I played the Gamecube version, which wasn't listed here.

Context

Madagascar is a movie licensed game from the mid 2000s, an era full of licensed games, good or bad. This game was made by Toys for Bob, who would later on make the remakes of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot.

The wild

• The controls are simple and they work well, it's hard to screw this up. No character plays the same, and there are levels where you get to switch them around since some characters can do things the other can't. Everyone has their own unique moveset.

• The game has lots of minigames that you can play with other people, a golf minigame, a DDR clone and shuffleboard.

• It has plenty of unlockables, like outfits, buffs to health and characters for the minigames mentioned above; every single playable character has their own unique animations in the shuffleboard game and I found that pretty neat that they didn't recycle anything.

• The music is pretty decent, especially the ones from the minigames or the little arcade games you play a few times in the first levels. The plane one is still stuck in my head despite being so repetitive; and the music that plays when Marty escape is very funky and memorable.

• The plot is very different from the movie, but it follows the same outline. The deviations stack up when they reach the island, since for example, the Fossa can't talk and have an actual king that becomes the final boss at the end.

• The comedy is good. A scene from the game even became a meme in latin america, the scene where Mort says "The plot called for it".

The psychotic

• The game lacks scenes from the movie. This ends up causing slight issues; for example, Marty in the game escapes due to intrusive thoughts and doesn't tell his friends he wants to escape, you never see the foreshadowing of Alex going mad with hunger and he just goes mad out of nowhere.

• No actor from the movie reprises their roles other than Skipper, he's the only one who reprises his role. Marty, Gloria and Melman did ok but Alex's voice actor is not even close to the original take on Alex.

• The graphics look somewhat ugly, even for its time. The characters look too polygonal and the scenarios tend to look flat; the Shrek 2 videogame for the home consoles was made a year earlier and it doesn't look as polygonal thanks to clever use of effects to mask it. Mort looks even uglier here than in the movie.

Conclusion

It is a decent game with a fun core gameplay loop and decent minigames, it offers unique character mechanics and decent unlockable content. However, the game's dated graphics and lack of voice acting from the original cast can detract from the overall experience. It's a fun title for fans of the movie, but it's not a must-play for everyone.