Starring: A Boy and His Blob The Rescue of Princess Blobette tells the story of a young, male protagonist and his blob companion as they attempt to rescue the latter's girlfriend, the titular Princess Blobette. The damsel in distress has been imprisoned by the Antagonistic Alchemist within the highest tower of the Royal Castle on the planet Blobolinia. Like its predecessor, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, The Rescue of Princess Blobette is a puzzle-platformer in which the player directly controls the boy as he is followed around by the blob, who is controlled by the computer AI. The pair must navigate the various passages and floors of the castle to locate and free Blobette. The boy can only run back and forth, cannot jump or swim, and will die if he falls a long distance or comes in contact with dangerous objects such as flame throwers and sewer serpents. However, the blob can be made to turn into useful tools when he is fed jelly beans of various flavors. Each flavor causes a different transformation. For example, feeding the blob a tangerine jelly bean will change him into a trampoline, which the boy can then use to reach high platforms. The player may also locate extra jelly bean sacks and numerous, optional treasures. Finding five peppermints will increase the player's extra lives by one.
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Have you ever played a game that was so bad, so fundamentally flawed, so agonizing to try to even complete, that it makes you wonder how anyone would ever like it to begin with? Well, that would be me and my experience with A Boy and His Blob. Conceptually, it is very creative, and I imagine if given a proper platform and proper time to develop it, it probably would’ve been a great game, and dare I say, maybe even a cult classic. However, as it stands, it is a fucking mess of an experiment that makes me never want to even consider playing it ever again, or even watching it. And you wanna know what’s the worst part about it? IT GOT A SEQUEL. I don’t know why David Crane hated kids this much to make a follow-up to that game, but anyway, we did get a sequel known as The Rescue of Princess Blobette.
Now, the original game on the NES could barely properly function without a lot of unneeded frustration and clunkiness, so imagine how all of that would work on THE GAME BOY. Yeah, that is basically this whole game, and it is also pretty fucking terrible. If I were to compare the two games, I would actually consider this game to be sliiiiiiightly better then the original, but I cannot bring myself to rate it the same or higher then the original, because while it does remove some problems, it adds several more to balance it out on the garbage scale.
The story has been devolved to “save girl”, which is about as much as I could expect from this series, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but all of the sprites and animation is pretty much on par with the original game, so I will give it credit for that, the music is THE EXACT SAME FUCKING MUSIC FROM THE LAST GAME, with no new tracks or changes whatsoever, the control is not just as terrible as the original game, but it is EVEN WORSE this time around, and the gameplay is pretty much the same as the original game, which is probably the worst aspect that holds it back.
The game is still a puzzle platformer, where you and your blob friend travel along in a dungeon, avoiding obstacles and solving “puzzles” throughout, while using different types of jellybeans to get treasures and items. Now, before I get into completely tearing this game apart, I will say that, in terms of the puzzles and progression through the game, it is a lot less irritating and specific. Everything is a lot more simplistic and easier to get around (for the most part), so I will give it that. There aren’t too many new additions to gameplay, or that many new different jellybeans to try out, but I am thankful for that, because any new additions could have probably screwed it up even more then it already is.
NOW we will get into completely tearing this thing apart. In terms of the problems, a lot of the same problems from the last game return in this one, so if you wanna know the extent of them, go read my review of that game. For a short summary though, the AI, while being advanced for the time, is completely imprecise and hard to control, the movement of your main character is erratic as fuck and incredibly hard to get a hang of, and while finding the treasures and solutions is (somewhat) easier this time around, it is still a guide game in the worst sense. I assume that the original game got pretty good reviews back in the day, as well as sold pretty well to get this sequel made, so that’s why the developers didn’t even consider trying to fix any of those issues, even though they were clearly there the whole time.
Like I mentioned earlier though, this game does fix something, that being that the puzzles this time around are thankfully much less aggravating and item specific, making progression much more doable (in a sense of the word). However, that is screwed up now, because there is practically just one solution to all puzzles in this game: TRAMPOLINE. I swear, almost every single puzzle, collectible, or location you need to get to in this game requires you to use the trampoline power with the blob in order to solve it, and I don’t need to tell you that constantly using the same incredibly clunky and unpredictable trampoline physics made me wanna go find a trampoline in real life… and bounce on it instead, because it would be a lot more fun then this game ever was.
