Home on the Range for the GBA is based on the Disney movie of the same name, featuring a herd of cows, horses, and sundry other animals of the Lil' Patch of Heaven ranch who take on the task of cleaning up the town. In the game, players will relive the adventure of rounding up the bad guys, playing alternately as Jeb the Billy Goat or Buck the Horse.

The game is a mixture of platforming, fighting and racing. Jeb stars in the platform modes, which are basic running and jumping levels. Jeb's special moves consist of double jumps, spitting corn kernels, stomp-jumping, running jumps and head butting. To gain these moves, Jeb only has to run through power-ups like jumping beans, ears of corn, and chili peppers. These are timed attributes, but the power-ups appear again and again once they run out, and players simply need to run through them again.

These platforms are pretty basic, but do take on a more puzzle-like quality later in the game, as players have to figure out how to get from one area to another that is visible, but not obviously accessible, such as when Jeb has to use his special running jump to get to a distant ledge that appears to be unreachable, but isn't. Actually, this is a slightly aggravating aspect of the game, in that the visuals are misleading at times, as this one area seems to be blocked by a rock wall, but when Jeb uses his running jump, he jumps in front of it with the rock wall in the background, instead of it blocking his forward progress, as is usually the case in these 2D type of games.

Buck is more action-oriented, and spends his time fighting and racing. The fighting mainly consists of Buck punching and kicking the bad guys, who come at him from all directions, but usually singly. These levels are slightly different than most of this type, as Buck and the villains can not only move from side to side, but they can also move up and down and diagonally across the screen. This can make the fighting a little tricky, as the bad guys can accost Buck from different directions.

As Buck fights, his horseshoe symbol fills up. Once full, Buck can perform a special four-hooved kick. After beating all the bad guys, Buck fights a boss. These bosses aren't very difficult to beat, but there is a little bit of strategy involved. The bosses are entertaining to fight, and are just hard enough to challenge without being frustrating. There are also race levels that Buck must successfully traverse. These races are harder to win than the fight scenes, and players may end up racing them several times to memorize where the hazards are. The races are also quite fun to run.

The enemy detection isn't designed very well, and is aggravating at times, such as when Jeb is right on top of an enemy and is head-butting him, but nothing is happening. Eventually, Jeb often ends up taking a hit until he moves away and comes back to head-butt again. Buck has a slightly easier time of it, but sometimes misses hits as well. There is also a long transition time between their hits and regular moves, which can lead to them taking several hits before they finally make the switch between head-butting or kicking, and running or jumping.

The game looks very nice, and is typical Disney quality in terms of graphics. A2M designed the game, and did a great job with the visuals. All the characters are very detailed and move smoothly and fluidly across the screen. The backgrounds are also drawn well, and evoke just the right touch of western flavor.

The music is pretty typical of most platform games, and while not horribly annoying, isn't anything to jump up and down about, either. The sound effects are much better, and fit the sounds to the actions just right, especially the metal "tinging" sound when Jeb head-butts the metal barrels. Spitting, hitting, hooves running - all the effects sound just as they should.