0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Bratz

       

Bratz is a children’s action rhythm game based on the popular Bratz doll line, the game was developed by DC Studios and published by Ubisoft for all of the game releases. The game was launched not that long after the release of the Bratz doll line which was in 2001, with the game releasing in 2002.

The game initially released on Windows in late 2002, with a Game Boy Advance release coming on the 11^th of March 2003 in North America, the game also received a North American release on Playstation the following week on the 17^th of March. The European release of the Playstation version would come a couple of months later on the 2^nd of May 2003.

Notable people who worked on this game, Mark Greenshields who worked as the Executive Producer on the game, a role that he would hold from games like 2002s Bear in the Big BlueHouse, Charmed in 2003, and The Cat in The Hat in 2004. He would also take on the role of Managing director for the Production of 2008s GRID.

More recently though he formed Firebrand Games where he is the CEO, the studio specialises in Racing games, with titles in the Trackmania series, Need for Speed Nitro and Undercover as well as the Nascar Heat Mobile game in 2017 on their resume.

Stéphane Roy has had a productive career since the early days of Bratz, Bear In the Big Blue House and The Cat in the Hat. Roy has mostly been involved in Ubisoft projects, working as a producer on Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas more recently however  he was a Senior Producer on 2014s Thief reboot and  has been an Executive Producer on the Deus Ex IP.

Oliver Sykes who worked as the Assistant Designer for Bratz, moved mostly on to being a Creative Director, working on games such as State of Emergency 2, the 2006 Hanna Montana game, and more recently on various board game adaption’s, such as 2008s Scrabble, and 2010s Risk The Official Game.

Dominique Roussy who worked as Art Director on Bratz, also worked on 2002s Bear in the Big Blue House as well as Charmed in 2003, and The Cat in The Hat in 2004 as the games Art Director. More recently back in 2011 her worked as Executive Producer on the adaption of the Wipeout gameshow Wipeout 2, the same year he was Senior Producer on the video game movie tie in of Rango.

Dominic Filion who worked as a Programmer on the game, moved on to work on the 2003 released Le Tour de France: 1903-2003 - Centenary Edition. He worked as part of the Game Engine Team for 2005s Scooby-Doo Unmasked before moving to Blizzard and working on StarCraft II. Filion worked as a Programmer on Wings of Liberty, he was Lead Programmer on Heart of the Swarm and provided Additional Engineering for Legacy of the Void.

Steve Szczepkowski who worked on the games Music, he also worked on Le Tour de France 1903-2003 Centenary Edition in 2003. He was the Audio Director for State of Emergency 2 and Samurai Warriors 2 and the Xtreme Legends release. In 2011 Szczepkowski moved to the Deus Ex development team working as Audio Director for Human Revolution and Executive Audio Director for Mankind Divided.

The game is based around the Bratz toy range and features Bratz girls Yasmin, Cloe, Sasha, Jade and Meygan as the player controls the girls in a rhythm action game. this being a game aimed at a younger audience the games controls are pretty easy.

The games has two move types the first are your basic moves, these are done using the D-Pad or left analogue stick. On the screen next to the dancing Bratz character of choice are four directional arrows with a yellow centre star shape, from this centre point direction prompts will move towards the corresponding direction, with the player required to press the corresponding direction key when the moving arrow is positioned over the direction marker.

When the player has imputed the direction, the voice over for the game will give the player a rating on how accurate they were, with Sizzlin’!, Totally Hot!, Perfect, Cool and Good as well as a few others appearing in coloured lettering on the screen, The game does offer a tutorial for players that don’t have much experience with rhythm action games. In addition to the main contest mode the game also has a practice mode,

At the bottom of the screen the players points total will be shown, during the level a freestyle mode will be initiated, this is a small section of the level where the player is free to perform any move that have been unlocked, standard direction moves are the same but now Stylin moves are available, these are used by hitting the face buttons so X, Square, Triangle or Circle.

Upon completion of a level the players total points score will be displayed on the right of the screen under the Cumulative Score. On the left of the screen will be a breakdown of the players performance, showing the number of Perfects, each of which is worth 500pts, the number of goods, which is worth 250pts, as well as the number of missed prompts. In addition to these scores these will also be your freestyle score, your level score and the contest score.

