The classic NES title is being reimagined for Wii by WayForward Technologies.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/17864
Amongst the pages of April's Nintendo Power are details on a new title in the A Boy and His Blob series. Developer WayFoward Technologies, who got their feet wet on Wii development while making the recently released WiiWare title LIT, are creating the new A Boy and His Blob, which will be a full-featured Wii retail release this fall.
The NES A Boy and His Blob was the brainchild of David Crane who is famous for programming Pitfall and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns for the Atari 2600. While the game received one sequel on the Game Boy called A Boy and His Blob in The Rescue of Princess Blobette, a more recent attempt at a revival on the DS by Majesco did not come to fruition.
The new game will have a lot in common with its forebearer. Players will once again take on the role of a boy who is on a quest to defeat an evil emperor with his jelly-bean-loving blob friend. Upon eating jelly beans, the blob (named Blobert in the NES title) can morph into a number of useful forms like a rocket, an anvil, a parachute, a trampoline, and even a humanoid-like appearance. Unlike the original title, many of the blob's new transformations will be used for more offensive means such as, in a possible nod to Lode Runner, punching holes in the ground for enemies to fall into. In addition, the game also sports a beautiful hand drawn 2D art style.
WayFoward may be well suited for the new A Boy and His Blob having developed the well received platformer Shantae, which saw release during the twilight of the Game Boy Color. The first artwork of A Boy and His Blob's new look can be seen at Nintendo Power's website.
Looks cool. Talking about attacking enemies, I wonder if there's an Ovalqwik flavoured bean that makes the Blob pull out a plasma cannon and vaporize anything in his path...
The original game is very interesting, although totally obtuse as noted above. I like the approach of doing it in 2D, and Wii seems like the right platform for such a game. But WayForward is totally overrated, so they have a lot to prove with this one.
But WayForward is totally overrated
or just the fact two of the guys are also part of the IGN Nintendo team
Blimey, is that why Shatae got so much exposure on the GBC way back when? I am sickened. (I never played it; can't say if it was good.)
By that are you referring to games they made in the past (Shantae), recent games (Lit) or just the fact two of the guys are also part of the IGN Nintendo team and therefore they automatically get attention, hype and the lielighte? Or is it a mixture of all the above?
I own the NES game but never could figure out what in the world you're supposed to do in it. There's too much trial and error in it for me as you have to keep giving each type of jelly bean to the blob to figure out what they all do and how to use them. Add to that the limited amount of beans, and, well, I don't have the patience for a game like that anymore.
This could turn out interesting however. If you're given more direction and explanation of each bean's transformation, it would be a lot easier to get into the game.
Basically, the studio does great art -- I'm sure we can all agree on that. But the three games of theirs that I've played were all disappointing/crap to various degrees. Ping Pals is worthless junk, obviously. Sigma Star Saga took a great idea and fumbled the execution in more ways than I can count. And Contra 4 is basically a level pack for Contra 3, except even harder. It has no new ideas and shows basically no gameplay progress since the early 90s. I'm just not nostalgic enough about Contra to accept more of the same from fifteen years ago. I bought a copy on the recommendation of many friends, but traded it in after a couple of weeks because I wasn't enjoying it at all.
5 gorgeous gameplay videos.
http://media.wii.ign.com/media/143/14326534/vids_1.html
The review sounded like there are simply too many different buttons involved, Scribblenauts had problems where the controls tended to do the wrong thing, here it's just that you have to remember how to do things.
The IGN review of Afrika I read was VERY negative. I was wondering if the reviewer would have liked Endless Ocean.