You remember the ending of the first Incredibles movie. The family stands together in the parking lot, masks on, ready to face a giant drill emerging from the asphalt. A gravel-voiced villain screams about declaring war on peace and happiness. It was the perfect cliffhanger. Most people waited fourteen years to see what happened next in the 2018 cinematic sequel. But if you were a kid with a PlayStation 2, GameCube, or Xbox in 2005, you didn't wait. You played The Incredibles Rise of the Underminer.
It’s such a bizarre artifact of mid-2000s gaming.
Back then, movie tie-ins were the wild west. Usually, they just rehashed the plot of the film with worse voice acting. This game was different. It was a direct canonical sequel—or at least it claimed to be at the time—that picked up exactly where the credits rolled. No Dash. No Violet. No Jack-Jack. Just Mr. Incredible and Frozone against an army of robots.
Honestly, looking back at it now, the game is a fascinatng case study in how "expanded universes" used to work before Disney bought everything and tightened the screws on continuity.
The Game That Erased the Rest of the Family
When you boot up The Incredibles Rise of the Underminer, the first thing you notice is the shift in tone. The movie was a vibrant, mid-century modern superhero flick about family dynamics. The game? It’s a gritty, metallic, industrial slog through underground caverns. It’s basically a "buddy cop" beat-'em-up.
The story starts exactly where the movie ends. The Underminer (voiced by John Ratzenberger, naturally) makes his big speech. But instead of the whole family jumping into the fray, Mr. Incredible tells the kids to stay back and take care of the city while he and Frozone dive into the literal hole in the ground.
It’s a convenient narrative excuse for a two-player co-op mechanic. If you played this alone, the AI controlled the second character. If you had a friend, you were golden. One person smashed things with Bob’s super strength; the other froze enemies and built ice bridges with Lucius.
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Why the Gameplay Loop Actually Worked
It wasn't a masterpiece, but it wasn't shovelware either. Heavy Iron Studios, the developers, actually had a decent track record with Pixar properties. They understood the physics of these characters.
The levels were linear. You moved from Sector A to Sector B, punching robots that looked like they were rejected designs from Bioshock. But the progression system was surprisingly deep for a licensed game. You earned experience points. You upgraded your health, your energy meter, and your specific moves. Bob could get a "Thunder Clap" that cleared the screen. Lucius could upgrade his "Ice Beam" to freeze multiple enemies at once.
It felt like a "baby’s first dungeon crawler."
The difficulty spike was real, though. Those Magnabeams and the giant robot spiders in the later levels? They were genuinely tough. It required actual coordination between the two players. You couldn't just button-mash. If Frozone didn't freeze the fire vents, Mr. Incredible would take constant damage. If Mr. Incredible didn't draw the aggro of the larger sentries, Frozone—who had a much smaller health bar—would get shredded in seconds.
The Weird Canon Problem
Here is where things get sticky for fans of the franchise. For over a decade, The Incredibles Rise of the Underminer was the only answer we had to that cliffhanger. In this version of events, the Underminer isn't just a bank robber. He’s a mad scientist with a massive underground city and a plot to replace the surface world’s atmosphere with "Underminer Dust" to block out the sun.
It's high-stakes stuff. You eventually fight a giant robot called the "Magnabeam" and chase the Underminer to his final lair.
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But then Incredibles 2 happened in 2018.
The movie sequel completely ignores the game. In the film, the fight with the Underminer lasts about ten minutes, he robs a bank, and he gets away. He’s a minor character, a catalyst for the plot about superhero legality. The game’s epic underground war was essentially deleted from history.
Does that make the game worse? Not really. It just makes it a "What If?" scenario. It represents a time when games were allowed to take big swings with movie licenses without worrying about a 20-year multi-media roadmap.
Breaking Down the Visuals and Sound
Visually, the game was dark. Lots of grays, lots of browns, lots of glowing orange lava. It lacked the "pop" of the Pixar film, likely due to the hardware limitations of the era and the setting. Everything was subterranean.
However, the music was a standout. Michael Giacchino didn't score the game, but the composers did a stellar job mimicking his brass-heavy, 1960s spy-thriller vibe. It felt like an Incredibles product, even when the screen was filled with generic ticking gears and steam pipes.
The voice acting was a mixed bag. Having Ratzenberger was huge. Having Samuel L. Jackson... well, we didn't get him. We got a sound-alike who did a "passable" Frozone, but you could tell the difference if you listened closely. Craig T. Nelson didn't return for Bob either. It’s one of those things you notice more as an adult than you did as a kid.
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Is It Worth Playing Today?
If you can find a copy for the PS2 or even the PC version (which is notoriously finicky on modern Windows), it’s a fun afternoon. It’s short. You can beat the whole thing in about five or six hours.
It’s a relic of an era where co-op gaming was the king of the living room. Before online lobbies took over, sitting on a couch and arguing with your brother about who got to play as Frozone was the peak of entertainment.
The game also appeared on the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance. Those versions were completely different—side-scrollers that lacked the punch of the console versions. If you’re looking for the authentic The Incredibles Rise of the Underminer experience, stick to the home consoles.
Actionable Takeaways for Retro Collectors
If you’re looking to dive back into this piece of Pixar history, keep these specific points in mind to get the most out of it:
- Prioritize the GameCube or Xbox versions: These generally ran at a more stable frame rate than the PS2 version and had slightly cleaner textures.
- Play with a partner: The AI is serviceable but lacks the tactical awareness needed for the later boss fights. The game was designed for two humans.
- Focus on Bob's strength first: In the upgrade tree, pumping points into Mr. Incredible’s combat finishers makes the middle-game slog much faster.
- Check the PC compatibility: If you're playing on PC, you’ll likely need a community patch or a glide wrapper to get the textures to render correctly on modern GPUs.
- Ignore the "Canon": Don't try to make it fit with the 2018 movie. Treat it as a standalone "Saturday Morning Cartoon" version of the story.
The game remains a fascinating look at what happens when a studio is given the keys to a massive franchise and told to "fill in the blanks." It’s loud, it’s clunky, and it’s unapologetically focused on smashing robots. It might not be the sequel Pixar eventually gave us, but for a generation of gamers, it was the first time we felt like a Hero.