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| Source // PlayStation |
A Nintendo might as well be the home of the platformer. Sure, every other console, handheld, and computer under the sun has had platformers, but there's something about those that appear on Nintendo hardware that stands out.
Maybe it's because of Mario standing head and shoulders above the rest. Maybe it's because the generally weaker hardware has pushed developers to work within limitations and direct their creativity and skill towards only two dimensions.
A long time ago, the NES was the home to a small boy and a smaller blob, and two decades later, the Wii provides the platform for the puzzle-platformer A Boy and His Blob to stand out once more.
Grab yourself some jelly beans and put on your thinking caps. You're going to need both.
Fond Memories
Back in the 1990s, I had a Game Boy like many a '90s kid. I had such classics as Mercenary Force and F1 Race, and my sister had David Crane's The Rescue of Princess Blobette Starring A Boy and His Blob. At least I think she did. We as a family owned it, for sure, but I disown this game. It wasn't my piece of trash. I had good games.
Nobody could get past the first screen. Nobody. For a game with only a D-pad, A and B buttons, and Start and Select buttons, that was impressive.
I emulated it 30 years later (Holy Shit it can't be 30 years already can it?!) and even with my 'advanced' skillset and knowledge of video gaming history, I can't get any further than I did back in the '90s. The best I could do was have the Blob disappear.
Honey = Hummingbird. Good to know. Don't know where he's hummingbirded off to, though. This screen is burned into my memory as 'that stupid Game Boy game'.
It was a sequel to A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia for the NES, and all these years later, it's been reimagined as simply A Boy and His Blob.
Frustrations
A Boy and His Blob opens with a cartoony intro accompanied by music that doesn't quite seem to fit the action, and nothing else. No sound effects at all, no speech, no monster noises, just music that renders it 'not mute'.
I'm already coming into this game with some emotional baggage and shouldn't. Let's give it a chance. I'm evening playing the PC port so I don't have to worry about Wiimote waggling. Treat this as a puzzle platformer all of its own. They might have learned from the past. They must have.
A meteor wakes us up from our treehouse slumber. The moon is full, the glowworms are out, and the forest isn't that scary at night, is it? It's even got treasure chests in it, not that you can do anything with them. Your only buttons appear to be moving left and right and jumping, and your jump isn't particularly impressive for a platform hero.
You can jump over these spooky creatures, but you sure can't land on them. One hit kills don't make for the friendliest of games that presumably appeal to kids, but I've definitely learned not to go near these folks.
Just a hop, skip, and a jump later, we learn how to push blocks to open up new routes. How a child can't scramble up a chest-high wall, I don't know. They just get stuck into challenges like that, don't they? Maybe the weight of his enormous head is so much that he has to take things more carefully than his friends. Whatever the reason, push blocks to keep moving.
So how the hell do we push this one? Again, surely a small child would squeeze through the gap and be done with it, but big 'ead over here isn't going to risk getting stuck. Unfortunately, he is stuck, down in what is effectively a hole, in the forest, in the middle of the night, where monsters lurk. Good luck, kid.
Not knowing how to progress, memories of the Game Boy game came flooding back into my head, and my frustrations mounted. It's not happening again. Surely not.
My options were to bang my head against the wall or head on over to YouTube to look for a tutorial. It wouldn't take me long. It's not like I'm stuck three-quarters of the way into an entire game here...
What's next? Where's the bloody blob that ought to be by my side?
Oh, here he is, emerging from the crash site unscathed, good for him. Our introductions are brief, and surprisingly the boy does have an actual boy voicing him. I forget what he says. It wasn't much. There's no "What are you? Did you fall from the sky? My name's boy." None of that.
There is a button to hug your new best friend, though.
Now, let's see what this little guy is capable of. There's an enemy back there. What have you got?
No, please don't run away, deal with it. Last time I was here I died. I don't trust my ability to jump. Don't make me do this.
We make it back to the treehouse where Blob regurgitates the chests he's eaten on the route back, and they magically open and release some orbs of light that float to the top of the treehouse and seem to turn into the back half of an alligator.
What in the actual fuck is going on?
We can't investigate as the ladder is too high to reach, but Blob helps himself to a jelly bean and transforms into a ladder to help us out. What a great friend. Probably deserves a hug, but by the time I get up to the attic and celebrate, we fall asleep and call it a day.
I've tried all of these, Blob. I've tried them repeatedly, with levels of button mashing that borders on Angry German Kid. This shit is ridiculous. First I can't see how to break a block, now I can't even wake up. Who is broken here, you or I?
Final Word
P2 will tell you that I wasn't a happy bunny after my experience with A Boy and His Blob, and she's right. It can go to hell and stay there as far as I'm concerned.
I don't like feeling dumb in games. I definitely don't like games that make me question whether they're broken. A Boy and His Blob gives me both, a perfect storm that will quickly culminate in "this isn't worth any more of time, no matter how good someone says it is."
It was immediately uninstalled after I watched the next YouTube video, where the boy springs to life like nothing unusual is happening. I don't even want to know where the problem lay. Probably between the keyboard and the chair, as is often the case, but let me have this one, eh? Let me get my anger out. Maybe I should fire Wii Sports Resort back up, and dive into the Swordplay section.
I'm not going to return to A Boy and His Blob in any way, shape, or form, and yes that's some sort of irony when the blob's sole purpose is to take on many different shapes after being fed the appropriate flavour jelly bean. I know how it works, I congratulate the designer on the idea, that's fine. A hug for you.
Actually, you know what, I am going to return to A Boy and His Blob - the Game Boy version. Surely there's a video of that on YouTube. Maybe after all these years, I'll finally know how to get to the second screen - and it'll probably be a 14-year-old kid that tells me how it's done, too.
At least I've not come to associate jelly beans with A Boy and His Blob. I wouldn't want to ruin jelly beans.
Fun Facts
The hug is the one leftover from an entire emotion system, where you'd have to maintain Blob's happiness because he now acts a little more like a dog. D'awww.
A Boy and His Blob, developed by WayForward Technologies, first released in 2009.
Version played: PC, 2016.