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[The Take Out Bandit]

Not a press release, for immediate release to all two people that care!

I wept a buttery fanboy tear the day I got an error trying to connect to www.genie-girl.com, the former homepage for all things Shantae.

It seems that Matt Bozon and Co. have managed to secure www.shantae.com as the new home for all the cool kids with good taste in games.

Now if only they could find a publisher for Shantae Advanced I could have the happy ending.

In the meantime, get your money ready for Sigma Star Saga. Vote with your dollars, and maybe we can get Namco to let the genie out of the bottle.

Tekunorobby, join me in the happy dance! While Dog$ provides the musical accompaniment.

 

[krypt0nian]

Hell yes!

Sigma Star Saga - me wanty!

 

[jarrod]

Now if only they could find a publisher for Shantae Advanced I could have the happy ending.

Shantae DS you mean.

 

[Blackbird]

Hell yes!

Sigma Star Saga - me wanty!

Seen the trailer? It looks pretty bad in motion...

Shantae DS you mean.

"We still haven’t found a publisher for Shantae Advance, but we are currently talking with a few publishers about a Shantae DS game. We may even be able to piggyback Shantae Advance with the DS game as a package deal. Nothing is set in stone yet, though."
^got that in my mailbox back in July 2004... Haven't heard anything about it eversince.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

Y'know, I know you're doing that just to spite me; but if Wayforward can't find a publisher for Shantae on the GBA - why in the hell would they find a publisher for a NintenD00DS version?

Especially after the panning they got for Pingpals. :lol

Hopefully SSS sells well and it leads to more GBA projects from Wayforward Pocket getting the green light. I know it's a longshot, but it's a better chance than making a completely new title for the NintenD00DS and betting the bank on that.

 

[WordAssassin]

I'm pretty sure Shantae Advance has merged with Shantae DS. Matt visits the IGN boards all the time, and at one point said...

It runs on DS presently (not in the GBA slot). I guess we'll wait and see. It would be easy to switch over to DS.

Here's the thread he says this in. (It's pretty funny, he was using a piece of popcorn chicken as a stylus.)

I REALLY REALLY want a new Shantae game. The GBC game is tied with Yoshi's Island as best 2D platformer EVAR.

Why won't publishers put out this game? Do they not like having their names on good products? Where's Nintendo, ready to grab up awesome new IPs ala Pokemon? Whatever happened to Shantae eReader?

 

[jarrod]

Y'know, I know you're doing that just to spite me; but if Wayforward can't find a publisher for Shantae on the GBA - why in the hell would they find a publisher for a NintenD00DS version?

There's actually far more interest in DS content publishing right now than GBA, despite the massive GBA base. This is likely due in large part to media costs (there's far higher margins on DS than GBA) and less direct competition thanks to DS being a new platform. Upspeccing Risky Revolution to DS seems like a pretty painless proposition for Wayforward.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

Well, hopefully the NintenD00DS will be on it's way out soon enough so I can pick one up on the cheap. I'm not all that interested in one, but considering the GBA, GBAsp, and GBA Player are all IMO flawed products; and you can allegedly see the god d@mned screen on the NintenD00DS it may be worth picking up on the cheap to play GBA games. :/

Ugh. . .

Not to mention I've just come up with a brilliant idea on how to justify releasing a Shantae game on the NintenD00DS that I'll have to fire off to Matt ASAP. :X

TITTY SLAPPING CONTEST!

HAR HAR HAR!

j/k

 

[Mejilan]

Shantae GBC was one of the few games I bought, despite my misgivings, essentially based off of IGN's glowing press.

Man, was I ever f-cking pwned hard. :lol

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

w00t!

Well, mailed along me suggestion to possibly ape Gitaroo Man with Shantae DS.

I don't know about you bunghole tooters, but methinks it would be pretty keen to use the stylus in a Gitaroo Man fashion to trace a music line while Shantae shakes her groove thing to earn gems and moneys. Woo woo!

Aye ki ki ki ki!

 

[BenT]

Shantae GBC was one of the few games I bought, despite my misgivings, essentially based off of IGN's glowing press.

Man, was I ever f-cking pwned hard. :lol

Haha, me too. At least Toki-Tori was good, though.

 

[belgurdo]

Shantae GBC was one of the few games I bought, despite my misgivings, essentially based off of IGN's glowing press.

