Summary
A retro action-adventure platformer starring the babies of the hit ’90s cartoonRugrats, titledRugrats: Adventures in Gameland, has revealed its official release date of July 30, 2025. Based on the classicNickelodeonanimated show, the upcoming game will provide the first new officialRugratsadventure for players since 2004’sAll Grown Up! Express Yourselfon the Game Boy Advance.
The upcoming game, which will release on modern consoles and PC as well as Nintendo Entertainment System hardware, lets players switch between any of the game’s main baby cast, essentially giving a player four lives to work with. ThenewRugratsgame received a free demoin February on PC.
ThenewRugratsgame was originally announcednearly a year ago, in September 2023. A fresh trailer for the game has confirmed the September release date and gives a little more detail on the game’s plot, which centers around the series' four main babies — Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil — imagining Tommy’s house in a video game setting after seeing a commercial for a new game-within-a-game starring their dinosaur hero, Reptar. The new trailer shows off a lot of gameplay in a variety of different settings, as the babies go from wandering around Tommy’s house and using his dog, Spike, as a springboard to investigating lush jungles and an ancient-looking desert temple, jumping over enemies and tossing them at each other in a way that looks similar toSuper Mario Bros. 2.
Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland Releases on September 10
The standard visuals in the game take advantage of modern graphics to present the game’sworld in a way that looks like a high-definition version of the originalRugratscartoon on Nickelodeon, complete with its neon-colored backgrounds while the babies are exploring their imaginations and some of Stu Pickles' more memorable toy inventions. However, it also leans heavily on its ’90s nostalgia, as players will be able to enter an 8-bit mode, which seems to present the same gameplay but pixelates the world, limits the color palette, simplifies the backgrounds, and dulls down the sound effects to reflect an experience players would have had in the days of the NES. Players will be able to switch between these two presentation modes freely on all versions except the NES one, which won’t be able to support the modern graphics and music. The game will also support two-player co-op.
While this will be the first adventure in about 20 years that focuses solely on the Rugrats franchise, its characters have seen in-game action in the years since 2004. Reptar was aplayable character inNickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, and the babies have made appearances in games like 2022’sNickelodeon Extreme Tennisand theNickelodeon Kart Racersseries.
