You've got your monster built up, so now it's time to go fight the dreaded Black Evil, which means it's time play some minigames. The minigames constitute the actual "game" part of Amazing Island, pitting your monster against a demon representative of the Black Evil, or just against preset records, in simple challenges of timing, reflexes, and good old-fashioned thumb endurance. Before you're done, you'll put your monster through a foot race, enter him in a free-throw contest, skip him across the water like a stone, launch him off a catapult, and fair amount of other, more archaic challenges. Games like this are generally only as enjoyable as the minigames they contain, and Amazing Island is a little inconsistent. It has a habit of relying on somewhat archaic rules and controls. That these rules aren't always explained very concisely beforehand can often lead to a string of frustrating losses. The game stays remarkably fresh through the first few rounds, though it eventually begins recycling minigames, with some of them benefiting from the revisiting more than others. Amazing Island tries to alleviate this by regularly introducing additional challenges or rules to games you've already played before, and it is somewhat successful in this endeavor. The strangest thing about the minigame portion of Amazing Island is the absence of a multiplayer mode, as most of the minigames seem tailor-made for two-to-four-player action, and the rest would require little tweaking to be made suitable for competition.
Aside from all the monster-making and minigaming fun, Amazing Island offers some simple GC-to-GBA connectivity, allowing you to transfer monsters over to your GBA to do battle with the CPU, or in an unlikely scenario, fight it out with friends who have transferred their own monsters over to their GBAs. With all of the action being represented on the GBA screen by rudimentary collectible-card-game-style cards, it's not much to look at, and as with most GC-to-GBA connectivity features, the novelty wears off rather quickly.
Amazing Island seems like two halves of two different games that were probably better on their own.
Amazing Island is a cute game, and the visuals definitely account for the lion's share of its cuteness. The anime-styled lead character makes the game's Japanese origin apparent, though the locals have a sort of psychedelic totem-pole look, which, at the very least, lends a bit of unique flavor. The polygonal foundation for Amazing Island isn't too impressive, with fairly basic character models and environments that are quite modest in scope. The textures have a clean, sharp look to them, though they too are quite simple and are occasionally afflicted with some mean color banding. These fundamentals contrast sharply with some of the game's unexpectedly good special effects. The water reflects and ripples with surprising realism, and glowing particle effects help spruce up much of the proceedings. The game even sounds cute, with some sprightly synthesized tunes, anime-voice-acting-grade exclamations, and a store of instantaneously annoying animal sounds from the monsters. The sound design is in line with the visuals, though it isn't as strong as the colorful, cute graphics.
Sega is gunning for the Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh! set with Amazing Island, but the game lacks the gameplay depth that makes Pokemon a guilty pleasure for older gamers and the strong branding that makes Yu-Gi-Oh! so ubiquitous with the lunchbox-and-backpack crowd. With a decent number of minigames but no four-player options, there's a very real missed opportunity here for some good multiplayer fun. Amazing Island is decent entertainment for a younger crowd, though they'd probably prefer a game featuring one of the franchises it tries so hard to emulate.
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