Probably one that, like Shantae, owes a tremendous debt to Metroid and Castlevania. Thanks to the rise of independent publishing, you can't swing a dead cat at a games convention with hitting an angry ASPCA representative playing some kind of retro platformer. '90s-style 3D platformers in the Mario style have become rarer than side-scrollers were in 2002. These days, though, it's a different story. It wasn't perfect, but by god, it existed, and that was enough to make it remarkable. While Shantae lacked a certain level of balancing one might have hoped for in a game constructed in this current millennium, its ebullient visuals and obvious affection for 8-bit greats made it a breath of fresh air in an era in which that style of game had grown effectively extinct. Still, its very scarcity - not just in terms of quantities shipped but in terms of its alarming lack of contemporaries - made it precious. Shantae saw the light of day, but only barely it appeared on a defunct platform and in such tiny numbers that the cartridge alone now sells for more than 10 times its original price. Sprites? Who needs 'em! Side-scrolling? Nowhere near as cool as wandering around in virtual spaces collecting several thousand pointless doodads! Especially for classic-style 2D action platformers.īack then, those games seemed a dying breed, having vanished in the revolutionary onslaught of Super Mario 64's radical three-dimensionality. When Shantae debuted back on Game Boy Color in 2002, the world was a very different place. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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