GoNintendo "End of day" thoughts - Bring back Shantae!

What a crazy morning for news! The Brawl news and rumors are enough to keep us busy for days. I should hope so, we have to wait a week before the new Brawl site opens! Have a great time discussing all the insanity. I will catch you guys in a few hours, have a great morning.

When I opened up my email a few hours ago and saw that press release from WayForward, it made my night. We reported on WayForward and their Wii support months and months ago. We hadn’t heard a peep from them in a very long time. I remember getting psyched for the first bit of Wii news related to them. I thought that in a month or so we would be hearing something more. Unfortunately that never happened, and we were all left twiddling our thumbs. To be perfectly honest, while I remembered WayForward’s work, I had forgotten all about their intentions to work on the Wii and DS. I guess these sort of things happen when you least expect it. Just seeing that press release brought my excitement level right back up to where it was months ago. Then I noticed that there was a logo attachment with the email. Nothing special I thought, but I figured I should look at it anyway. I opened it up to find Shantae staring at me. She has a bit of a different look now, but there’s no denying that it’s her. What an odd pairing of information for a logo. We see Shantae, the WayForward logo, and the Wii logo as well. Why are all three of these paired together? Could Shantae be making a return after a lengthy respite?

The most unfortunate thing is that many people don’t even know who or what Shantae is. WayForward’s Game Boy Color masterpiece Shantae was released at quite an awkward time. Nintendo fans were gearing up for the release of the Game Boy Advance, the new big brother of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. We were all foaming at the mouth to get the new portable that would match the quality of the SNES and than some. Just as the GBA was about to hit the market, Shantae finally made it to store shelves. The game was getting amazing reviews, but there was no other publicity to push it on consumers. Pair that with the focus on the GBA, and you have a recipe for disaster. Due to these unfortunate circumstances, many people missed out on Shantae. I don’t blame the consumer at all; they were most likely unaware that the game even existed. It just seems that Shantae was plagued with production issues that were out of WayForward’s hands.

If you haven’t played Shantae, you need to head over to eBay and pick yourself up a copy. This is a must have game for multiple reasons. First off, fans of Castlevania and Metroid (Metroidvania if you will) will love this game. You’ll be exploring a massive 2d world filled with dungeons, swamps, deserts, mountains, towns, and much more. You will be doing a lot of back and forth exploration, returning to old areas to collect items you couldn’t get before. You can access these previously unreachable areas through dances that Shantae learns. By doing a set of dance moves Shantae can transform into various animals that give her special abilities. Each new ability opens up new areas of gameplay. Shantae is also worth a look for technical merits alone. I feel very confident in saying that Shantae is one of the best looking games on the Game Boy Color. The colors are bright and vibrant, the attention to detail is astonishing for the GBC, and the animation is top notch. I still can’t get over how silky smooth the characters move. Even the soundtrack sticks out in my mind. So much was done with the timid GBC sound capabilities. There are tons of games out now that have soundtracks that don’t hold a candle to Shantae. All around, Shantae is a high quality product, and shouldn’t be missed by anyone. Hell, why do you think I rave about it so much?!

Due to poor sales, that was the only outing that Shantae saw. That didn’t stop the gang at WayForward from moving on with a GBA sequel. Even in the early stages, Shantae Advance looked to surpass the original in every way. Videos popped up on IGN that got me even more excited for the game. It helped me to believe that the project really would see the light of day. Unfortunately that never happened. That’s where I have been stuck as a Shantae fan for years now. From time to time I would wonder what became of the GBA sequel. When the DS first came out there was renewed hope that the game might resurface. As you all know, no such thing happened. That didn’t stop me from supporting WayForward’s other projects though. I picked up Sigma Star Saga which was an interesting yet flawed idea. The character designs closely resembled the art style of Shantae, which of course sparked my interest that much more. Still though, I hunger for that next Shantae adventure.

That brings us back to the email I got this morning. Now I know that WayForward is serious about developing for the Wii. The press release is decidedly cryptic, not stating any certain projects that the team is working on. It’s that logo that gets my hopes up. Why include Shantae in there…they know it will just tease their fans. Regardless of that, I started to think of the possibilities. I am not sure how I feel about the idea of a 3d Shantae. I don’t doubt the developers’ skills; I just tend to prefer 2d games. Of course, I started to picture Shantae coming back to life through a Wii Shop Channel download. That type of game would work perfectly as an original download for the Wii’s upcoming new games collection. We know that Impossible Mission is on the way, so that confirms the service. What a great way to release all those other Shantae projects that never saw the light of day! I did some searching to see what I could find on past Shantae projects, and I came upon a Wiki entry taken from and IGN article. I’ve only grabbed a couple paragraphs, but I recommend you read the entire post.

The GCN demo didn’t go very far beyond documents and preliminary engine work. But, somehow a typo got on Nintendo’s website listing Shantae GBC as Shantae “GCN”, and we started getting lots of questions. Later, a version of the Risky Waters doc was leaked from someone. When we got our Wii kits, re-imagining Risky Waters was one of our first steps. Risky Revolution is a sort of adventure/theme park ride hybrid. Imagine Small World with a melee weapon, and people keep getting out of the boat to belly dance.

So, what was a simple question has a very complicated answer. We’re still making Shantae “things”, like animations, models, engine work…but there is no collected effort to make a retail game. Wii and 360 downloads are a great way to escape the retail channels, and I’m hoping that will help bring some originality back to the more accessible systems like DS. I’d like to see Shantae DS distributed through the Wii Shop channel, straight to your DS. For now, the fans are keeping this thing alive. Please nag nag nag your favorite publishers with links to Shantae stuff. Send them the message that you want this game! And Mark, call Mom. She has rainbow cupcakes for you.”‘

Basically that says that WayForward is looking at every option the Wii and DS offer. Now we have yet another confirmation that WayForward is officially working on the Wii. Will one of these projects come to fruition? Once again I return to that logo, those beady eyes staring at me. There has to be something Shantae in the works…there just has to. I’ve been waiting to long to be teased once again. Wii downloads, DS demos, retail games…something. Shantae is itching to come back, and she’s already gotten her art overhaul. Something Shantae is always brewing at WayForward, but now I think we are going to get to see some of it.