DreamWorks Madagascar

Toys for Bob spent the nineties making Star Control and Pandemonium, and by 2005 they were building licensed platformers for Activision on the way to inventing Skylanders. That lineage shows in odd places here. The Grand Central Station escape, the crated voyage, the beach on the island — each stage is built around a specific animal's trick rather than a generic run and jump, and someone clearly sat down and worked out what a giraffe is actually good for.

The four leads split the verbs between them. Alex claws and roars to frighten things, Marty is fast and can dash through gaps, Melman uses his neck as a bridge or a lever, and Gloria shoulder-charges through anything that will not move otherwise. The game rarely lets you pick; it assigns the animal to the level and designs around them, which keeps the abilities from turning into a menu of interchangeable moves. It also means the pacing swings hard, since a Melman stage plays nothing like a Marty one.

The penguins get their own material, and it is the part people remember. Their sequences lean on sneaking past guards and lining up distractions rather than platforming, a small stealth game folded into a children's tie-in, and the tone matches the film's best running joke without needing dialogue to sell it.

What has aged is the camera and the combat. Fights come down to mashing one attack at animals that telegraph nothing, and the fixed angles occasionally hide the ledge you are aiming for. Collectibles are scattered generously enough that a child will find plenty and an adult will find them all in an afternoon. It is short.

This was the licensed-movie economy working as intended for once: a competent studio, a reasonable budget, a game finished before the film left cinemas. Not a lost classic, but the kind of tie-in that treated its audience as players rather than ticket stubs.