I will always remember borrowing the Asterix books at my local library when I was younger and I really did enjoy reading them from their journey to Britain, The Great Divide, Mansion of the Gods and Caesar's Gift. Some of them I can still remember till this day, just like the Titan franchise, it's the only European comics that are still huge elsewhere other than manga or graphic novels.
There's been a fair few Asterix movies and video games over the years on various platforms, most of them have been platformers and a movie licensed title. There was one Asterix game I remember from the Official UK PlayStation magazine being Mega Madness and it really did remind me of Mario Party instead it's based on the Asterix franchise. Straight forward story, especially if you've read the books the Gauls plan to celebrate in style by having one of the biggest parties they've ever seen. The biggest honour of all the Gauls is to sit besides the Chief Vitalstatistix. In order to determine exactly whom this honour will be bestowed to, Chief Vitalstatistix has announced that he will be holding a special sports tournament, the likes of which have never been seen before. The Gauls all get ready to participate in a series of crazy sporting challenges, to win the ultimate privilege of sitting with Chief Vitalstatistix at the party.
You'll have the option to play as either Asterix, Obelix, Cacofonix or Mrs. Geriatrix; only four characters to play from, which isn't much for a party styled game you can play up to four players when it comes to multiplayer which is a neat feature to have if they had more character pronouncing the names in general is hard to remember especially with most of them having a long name or anything with the letter x at the end of each name. The graphics and visuals look decent for a PS1 title, especially when it was released back in 2001 where games were being released less for the PS1 while most developers were making a jump to the next consoles at the time.
There is a total of 14 mini games in total for going through Mega Madness with games like Food Feast being an all you can eat contest eating as much as you can using the directional pad for eating certain foods and drinks and the option to toss away any food that go off or steal someone else food. There's a few races from rowing a boat race, carrying someone on a shield or having a roman carrying you on shield or pulling a catapult around with you around the race track. Another is finding certain items like ingredients for the Magic Potion or finding keys in the village kind of like a hot and cold effect on finding items. Another is using the catapult for firing at your opponents and gaining a high score and not getting hit by your opponent; as always in the Asterix franchise, you get to take on romans by collecting helmets in an amount of time. The controls are simple and easy to control and there are a few hiccups and are easily ignored.
The soundtrack makes a nice touch, making the game enjoyable and there are a few hidden things you may never notice, especially with it being a European exclusive game on the PlayStation like when you select your language you'll have each boar represent the country kind of wish games had this neat feature at the time. You can easily clear through the main story of Mega Madness within an hour and doesn't really hold much of a challenge I would say it's more fun playing the game with a group of friends. It does have its moments here and there, but don't last very long, I would say it's worth taking a look if you're a fan of the series or see it at a decent price.