🦙 Written: June 13th-21st, 2026 🦙
(As played on Game Boy Player)
Year: 2000 | Developed by: Sandbox StudiosPublished by: Ubi Soft | Distributed by: Disney Interactive
Hello, gamers and readers alike, welcome to my blog and thank you for taking the time to tune in today, I really appreciate it!
The holiday season of 2000 saw the latest animated feature by Disney, which was produced by the late Randy Fullmer (who was an animator and effects supervisor from the early '70s to 2006 when he decided to switch careers to guitar crafting for his firm Wyn Guitars until he sadly passed away at the age of 73 in 2023) and directed by Mark Dindal (who was an animator and effects supervisor during his time with Disney in the '80s to early '90s, and in 1997 had just worked on the critically praised Warner Bros. animated box office flop Cats Don't Dance which was his directorial debut) who also wrote the story with Chris Williams which David Reynolds adapted into a screenplay. Initially to have been called Kingdom of the Sun it was originally to have been helmed by the late Roger Allers as his follow-up feature to Disney's The Lion King from 1994 (the highest grossing animated film at the time) which strived for an ambitious scope and story but was changed into a comedy following poor test screenings and because production wasn't far along to meet the originally intended summer of 2000 release. Once Allers left the project following creative differences, this gave Fullmer and Dindal basically a year to retool and change the movie to meet the 2000 release, which would be given the final title Disney's The Emperor's New Groove. With a reported $100 million budget, six years after production had started this movie would finally be released in that December to positive reviews but sadly underperformed in theatres having only made back $169.5 million. Fortunately like a lot of movies that didn't do that well financially on the big screen it made a bigger profit once it hit home video and DVD.
Sandbox Studios was an Ontario based Canadian video game company that was founded by Steve Bergenholtz (who helped produce Utopia Technologies' Montezuma's Return) in 1999 whose earlier output comprised of Lawyer Hunt, Wham-o Frisbee Golf, the PlayStation One adaptation of Disney's Dinosaur, and Hoyle Card Games on the Game Boy Color. Come 2001 they would be acquired by Digital Illusions CE AB under the new name Digital Illusions Canada until 2006 when it got closed down after Electronic Arts acquired them. Executive produced by Bergenholtz, directed by Gary Corriveau (who worked on the art direction and level design of Montzeuma's Return) and Armando Marini (who was a lead designer for Silicon Knights' Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain/Kain the Vampire), programmed by Claudette Critchley, Mike Kasprzak, Damir Slogar, Andrew Berdan, and Scott Pinkerton, this game
would be published by Ubi Soft of Rayman fame. Produced by Ubi Soft CEO Yves Guillemot, Vincent Minoué (who worked as project manager for Vivid Image's Street Racer and S.C.A.R.S.), and Daniel M. Ayoub, project managed by Yannis Mallat, game designed by Lionel Rico (who tested Ludimedia's Rayman and contributed his design skills to S.C.A.R.S., Argonaut Software's Buck Bumble, and Planet Interactive's Spirou: The Robot Invasion, et al), business development managed by Jean Laflamme, Dennis Roy served as public manager U.S.A., Laura Gelis and Emilie Pujol worked as group and product manager Europe respectively, and Sandra Yee helped with public relations (she also assisted with public relations for The Illusions Gaming Company's Blazing Dragons, Crystal Dynamics' 3D Baseball: The Majors, S.C.A.R.S., Buck Bumble, Ubi Soft's Rayman 2: The Great Escape, and Crawfish Interactive's Game Boy Color port of Virgin Games' Sega 16-bit adaptation of Disney's Aladdin, et al). This handheld take on the latest Disney animated feature would
Image from GameFAQs
come out in North America on December 14th, 2000, close to the time of the movie's wide theatrical distribution, with Europe following suit on March 16th, 2001.