It truly astounds me, because whenever it comes to the games I review that takes a series from the NES and puts it onto the Game Boy, I usually point out how the game turns out being pretty much the exact same as the original game, which some could see as a problem, but I don’t really mind all too much. However, if there was one series that definitely needed a MASSIVE gameplay overhaul in order to make a more unique and even better experience, it was definitely this one. And yet, here we are; they made it, I am mad, and I hope this boy and his blob die a horrible and painful death.
Overall, while it does make the “effort” to try to fix some elements that were bad in the original, the entire product still ends up being a complete travesty of programming, and is without a doubt one of the worst Game Boy games I have ever played in my life. But thankfully, this is the last game in the series, and THANK GOD for that. Yes, I am aware there is a remake of the original game that was made by WayForward, but I trust those guys to actually have competent game design, so that doesn’t concern me. So, let us all collectively forget that these two games exist, and move on with our lives.
Game #236
Now, the original game on the NES could barely properly function without a lot of unneeded frustration and clunkiness, so imagine how all of that would work on THE GAME BOY. Yeah, that is basically this whole game, and it is also pretty fucking terrible. If I were to compare the two games, I would actually consider this game to be sliiiiiiightly better then the original, but I cannot bring myself to rate it the same or higher then the original, because while it does remove some problems, it adds several more to balance it out on the garbage scale.
The story has been devolved to “save girl”, which is about as much as I could expect from this series, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but all of the sprites and animation is pretty much on par with the original game, so I will give it credit for that, the music is THE EXACT SAME FUCKING MUSIC FROM THE LAST GAME, with no new tracks or changes whatsoever, the control is not just as terrible as the original game, but it is EVEN WORSE this time around, and the gameplay is pretty much the same as the original game, which is probably the worst aspect that holds it back.
The game is still a puzzle platformer, where you and your blob friend travel along in a dungeon, avoiding obstacles and solving “puzzles” throughout, while using different types of jellybeans to get treasures and items. Now, before I get into completely tearing this game apart, I will say that, in terms of the puzzles and progression through the game, it is a lot less irritating and specific. Everything is a lot more simplistic and easier to get around (for the most part), so I will give it that. There aren’t too many new additions to gameplay, or that many new different jellybeans to try out, but I am thankful for that, because any new additions could have probably screwed it up even more then it already is.
NOW we will get into completely tearing this thing apart. In terms of the problems, a lot of the same problems from the last game return in this one, so if you wanna know the extent of them, go read my review of that game. For a short summary though, the AI, while being advanced for the time, is completely imprecise and hard to control, the movement of your main character is erratic as fuck and incredibly hard to get a hang of, and while finding the treasures and solutions is (somewhat) easier this time around, it is still a guide game in the worst sense. I assume that the original game got pretty good reviews back in the day, as well as sold pretty well to get this sequel made, so that’s why the developers didn’t even consider trying to fix any of those issues, even though they were clearly there the whole time.
Like I mentioned earlier though, this game does fix something, that being that the puzzles this time around are thankfully much less aggravating and item specific, making progression much more doable (in a sense of the word). However, that is screwed up now, because there is practically just one solution to all puzzles in this game: TRAMPOLINE. I swear, almost every single puzzle, collectible, or location you need to get to in this game requires you to use the trampoline power with the blob in order to solve it, and I don’t need to tell you that constantly using the same incredibly clunky and unpredictable trampoline physics made me wanna go find a trampoline in real life… and bounce on it instead, because it would be a lot more fun then this game ever was.
It truly astounds me, because whenever it comes to the games I review that takes a series from the NES and puts it onto the Game Boy, I usually point out how the game turns out being pretty much the exact same as the original game, which some could see as a problem, but I don’t really mind all too much. However, if there was one series that definitely needed a MASSIVE gameplay overhaul in order to make a more unique and even better experience, it was definitely this one. And yet, here we are; they made it, I am mad, and I hope this boy and his blob die a horrible and painful death.
Overall, while it does make the “effort” to try to fix some elements that were bad in the original, the entire product still ends up being a complete travesty of programming, and is without a doubt one of the worst Game Boy games I have ever played in my life. But thankfully, this is the last game in the series, and THANK GOD for that. Yes, I am aware there is a remake of the original game that was made by WayForward, but I trust those guys to actually have competent game design, so that doesn’t concern me. So, let us all collectively forget that these two games exist, and move on with our lives.
Game #236
Kind of like a straight to DVD sequel that nobody remembers but still alright.