If you're new here and you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, and browse around for more fun stuff. Thanks for visiting!

The eternal life question of “what a girl wants?”, as answered by the purple-haired lady genie exotically named Shantae, is to kick pirate booty and restore order in a quaint little 2-D circular-designed world. It also means that when you’re given an hourglass figure that the entire contestants of those goddamn top model shows would sacrifice a newborn or two for, you exploit it via the sensual art of the belly-dance. Only in this case, dancing lets you to turn into a menagerie of animals to help solve conveniently-placed puzzles blocking your path.

Shantae’s tale begin in a fishing town where she is catching a few pixelated “Z’s”, until a group of pirates, led by Risky Boots, lay the town to waste. Armed with her magic ponytail ( taking a few cues from Millia Rage, eh?), she is set out on a quest to recover steam-engines, speak with other genies, and the usual-save-the-world-from-evil-unleashed-by-a-femme-fatale-pirate. But hey, a simple, charming, and humorously-written tale is all it needs. It also happens to look very good.

As soon as you get out of your little hovel of a home, you would notice how smooth Shantae walks. You also notice how the goblin-like pirates swagger and lurch onto your general direction as they try to kill you. All this was done on the Gameboy. Color. Not Advance. Call it great coding and compression skills. Call it hours of intensive labor and well-placed-but-painful-love. Just watch it in action. You would believe a pixelated genie can “get down on it” in fluid motion on a miniscule-powered handheld.

Belly-dancing action, triple fireballs, and albino pirate ladies. Stuffed into one small GBC cartridge.

As mentioned above, there’s also the booty-shaking, which is crucial in exploring the majority of Shantae’s four-season world. With a press of a button, a background beat pops up from the thin GameBoy speakers. Pressing a correct combination of buttons in that time frame results in her transforming into animals to solve a puzzle blocking the way or to flat out kill enemies if the hair isn’t sufficient. Your dance also teleports you to previous areas you’ve visited, as well as earn you some coin in the lone bar in the only major city of the entire gameworld.

All this is integrated in the actual adventure-platform gameplay where you’re trounched into a huge 2D world to explore reminiscent of classics like Metroid & Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night. Better to stick to a winning formula, as long as you do it right. Thankfully, Wayforward did an awesome job. It’s fun, controls like a dream, and challenging enough to slap down the gauntlet for hardcore platform gamers. And yet it’s creative enough to give most next-gen games of Shantae’s time a run for its money.

It’s just a pity that this wondergirl had her Gameboy Advance debut “on hold”, as Wayforward had a few projects going on. At least they’re hard at work on the latest Contra, with full approval from Konami and, hopefully, the fans. But no frowns for now: Shantae might blatantly be Metroid where Samus uses her locks to lay the beatdown on not-space-but-sea pirates in a vividly lavish Arabian Nights setting, but it’s a game which deserves its acclaim from the legions of the hardcore for being great to look at and fun to play.

Technorati : a look back, action, gameboy, genie on genie, metroidvania, shantae, wayforward