Left: Beginning the game in the village | Right: *sweepity sweep sweep* 🧹
In the licensed sidescrolling action platformer Disney's The Emperor's New Groove you take control of Kuzco (voiced by David Spade), teenaged Incan emperor of all of Peru-turned-llama, whom you can move left and right, duck down, jump up in the air with the A button with your gained altitude dependent on how hard you pressed it, do a simple headbutt attack by pressing the B button, charge across by holding the down arrow and B simultaneously which will allow you to not only move under tight gaps but will augment your traction so much that it will make you clear large gaps by pressing the A button afterward (though you can let go of the B button to stop moving fast), and due to his status as a llama Kuzco has developed to spit upward in the air by holding up and B until the gauge is full. During the
Left: Pottery smashing is necessary to unveil a replenish health heart of a life one | Right: Villagers can also hurt you if you get in their way, which is why it's possible to headbutt them...
earlier set of levels you can gather scrolls which impart a different Kuzco move unto you (which you could always consult with after selecting "scrolls" in the pause screen, not that you really need to as you'll be making good use of these functions throughout the game), and hidden inside vases which you can smash open with a headbutt are a heart to gather: a red heart to replenish one bit of health (out of a capacity of four) and golden one to add another life to your count. From time to time you will come across spittoons for Kuzco's spit to land on which will cause a doorway to be opened for a limited amount of time which varies depending on the distance between the two, for if you make it on time to the opened doorway it will act as a checkpoint in the event that you lose a life (from either falling offscreen or by
Left: Echoes of Virgin Games' Disney's Aladdin with the unseen NPC just casually dropping vases from the window | Right: "Jumpy jumpy jumpy jump!"
losing your last bit of health) but if you are too late to reach it then the doorway will close thereby leaving you to go back to the spittoon and activate it again until you succeed on your way. Kuzco's spit will also momentarily stop an enemy in its tracks and render it inactive for a short while, enemies can also be headbutted out of the way by pressing B from the front or from behind (the latter of which is the only way to take out a couple set of enemies). Each area is divided into three levels, with the goal of each one of them to reach Pacha (voiced by John Goodman) at the end. By clearing the third of the present area's three levels the game will automatically save your progress in one of the three files you're playing from, and should you lose your last life you'll receive a game over and be taken back to the title screen.
Left: You can either spit upward to the spider to incapacitate it briefly or you can wait for it to reel itself upward through its web to pass 🕷️ | Right: Headbutting action
The visuals of the Game Boy Color adaptation of Disney's The Emperor's New Groove were handled by Jacques Bruyns (who was the lead character artist for Sandbox Studios and Big Grub's Disney's Dinosaur), Charles Amsellem (who did the sprite animation for Western Technologies' Spider-Man and worked as an artist for Adrenalin Entertainment's Doom Troopers: Mutant Chronicles, Electric Moo's Into the Void, and Realtime Associates' Battle Stations), Mark Choy, Jean Apollinaro, and Larry Tremblay. The visuals are colorfully solid across the board, the huts with a straw roof look well-made in Pacha's village with the green grass below and the mountainous backdrop looming in the sky, the jungle is a dark shade of blue designed in an ominous and intimidating manner given the danger abound, in one of the
Left: In the deep jungle at night you must occasionally contend with monkeys (but no bugs) 🐒 | Right: Damaged by the slithering snake 🐍
cliff levels the sky intermittently flashes red above the mountains in the backdrop as the screen briefly shakes to signal you the impending boulder falling straight down, there's a rustic quality to the city levels, the laboratory levels have got a detailed patterns adorning the bright blue walls with potions around where Pacha is waiting for you, and the palace levels' Incan architecture are ornate in gold. Kuzco's llama form is designed very well in-game with reasonably fluid animation from walking to jumping to ducking to headbutting, his idle pose as he turns his head to look behind him is decent, I like the way his wool flutters in the wind as he's falling down, I appreciate the follow-through animation of his tail as he walks across, his red palette is so vibrant that it pops off the screen, and overall I feel the art team captured
Left: That is a pretty starry night sky you can see clearly | Right: Get to Pacha to move on to the next level, or in this case the next area
how he looked in the movie (even if he is limited in terms of expression). Even Pacha doesn't look bad on the Game Boy Color with his vibrant green poncho with his big and tall stature, even though you really only see him standing in place alternating from looking across to looking behind him at the end of each area's first and second levels or happily gesturing you to follow him at the end of every third level (or, during the jaguar level, swinging back and forth on a vine), I feel that Sandbox Studios also captured his notable quality and features well despite sporting a massive tan like the musclebound blue and gold wearing Kronk Pepikrankenitz (voiced by Patrick Warburton in one of his all-time greatest character roles) is known for. Throughout the course of the game Kuzco must contend with a myriad of
Left: Watch out for the occasional bats while making your way through the cliffs 🦇 | Right: Cliff jumping
enemies comprised of broom sweepers sticking out from behind the window, hands from behind the window that occasionally drop pottery toward the ground (a la the Virgin Games' Disney's Aladdin), a random villager manually pulling a cart full of straw, spiders, monkeys, slithering rattlesnakes, black bats, scorpions, donkeys, a lone jaguar, Andean condors who gracefully flap their wings, and palace guards (be it spear wielders or axe throwers), et al. During the final two levels you must twice reach the top where Yzma (voiced legendarily by the late Eartha Kitt, RIP), with her recognizable hairstyle with pinkish shade of purple palette (though like Pacha in the end of most levels she just stands there in place), awaits to throw her potion at Kuzco while making sure to occasionally avoid taking damage from her henchman Kronk flying on a balloon along the way. Considering the Game Boy Color's
they could muster, including for the game over screen and pause screen featuring Kronk in it.
