Shantae and the pirate's curse is coming to Wii U as well as 3DS

Wow some news of this game! It'll be out sometime this Summer they're saying and there's a nice new trailer and well... I hope it won't be ridiculously expensive.

Shantae 1/2 genie hero transformation art

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1236620800/shantae-half-genie-hero/posts/611961

Some nice art here. There's also some voting going on for upcoming transformation stuff. The spider girl is cute even though I thought that was a different character. Shantae just looked like a normal spider in the first game.

Shantae Half Genie Hero is funded, nice!

WayForward's Kickstarter was a success! Not that there was any doubt or anything. I mean, Shantae has a wonderful fanbase and we all want to see more games with her.

Shantae and Monster World similarities are coincidental (but co-exist peacefully of course!)

From that interview I linked to yesterday I found that what I previously thought was clearly an influence on Shantae was purely coincidental!

Matt mentions Monster World 4, which also stars a cool girl character. I thought it was Monster World 2 (Dragon's Trap/Dragon's Curse etc) that influenced Shantae! My reasoning of course is the animal transformations, which is a theme that's common to both.

It turns out though that no game in the Monster World series were so much an influence on Shantae as the likes of Castlevania were! Purely coincidental that they had similar themes and spookily so!

Again, go watch the interview! It's really interesting!

Really interesting interview with Matt Bozon by Jonathan Holmes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDQUa_96N7E

I think Jonathan Holmes is sound out! I don't browse his work regularly but when something of his catches my interest, I tend to enjoy it very much.

Matt Bozon then, the guy at WayForward who created Shantae, is someone who's really fascinating. This interview is a good lengthy one that talks about not only the creation of Shantae but the way the company has been really sensible and prolific throughout the years. Definitely worth a watch.

Ever wish Shantae was on a console using console power?

It seems Shantae Half-Genie Hero was made for you if your answer is "Yes!" to this question!

Gotta say, the Kickstarter trailer looks very pretty. The only disappointing thing was that the page mentions Metroid and Zelda influences but nothing about Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap (or Dragon's Curse).

That may not matter when talking about new audiences... New audiences might like being sold on the song from the trailer, or the genuinely cool protagonist or just how darn gorgeous the game looks.

Shantae: Pirates Curse looks like chapter 2

Remember waiting for Risky's Revenge? It was supposed to be chapter based and this looks very much like it and possibly chapter 2 of it.

If that is the case in some respect like design or plot or something then I'm very happy to see it alive!

Another Shantae sequel; a fourth game in the series

The series is getting prolific! Strangely enough it'll be on other formats as well as Nintendo ones. This one will be done in the DuckTales Remastered engine. It is looking lovely!

Shantae's available in Ireland now too!

Shantae and EarthBound released on the same day?! Yesterday was a good day! Remember to check this out on GBC 3DS VC! Go on!

Shantae GBC's coming to 3DS VC this week! (official Ireland debut!)

It'll also be reasonably priced at 5 Euro! Horray!

Shantae GBC coming to 3DS VC this Summer

This'll be nice. The DSi sequel is great but the original is even better.

Matt Bozon tweeted: "Shantae Virtual Console update: looks like mid June-early July. Will keep you posted!"

Of course this is probably the American VC. I'm sure a European release will follow shortly though and it'll be extra nice for us because the original never came out over here.

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse announced by Nintendo Power!

Well the magazine isn't going quietly and that's a nice thing. The last few issues of Nintendo Gamer had very similar covers to each other apart from the Rhythm Paradise Wii one. Anyway...

New Shantae is always good! :) I love these games (especially the first one) and it's a nice treat to see this new one be announced. It's a direct sequel too... I wonder if this is one of the "episodes" that WayForward were originally working on when they first announced Risky's Revenge all those years ago?

Another thing, I hope this is reasonably priced. Charging me 12 Euro for Risky's Revenge and then porting it to iOS —a range of machines that don't have any buttons— while charging less than 2 Euro was a really stupid idea. If you did it the other way round, the people who paid 2 Euro wouldn't think that your game has shit controls.

I completed Shantae Risky's Revenge!

Great game this! I played the first Shantae recently too so I can compare them.

Generally the sequel has a lot of technical improvements over the GBC version in almost every way except for the save system. In the GBC game you could continue with your status when you got a game over where as with this one you have to restart back at the last save point with all progress lost since you last saved. This forces you to save more often.

The music is amazing. Most are remixed tracks from the GBC game but there's a few outstanding ones like the Scuttle Town music. It's very impressive and you really feel like you're in a busy Arabian Nights themed town.

I don't care much for the dialogue or about the fact that Shantae is a half genie. Wonder Boy never spoke — I see Shantae as being like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap — but at least you can skip the dialogue.

This sequel isn't as long or as difficult as the first game but it still achieves the high fun factor, which is the most important thing.

One nitpicky thing but it's something that really irks me and that is one of her expressions during the cutscenes, namely the sarky 'tudey raised eyebrow one. It's yucky and it's nothing like her other cute vivacious expressions. It's like some bored Garfield expression. She has an expression like this in the last game but she wears it with a bit of sass and banter and... well it's like I was saying, more vivacious!

I completed Shantae!

Wow that game was hard! It was satisfying to finally beat though. There's absolutely no hand holding with this game; you gotta go find everthing by yourself and fight through hellish hordes of baddies to get to wherever you need to go, just like the earlier Metroids or the Wonder Boy sequels or the earlier Zeldas.

Now I can go enjoy the sequel! I'd also like to read up on the development of the original game; there's lots of stuff online like interviews and old archived websites. There's no end to fan gushings about it either so that'll be fun to read up on too.