Sabrina the Animated Series: Zapped! (2000)

Let's lay it out there. There are only three reasons people would remember a handheld, tie-in title like this.

• It's somehow transcendentally good.
• It exists as a genre curiosity by taking some general format like 'Fighter' and forcing in the tie-in property's components, take the Star Wars Pod-Racer games.
• It's a meme

I appreciate you taking time to read a paragraph about this game, I'll sum it up so you can skedaddle: Zapped isn't any of these three. I'll pause here so those of you who are leaving can shuffle out

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The twin, animated Sabrina games, Zapped and Spooked, can be summed up as only for series fans (fanatics really) or materially replacing a flash game so some lady in 2002 could get her kid to stay quiet during church. Still, though, Zapped has some value, it may have been worth playing for free on Disney.com decades ago.

Knowing something fundamentally sound will be forgotten, several months of genuine effort from a small team, is a bit of a blue feeling, but not surprising in the least. I compare to a bird's nest in the tree outside your office window just disappearing one day. A tragedy of sorts, but not worth further investigation.

Let's memorialize then: Decent but easily improveable jump controls, fairly good but unmemorable music, decent level and enemy variety but altogether too short, a cheaply implemented password system, and gameplay that is a bit jaggedly challenging, where the biggest danger is not complete stepover boss fights, but rather 3 foot wide instakill water pits combined with a camera that doesn't let you track downwards.

As for Sabrina fans... there's really just nothing here other than her face on the box.