Left: Scorpion ahead 🦂 | Right: If the briefly flashing mountainous sky doesn't clue you in, then the falling rocks are enough to signal the upcoming arrival of a boulder hurtling straight down
The movie's music was composed by John Debney in his first collaboration with director Mark Dindal for which it got nominated an Annie Award for Music in a Feature Production, they would collaborate again for Dindal's subsequent directorial features Disney's Chicken Little in 2005 and The Garfield Movie in 2024, but alas none of Debney's cues and sounds are used or referenced in the Game Boy Color platformer as it is all new material. Providing the music for the handheld video game adaptation was Tomislav Slogar in his video game music making debut, after this game he would contribute his composing skills to the firm Big Blue Bubble for games like Atomic Betty, Red Faction II, Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune, and My Singing Monsters. Only comprising of literally a handful of songs, they're fairly serviceable within the context of the game and while they're not bad to listen to in short
Left: Ducking above an animal | Right: Falling down from the edge to meet up with Pacha
bursts they don't leave that strong of an impression in the long run (in the options screen you have the option to keep the music enabled or to disable it). The title theme is okay, the first level theme sounds relentlessly intimidating, the second level theme has got a comparatively lighter melody that makes for easy listening, the third level theme sounds engagingly bouncy with an endearingly adventurous melody and is arguably among the better themes, and once you reach the jaguar level it's accompanied by an ominous theme. The sound quality is fine given the Game Boy Color's sound samples, as there's a few decently thought up sound effects like the spittoon which once the spit lands on it will produce a spinning sound where once the timer is almost down to zero it will make a ticking like sound which signals for you to hurry up, and when Kuzco gets hit by an enemy there is a brief static sound, to name a couple.
Left: Jaguar attack | Right: Can we just appreciate how much upper body strength Pacha is exercising to perpetually swing on the rope back and forth and carrying Kuzco at once? Respect!
I got to watch Disney's The Emperor's New Groove in theatres as a kid back when I still lived in Italy in 2001 (which is when it debuted in that country) and recall enjoying it quite a lot as it was very entertaining, and I got to enjoy it some more once I got it on widescreen DVD while on vacation visiting my relatives from the North American side that summer which I
Left: More vase droppers deep in the city | Right: Ducking down at the sight of the Andean condor
ended up watching and rewatching so many times. Before returning back home to Italy I also got the video game adaptation made for the Game Boy Color where at the time I only managed to get up to the third set of levels if not the jaguar level that followed it up. It wouldn't be until I revisited the game at an older age that I would manage to overcome these
Left: Walking down the city | Right: Standing by the torch atop the pyramid 🔥
levels and see the rest of what it offered. The gameplay is fairly simple once you acclimate to it, although when it comes to crossing the wide gaps you're going to have to time your jumps properly (specifically when jumping from the ledge right after charging through a very narrow gap) for occasionally you may have to make a leap of faith. The lethal enemies (e.g.
