- Astérix / Taz (Atari 2600)
- Obelix
- Asterix and the Magic Potion
- Asterix and Obelix: The Odyssey
- Asterix and the Magic Cauldron
- Asterix at Rahàzade
- Asterix: Operation Getafix
- Astérix (Arcade)
- Astérix (SMS)
- Astérix (NES/GB/SNES)
- Astérix and the Great Rescue
- Astérix and The Secret Mission
- Astérix and the Power of Gods
- Asterix: Caesar’s Challenge
- Astérix & Obélix: Die Suche nach dem Schwarzen Gold
- Astérix & Obélix
- Astérix & Obélix XXL
- Astérix & Obélix XXL 2
Asterix: Caesar’s Challenge was originally developed for the ill-fated Phillips CD-i system. Billed as an interactive education game platform and featuring several titles based on TV shows and movies, Asterix would seem to be a good fit, for not only some family friendly fun, but also to teach kids about European history and geography. With Panoramix as your guide, get ready to walk across Europe and collect some ancient relics… and a sausage.
Asterix: Caesar’s Challenge is best described as an interactive board game. At the beginning of the game you’re treated to a well animated intro introducing the characters and story. The story is a blend of elements from Les Douze Travaux d’Asterix and Le Tour de Gaule d’Asterix where Asterix and his friends must travel through Gaul and the surrounding territories and collect relics, treasures and souvenirs. At the start of the game you are given a choice of playing as Goudurix, Obélix, Bonemine, Falbala, Agecanonix or Asterix himself. Since the game takes turns, it allows for six players. The “board” is a layout of interactive windows. Depending on what window you land on, you will have to accomplish certain tasks, or your play piece will either be jailed, hit or moved forward by various events.
The goal is to collect a set number of artifacts that the player chooses before the round begins, which starts at a default number of seven artifacts. The artifacts range from Roman pins, small statues, the Great Sphinx of Giza replica (of which Obélix tore the nose off, according to Asterix and Cleopatra ) and an Italian sausage. The only way to acquire these relics and artifacts is to answer a trivia question, which in most cases relates to Greek mythology and Roman history. These trivia questions are triggered by landing on a landmark window, and you can only get one item per window, so if you land on the same window later and answer correctly, you won’t get any prize.
Most of the well known characters of the Asterix universe pop up here in some way or another. Most of the interactive windows trigger some form of mini game that must be finished in order to gain credits, which can be used to break out of jail, and so forth. These mini games are quite a mixed bag, with some being surprisingly fun and other being horribly tiresome. One mini game puts in the role of Cétautomatix avoiding the flying fish thrown by Ordralfabetix, another puts in the running shoes of a frightened Gaul avoiding falling hazards from the sky and you also get to be Kiçàh jumping from carpet to carpet, a game I have never once been able to master. There are also windows where Zéozéosix will help you by letting you use his spy gadgets and go to any square you may desire. You can also get unlucky and land on a square with the evil Roman agent Tullius Détritus which will either take you straight to jail or a few squares back.
An interesting event that’s triggered at random is the appearance of Panoramix on screen. At times he will come in and tell the player(s) to take a break with him and join along in a game of his own. These games are truly interactive as they require you to do things in real life rather than in game. Sometimes he will tell you to race to touch the screen first while other times he will ask one of the player to grab the game box. When the music starts, you’re supposed to pass the game box around to each player around you and whoever holds it when the music stops will go straight to jail, which Panoramix cheerfully informs you. Of course the game has no way of knowing who actually wins these intermission games and requires the player to select the outcome through an on screen choice. I’m pretty sure this fact has led to some dishonest choices which has broken up siblings and friendships because it’s so tempting to just pick someone else rather than yourself when you are the loser. Just with a click of a button you’re the winner, after all.
The game looks quite good with some fluid animation and rather high production values for a CD-i game. However it gets stale really fast, as there aren’t many different windows to land on and repetition strikes within the first 5 minutes of playing. The voice acting in the English version saved for Panoramix is horrendous and barely fits some of the characters, while the French version sounds a lot better with the casts of the cartoons returning to provide the voices. The number of quotes are very limited along with the windows and you’ll know all the lines by heart after the first time playing. And I swear, if I hear that “Fresh air is bad for your lungs” one more time, I’ll start smoking four packs a day becase this game couldn’t tell me that enough, it seems. Die hard Asterix will have fun seeing all the cameos, but the fun won’t last more than a few minutes. For everyone else it’s just a boring board game which repeats itself instantly. It was later ported to IBM PC and Macintosh computers with no changes other than faster loading times.