As the player completes levels in the game they will unlock additional outfits for the Bratz girls as well as new dance moves that the player can use in freestyle mode, and the next level, as the player progressed additional songs are unlocked as well. Once the player has completed the game an additional bonus level will be unlocked, one for each of the five Bratz girls.

The player has the choice of three difficulty levels when starting a new game, the easiest mode and the one for players that have less experience rhythm games or younger games, this mode is called Casual Style. For the more experienced games you can move on to the Semi Casual Cool difficulty level, while for the more experienced there is the Formal Funk difficulty mode.

Critically with this game being a late release in the Playstation’s lifecycle, there are no critic reviews available. As a result we will be heading over to GameFAQs for their user ratings, where we find Bratz sitting at an average user rating of just 2.40/5 from a total of 15 user ratings. The game is also the 42^nd lowest rated action game on Playstation according to GameFAQs user ratings.

While we do find that the game received a single user rating of a 5/5 the remainder however did not break the 3.5/5 mark. Heading to the other end of the user ratings, we find one user also rated the game at a dismal 0.5/5. We find a total of three users rated the game at a lowly 1.5/5, while the most users four in total, rated the game at a below average 2/5.

A couple of users did rate the game slightly higher and found the game to be as average as you can get with their 2.5/5 rating, another couple found the game to be decent awarding it a 3/5, while two more found the game to be pretty decent rating the game at a 3/5. The final two users rated the game at the aforementioned 3.5/65.

Moving on to the games difficulty level, where we find a total of eleven users rating this category. We find one user who rated the game as being rather simple, with another couple who found the game to be slightly harder, but still overall the game was pretty easy for them.

Next up we find the largest majority of users, with a total of six users rating the game as having just the right difficulty level. The final two users struggled with Bratz, with these two remaining users finding the game was on the tough side. Averaging out the game comes in at as having just the right difficulty level.

Finally we have the games lifespan, here we find only 9 users rating this category with a decent spread of time spent with the game. Sadly the majority of users did not spent much time with the game, with three users spending less than an hour with the game.

Another two users spent around an hour playing Bratz, while three more users managed to scrape 2 hours playing the game. The final user unlike the other users must have some real patience, either that or they really liked the game, with that user spending 12 hours playing Bratz. Averaging out the game comes in at a 2.4 hour lifespan.

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, where if you are looking to trade in your copy of Bratz, you will be looking at a trade in value of just $1 from Gamedude. If on the other hand you are in the market for a copy of the game, you will be looking at an outlay of $5.

Next up is Retrogames.co.uk where sadly the game is not available or even listed. So we will quickly move on to eStarland.com where we do find the game available, with one copy currently on the market. This copy is a used but complete copy of the game, which can be picked up for $3.56. At the time of writing no trade in is offered at eStarland for this game.

Lastly we move on to Amazon.com where we find a good supply of the game on offer, and we find the first complete copy only a couple of listings down, with a good condition copy available for $5.69, this copy also comes with free shipping.

The remainder of listings on the first page while having good or very good condition copies not other specifically state that the copy is complete. As such if you are looking into buying one of them contact the seller first to ascertain the completeness of the copy.

Moving on to the second page of listings, and again second item down we find a complete copy of the game. This copy comes in very good condition and is priced up at $6.75, this copy also comes with free shipping. Another good condition and complete copy is next down in the listing for $6.76.

We find another couple of very good condition copies, these however are shipped by Amazon so the free shipping only applies to prime users, or those spending at least $25. These two copies are priced up at $6.83 and $6.99 respectively.

We find another two very good condition and complete copies in the next two listings, while these two copies don’t come with free shipping, they are priced up at only $7.54 and $7.85. If however you are in the market for a better condition used copy, a handful of like new copies are on the market, with prices starting from $8.57, with prices raising as high as $18.99.

If however you prefer your copies to be new, there is also a handful of new copies at are on the market, with prices starting at $19.76. Prices for a new copy from this point do rise pretty sharply with new copy prices currently peaking at the $53.98 mark.

  

Written by

P J Gibbon