Left: Going through the marketplace | Right: Looking back to see you've made it at the checkpoint
snake, scorpion, donkey, guards, et al) are much safer to attack from behind lest you want to lose a heart for it and temporarily become discombobulated for it seeing stars for a second (at least, if you choose not to jump up from the ground after the fact). I appreciate the fact that this game saves your progress once the main area has been cleared which makes it
Left: Kuzco taking notice of the décor of Yzma's lab, he does not like it one bit | Right: Recouped with Pacha
convenient in the event that you lose your last life to pick up your progress for later as there are no continues to use up otherwise. Kuzco's spit mechanic can prove to be useful when it comes to incapacitating enemies momentarily making them easy to pass through (unless it's
Left: Separated, you'll have to make your way to Pacha again | Right: Charging through a narrow gap
a condor or a bat, in which case they literally drop dead the second the spit lands on them) as well as dousing out fire obstacles and activating the spittoons, but you only have a finite amount of times to use them before you run out which can be fully replenished in a random spot in midair which stores a spit reserve. The biggest challenge comes from making it to the checkpoint gate on time after having activated a spittoon, with you sometimes having to
Left: Spiders and flames | Right: Lab snake
platform along the way (sometimes involving timing when to jump involving a falling boulder) or take out certain enemies or dousing out a fire to make it past it, and if you can't succeed the first time then you'll have to make your way to the spittoon again and reactivate it until you manage to get through. After the third cliff level there is a level involving a jaguar moving back and forth) with you getting on a perpetually swinging Pacha until Kuzco
Left: Spitting is just enough to momentarily douse out any fire | Right: Visual gag
headbutts a trigger for a boulder to damage the jaguar thrice, which is the closest thing to a boss battle that you can get. Once the palace levels have been cleared all that's left is to take care of Yzma, which consists of two back-to-back levels where the goal is to reach her at the
Left: "Especially the stout captain who only appeared in the deleted scene!" | Right: This is the palace? Where is the appealing architecture and Tom Jones' Theme Song Guy?
top while avoiding both Kronk and whatever falling objects are used to try to impede you from making it. The first time you reach Yzma, Kuzco will transform into a turtle and then into a bird before reverting back to a llama (just like in the movie) where he only becomes a human the second time you reach her (and he appears like a stick figure at that point in his
Left: Beware of occasional boulders falling down | Right: Made it through another checkpoint gate
emperor regalia... what is it with this game's core human characters just standing in place? Move!!). What you get after that is a splash congratulations page of Yzma followed by plain white screen credits which each new screen being accessed by pressing the A button as Kuzco walks and/or stands at the bottom (which you can even access from the options in the title
Left: Going up | Right: "HA! Boom, baby!"
screen, which for the time it came out is rarely a good sign). If you were hoping for a bigger payoff than that, I regret to say that there isn't. That's all there is. As it stands Sandbox Studios did a serviceably okay job with this game, in my opinion, but as Disney movie licenses on the Game Boy Color go I honestly think this is among the better ones--but when
Left: You'll have to angle Kuzco's spit to ensure it lands on that peculiarly positioned spittoon, then you must literally make a run for it | Right: Spearman
the other main options to choose from, and I'm just basing this from what I've personally played, comprised of Digital Eclipse's Disney's Tarzan, Crawfish Interactive's port of Disney's Aladdin, and Eurocom's Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, that doesn't really say much. But the fact that it is playable makes it somewhat passable, if only just barely.
Left: Watch out for Kronk and falling items on the way up | Right: "Hand that potion over, Yzma!"
If you're just looking for a game that takes roughly a half hour to beat (and that's presuming you play it through without making mistakes or avoiding cheap hits by certain enemies) or more (which is more likely) then this Game Boy Color take is fine though not necessarily what I would call "good". Though graphically solid across the board, it leaves a lot to be desired in the gameplay, music, and fun department. Just stick with the movie it's based on, or if you have to play an adaptation that's actually fun then look no further than Argonaut's PlayStation take. You will get more mileage out of both than from this version.
My Personal Score: 5.5/10
● From the Game Boy Color version of Disney's The Emperor's New Groove alone I took a total of 160 screenshots on June 10th, 2026, from which I had to determine which ones to use in this review. All the video game screenshots here I got while playing on my Samsung smart TV.
