It truly amazes me how the... well, not so much "classic" as "remembered" A Boy and His Blob for the Nintendo Entertainment System just won't stay dead. A Game Boy sequel was released a few years after the original 8-bit game, but then Boy and Blob were claimed by the mists of time until a supposed revival for the Nintendo DS from Majesco made news in 2005. That revival was never released, but Nintendo Power has announced that the company is trying again with a new A Boy and His Blob adventure for the Nintendo Wii in development by the company behind Contra 4, WayForward. Here's a bit of the preview from the Nintendo Power website:
Featuring beautiful hand-drawn 2D backgrounds and characters, and equally gorgeous animation, the new A Boy and His Blob is visually light-years ahead of its 8-bit precursor, but it retains the core mechanics that made the original so compelling. Playing as a boy, you'll again feed various flavors of jelly beans to your blob buddy to transform him into useful objects — such as a cannon, a trampoline, an anvil, a ladder, a bubble, a parachute, a rocket, and a human-shaped doppelganger — that you must use to overcome obstacles and defeat enemies.
In the original game, the blob's transformations were mostly for protection or world navigation, but this time out more of them can be used for offensive purposes — dropping an anvil on foes or punching a hole in the ground so enemies fall through it, for example. Another holdover from the original game is the story, as the boy and the blob are once more attempting to free the blob's homeworld of Blobolonia from the grip of an evil emperor.
I'll admit that this A Boy and His Blob revival excites me. The original game disappointed, but I loved the concept then and I still do now. I'm very eager to try this new game, and hopefully the developers will finally figure out how to make the boy/blob formula work efficiently to create an amusing and satisfying experience. Is it too much to hope for some remixed music? Nearly two decades later, the original game's tunes are still stuck in my head no matter how hard I try to dislodge them. Oh, and maybe this time around the Vitablaster can actually have a useful purpose. And no hiding the lime jelly bean needed to complete the game like last time, either!
(via Kotaku)
