactive, the game was a 3^rd person action game like the majority of Asterix games

The game while claiming to use scenes from the movie is a stretch, the main portion of the game is the single player mode in which you can choose to play as either Asterix or Obelix, these are also the two characters for the two player mode.

Each of the various levels which are in a closed location will either have the player fetching, punching or eating objects thrown at the player character, this is done by tapping left or right which moves the player character in the corresponding direction to a pre determined location.

The objects thrown to these locations in a random order and random speed, failure to reach a location in time will result in the player character being knocked out briefly, the character can also jump but this ability is not used much during the course of the game.

Sometimes obstacles will appear such as Romans or Crocodiles (because crocodiles a rife in France) these can be disposed of by downing a magic potion or throwing wild boars at them (Someone needs to call in some halfwits, sorry I mean PETA).

Julius Caesar’s master plan has almost come true and is just a sword’s reach away but he needs extra sesterces (roman coin) to pay for the vast legions of the Roman army. To fund his vast legions he turns to what all politicians turn to tax.

Caesar begins taxing the recently conquered Gaul’s well not all the Gaul’s however a small village of them still hold out against the might of the Roman Empire, this band of invincible Gaul’s are all that stand between Caesar and his dream of a Roman Europe.

Only a trio of critic review are available for this title and they all panned this game with the games highest review score received a lowly 30/100, which we will be starting with this review came from French publication Jeuxvideo.com.

Who were highly critical of the game having an effect on young players ever going near the Asterix name in the future, clearly mentally scarred by the experience the reviewER recommended Hugo 2 as an alternative clearly the reviewers mind has been broken by his experience with Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar.

After that amazing high score the game received things really took a nose dive from here on in, next we head to NowGamer who gave the game a truly dismal 10/100, who has seen their fair share of woeful titles on the Playstation, but according to the review they have not seen something that trawled the depths of incompetence quite so voraciously

Finally we have German publication Video Games who managed to beat NowGamer by one point scoring this game a 9/100 and were far from happy with the quality of this game, the review contemplated what the late Rene Goscinny would do from beyond the grave.

He came to the conclusion Goscinny would  Get out of his crypt and beat the programmers with their own hands? It's bad to bring such a lousy game to the store shelves, but even worse, probably because of this scam license, people are going to buy it.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who unsurprisingly don’t stock this European only release same goes for eStarland.com, Amazon.com and Retrogames.co.uk. Amazon.com do have a single copy of the PC version available, compatible with Windows 95 and 98 this copy is priced up at $9.98 and comes with free shipping.

With Amazon.com not having any copies available we head over to the co.uk version with this game being a Europe only release but not a single copy is available here either. So as a last resort we head to Ebay.com where we find a single copy of the game available.

This copy is a used copy in acceptable condition, the disc has clear signs of wear according to the seller but is still fully functional, the game comes only with a case and back cover, no front cover or manual and is priced up at £3.99 + a £1.65 shipping fee this converts to $5.34 and $2.21 in the US.

Written by

P J Gibbon