● I reviewed this game on my blog back in October of 2014 which I had also given a 6.0 out of 10, which I have since deleted as looking back I feel it wasn't that well-written and articulated. With this review I wished to rectify that, especially since in the old review I mostly used screenshots from the first three set of levels (and then they were few and far between and literally scattershot because of the layout I was using then with small screenshot dimensions).
● For this movie to have become a franchise at all is a bit of a phenomenon in of itself, thinking back on it, considering its troubled production and for having missed its originally intended release window. Nowadays it's seen and recognized as a beloved classic thanks to the reappraisal it had received over time, but back when it came out it underperformed theatrically (having made way less than the majority of the animated movies released during Disney's Renaissance era). Word of mouth for those who had gotten a chance to watch it must have been very positive for it to reportedly becoming the highest grossing home video release under the Disney label in 2001. That's quite the turnaround. And once it began airing on Disney Channel and Toon Disney (as Disney XD was known as back then), audience viewership skyrocketed. Disney's The Emperor's New Groove might not have been a financial hit on the big screen but it wound up finding greater success at home. Had it not been so, neither Kronk's New Groove nor The Emperor's New School would exist.
● I bring both up because during this month of May until the first week of June I decided to watch The Emperor's New School (which Dindal acted as head of story department) on Disney+. I remember watching the 2006 series all those years ago back when it was new, as well as most of the episodes from its second season (there were plenty of episodes I missed then, including the graduation finale), and it wasn't a show I felt highly of when I was younger. Having not watched it in so long, I wanted to give it another chance and see if there was any nuance or subtlety I could glean from it watching it as an adult. I suppose there's a part of me that will always be annoyed at the fact that this show jettisoned Kuzco's whole character arc from the movie about learning to care about others and not only thinking about himself, as it comes off as character regression (like he did not learn a damn thing, which has the potential threat of making his personal journey toward humility from when he got turned into a llama feel retroactively pointless), and I'll admit there were moments when his narcissism were beginning to grate on my nerves during certain episodes (and in the second season it felt like he doubled down in that regard despite promising to be nicer as he so eloquently put it in the season one finale after he reclaimed his life following his wish to have never been emperor). But... despite that glaring elephant in the room (and the occasional moments when Kuzco was written to come across as less bright than the average person regarding basic terminology or lacking in basic social graces, unless that's this show's way of inferring his spoiled yet secluded upbringing...), I didn't find this show unwatchable as it had plenty of moments and inventive (if not admittedly derivative) scenarios that made it worth sitting through (the musical episode, especially the "Kuzco Dance" number, lived rent-free in my mind since the first time I saw it), J. P. Manoux was not a bad substitute for David Spade as the voice of Kuzco, in keeping with the spirit of the movie Kuzco sometimes gets transformed into animals to amusing if not endearing results (rabbit Kuzco was so fluffy and his bright yellow fur palette reminded me of... well, Rabbit from Disney's Winnie the Pooh series, kitty Kuzco in particular was genuinely adorable, elephant Kuzco was likably drawn, and seeing llama Kuzco again was nice in the few times it happened in the second season, et al) and there were plenty of episodes that opened in media res (even Kronk's New Groove had an in media res opener), Fred Tatasciore as Pacha in the first season I felt was well cast before Goodman reprised the role he originated in the second season, Patrick Warburton and the late Eartha Kitt as Kronk and Yzma were still a highlight (Kitt even gets to sing in this show, "Yzmopolis" is such a fun number) especially with their amusing and funny dynamic, Jessica DiCicco's Malina was endearing as Kuzco's love interest (even when trying to help Kuzco despite his insistence on asking her out for a date), there were some Kuzco and Malina moments that made me go "awww" because it was so sweet (including the last pre-credits scene of the series finale, honestly the graduation episode felt like a satisfying conclusion), I liked that the second season had the characters occasionally change outfits like in The Weekenders and Kim Possible, and in the end I found the series to be okay. While I'll always prefer the movie no contest, I didn't mind rewatching the show (in fact, it was a bit of a throwback), and it was the core reason that gave me the incentive to formally revisit this game and cover it properly.
Thank you for reading my review, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think (neither spam nor NSFW is allowed); hope you have a great day, be a kind human, and take care!
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