GBA Preview | Shantae Advance

Shantae's back in this adventure quest game for the Gameboy Advance, now in development by WayForward Technologies. The nefarious lady-pirate Risky Boots has rigged a subterranean carousel beneath Sequin Land, and is ready screw things up with a worldwide revolution. Shantae must lean more hair-whip attacks, belly dances, creature transformations, and magical moves than ever before if she hopes to defeat Risky and her host of evil minions! It's up to everyone's favorite genie girl to save the day! Shantae Advance features:

An innovative rotating world where Shantae can switch from the back yard to the front yard to overcome enemies and obstacles... and even mix and match lands together for complex navigational puzzles.

Be sure to keep it here for the latest developments...Meanwhile, make sure you read the preview of the forthcoming GBA game below!

Picture the scene, it's the 4th June, 2002 and a new GameBoy Colour title hits the shop shelves. This game is Shantae, a title that has been in development for over two years at Way Forward studios, and one of the last ever GBC games released onto the market. Now, as you may recall, a certain new wonder-handheld system from Nintendo had now been out for a year, thus almost completely voiding the sales of all GBC and certainly ensuring that new title development dried-up faster than...um...something very dry! So when Capcom
came along and decided to take a risk on this critically-acclaimed title by publishing Shantae for Way Forward, did it change matters at all? In short, no. It came out in limited numbers, and even then was basically overlooked by everyone.

But things are about to change. Way Forward took heart from the praise that Shantae received by the bucketload and have chosen to not abandon the cute little half-genie by bringing her swirling back, this time on the GameBoy Advance. Therefore, it is hoped that now on a level-playing field, rather than a dead console, Shantae's blend of Castlevania and Metroid gameplay will shine through and reach the high level of sales it truly deserves.

This time around the GBC follow-up will feature graphics in a similar vein to the first title - but just as Shantae pushed the GBC to its limits, Shantae Advance (a working title, by the way) will utilise some of the GBA's extra horse-power. The original quest featured over 50 levels of play, plus mini games - and this new version is to be an even larger quest than the last! Players can expect more labyrinths, enemies and locations to explore, as well as a special four-player battle mode. Only one cartridge is required to access this option, where two-four players can compete and battle in the rotating environment of the game - another example of Shantae Advance clearly pushing the handheld's hardware to its limits!

Advanced gameplay mechanics will once again be the order of the day, although this time players will be able to the genie-girl between the foreground and background whilst moving along the side-scrolling levels in order to carry-out the allotted tasks. A feature that makes a welcome re-appearance from the original is that of the transformation capabilities that Shantae has. She can morph into a bird, elephant, monkey, or mermaid so she can fly, dig, climb and swim through the different levels and complete the set challenges.

Developer Way Forward has not announced when the new Shantae game will launch, or even which company is likely to publish the title (although all eyes will be on Capcom regarding this matter). There is still some way to go in terms of overall development, but as more details become known you can be sure that Cubed