Man, was I ever f-cking pwned hard. :lol

We need to start a fuckin' club, man :lol

(although I did like the art and music)

 

[WhippinSean]

:rolleyes

 

[Father_Brain]

*shrug*

I thought Shantae was awesome... don't get all the hate. But to each his own, I guess.

 

[Mejilan]

Official member of the Shantae SUX Club :lol

 

[Ironclad]

Shantae GBC was one of the few games I bought, despite my misgivings, essentially based off of IGN's glowing press.

Man, was I ever f-cking pwned hard. :lol

Yeah, same here. For some reason, I always felt like the hit detection was off. It was as if I couldn't land a single jump without having to adjust for the wonky detection.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

Having a Shantae Haters Club fits in nicely with the society that also embraces hugely commercial bands calling themselves "Rage Against the Machine."

TAKE THAT OBSCURE GBC GAME, THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE SOLD 10k! :lol

The only real issue I had with the game was the lack of "warning animations" for some creatures. Namely those little things that popped out of the ground under your feet. Video game design has me so conditioned to expect some sort of ground rumbling or breaking animation before something pops out.

Unless it's Todd's Adventures in Slime World. Then you're just fucked. CHOMP!

 

[Socreges]

Having a Shantae Haters Club fits in nicely with the society that also embraces hugely commercial bands calling themselves "Rage Against the Machine."

TAKE THAT OBSCURE GBC GAME, THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE SOLD 10k! :lol

Success doesn't matter. It's a natural reaction to an inexplicable love affair with such an average game.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

It's a natural reaction to an inexplicable love affair with such an average game.

Understandable, I feel the same way about a lot of popular tiles. e.g. DoA, Tekken, Street Fighter Alpha :X

 

[Mejilan]

Understandable, I feel the same way about a lot of popular tiles. e.g. DoA, Tekken, Street Fighter Alpha :X

And in regards to DoA, Tekken, and SFA, I'd applaud your stance. Makes me wonder why you feel the way you do about Shantae.

 

[TekunoRobby]

Not to bump an old thread but I missed this news. Glad to see the Wayfroward crew still pushing onward with Shantae. I like it when developers have their own IP that they pour their heart into. Hopefully one day they'll be able to find a publisher for Shantae.

The games were decent and certainly interesting. I loved the little animations they did on the GBC.

EDIT: Sprites for you.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

Yeah, sorry to bump myself; but I typed up a reply to link avatar guy a while back and I haven't been on my machine to post the file.

Recently e-mailed Matt Bozon to be nosy, and he advises not to count the GBA out. GBA is still the 800lb. gorilla of portable gaming.

So here it is for your consideration:

Shantae just managed to hit the right combination of character, game design, and execution. Three things that are very important to me when keeping an eye out for games to purchase.

I've always been peculiar when it comes to platform games. I prefer the more action based titles, like Sonic and especially Bonk. Which explains why my favorite Mario game was Super Mario 2. I like lots of offensive options at my disposal and I'm not too keen on intricate platforming exercises.

Dancing games are a genre I've really taken a shine to over the last two generations. Combining some dance game elements with an action based platform game resulted in an irresistible game for me.

I was also really pleased to find it was coming from a Western based developer. I'm generally not too keen on popular Western developed console games because they tend to skew more towards genres I don't care for. My favorite Western developers this generation have are Neversoft, Snowblind, and Wayforward.

Wayforward also happened to be a really obscure company, so I was very impressed by the amount of performance they managed to coax out of Nintendo's hardware, and I was very disappointed with the Gameboy Color for the duration of it's run. Nothing that was being released really took advantage of the leap from black & white to color IMO.

If Western developers are the future of gaming as so many folks are claiming this generation, I want there to be companies like Wayforward to deliver the games that tread off the beaten path so that it's not all FPS, sports, and dull action games aping whatever is popular this generation (GTA).

The final product had some rough spots; but overall it's extremely high quality coming from a relative unknown company who's past products were screwball parody PC games.

I'm looking forward to the sequel because there's definite room for improvement, and I want to see the characters gain a larger fan base.

I've got some concerns with the game details they've discussed for Shantae Advanced, but I'll remain hopeful until the final product proves me wrong.

In the meantime; I'll gladly consume any original product Wayforward releases for the consoles I own. In the vain hope that it will lead to them getting more exposure and publishing deals.

GODZILLA!