Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

A magical new first year adventure.

JP release: 11th December 2003
EU release: 12th December 2003
NA release: 12th December 2003
Developer: Warthog Games
Publisher: EA
NGC Magazine Score: 70%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

After the Chamber of Secrets film came out, it took a bit longer for the next film to be made. This led to EA having a Christmas period without a Harry Potter game (although they could have released Quidditch World Cup nearer to Christmas, it only came out two months earlier). To solve this, EA decided to go backwards and create a new Philosopher’s Stone game for a new generation of consoles. With a very low budget, of course.

A new developer was handed the assets from the Chamber of Secrets game and were told to use it to make a Philosopher’s Stone game. As it’s an earlier film, it almost feels like the developers purposefully made this worse in every way so that it would feel “right” if someone were to play these two games in the chronological order.

Most of Hogwarts is the same, except you can now walk around the grounds, which is so empty I actually preferred how the precious game handled it. The new levels are also extremely bland, with annoying boss fights (which repeat) and just no flow to it at all. The game also does a terrible job at explaining things – both the game and the story. It’s like some of the tutorial remained from the previous game but other parts were deleted and not reworked to fit the new one.

This game is also really buggy, with an atrocious camera and a Harry that loves to jump to his death at every opportunity. One great example in regard to the attention to detail is that collecting everything gives you 88% completion, as though they just moved the collectables from Chamber of Secrets to new locations and removed some without updating the counter. This is just rushed.

Poor

There’s masses of potential for a full-on Harry Potter school simulator, which would do away with all the problems of trying to tie the game’s action to the storyline of a movie and novel. Any older readers who played Skool Daze in the ’80s will know what we mean.

Martin Kitts, NGC Magazine #89

Remake or remaster?

Emulation is fine for this.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone