A Boy and His Blob
Encyclopedia
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a 1989 video game developed by Imagineering for the Nintendo Entertainment System
(NES). The game was published by Absolute Entertainment
in North America and Europe and by Jaleco
in Japan. A Boy and His Blob follows an unnamed, male protagonist and his shapeshifting
blob friend on their adventure to save the planet of Blobolonia from the clutches of an evil emperor.
A Boy and His Blob is a platform
-puzzle game that puts the player in control of the boy; its gameplay revolves around feeding his blob companion different flavored jelly bean
s to change its shape into various tools in order to overcome obstacles and traverse the game's world. A Boy and His Blob was designed and programmed by David Crane
. Licensed by Nintendo
in the summer of 1989, development began and was completed in an intense six-week period. Crane has described the game's overall concept of a boy accompanied by a morphing blob as unconventional and wanted to try his own hand at implementing useful tools for the player.
Critical reception for A Boy and His Blob has been largely mixed. Though most reviewers agreed the gameplay was original, some felt it was poorly executed. The game won the 1989 Consumer Electronics Show
(CES) "Best of Show" and a 1990 Parents' Choice Award
. A Boy and His Blob was followed by a sequel on the Game Boy
titled The Rescue of Princess Blobette. After two failed attempts to bring the series to Nintendo's other handhelds over the years, a re-imagining of Trouble on Blobolonia
was developed by WayForward Technologies
and released by Majesco
on the Wii
in 2009. That same year, the original NES game was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console
service in North America and PAL region
s.
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a platform
-puzzle game. The plot involves a young boy and his alien
blob friend (named Blobert) on a quest to save the latter's home planet of Blobolonia, which has been taken over by an evil emperor who only allows his subjects a diet of sweets. The boy and Blobert must traverse the subways and caves beneath the Earth and gain the necessary items before traveling to Blobolonia and defeating the emperor. They must evade dangerous obstacles like falling rocks, stalactite
s, and stalagmite
s, as well as deadly, snake enemies. A Boy and His Blob is not a side-scrolling game
, but rather presents the player with a series of single, interconnected screens. Despite being a platform game, the player-controlled boy is limited to simply running left or right. The player cannot jump or swim, and if the boy falls too long of a distance, he will die on impact.
Though the player directly controls the boy, Blobert is controlled by the computer AI
. The player must rely on the shapeshifting
blob to cross gaps, reach higher platforms, and overcome the obstacles and enemies. Blobert can change into several different tools when the player feeds him flavored jelly bean
s. A licorice jelly bean, for instance, will change Blobert into a ladder, while an apple jelly bean will turn him into a jack. Whistling at Blobert causes him to change back to his original shape and continue following the boy. The player is encouraged to experiment with the jelly beans and their effects to navigate the puzzling game world. Scattered throughout Earth's caverns are various treasures and diamonds that increase the player's score and can be used to purchase vitamin
s at a drugstore located within the game world. Vitamins can be used in conjunction with a special "VitaBlaster" gun, which is in turn used on Blobolonia to complete certain tasks. Also found on the map are extra jelly beans and peppermint
s, which increase the player's lives.
. The game was chiefly designed and programmed David Crane
with help from his former Activision
colleague Garry Kitchen
. Kitchen was the president of the Activision spin-off company Absolute, which began self-publishing in 1988; Crane joined Kitchen at Absolute around the same time. Crane described the concept of a boy accompanied by a shapeshifting blob as "an off-the-wall idea". Crane stated that Blobert's design was heavily influenced by the characters Gloop and Gleep from the Hanna-Barbera
cartoon The Herculoids
. In terms of gameplay, Crane's goal was to advance the adventure genre as he had done with the Atari 2600
game Pitfall!
. Since the release of the sequel Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
, adventure games on the market had grown to include useful tools for players to collect and utilize in their environments. However, Crane found displayed tool inventories "not very elegant" and decided to implement tools in a different way. After coming up with the game's premise, a wishlist of the blob's object transformations was written and brainstormed with artists, who then converted them to computer graphics. Transformations were chosen based on how they would appear on screen due to the NES
's graphical resolution. According to Crane, objects such as the bridge and ladder were "a must", but many ideas were scrapped because their nature would not be immediately obvious to the player. Puzzles that could be solved using the objects were created after the various shapes were finalized.
A total of 14 jellybean flavors were implemented in the game. To ease the game's difficulty level
, the flavors were named specifically as either puns or alliteration
to help the player remember them. For instance, the punch-flavored jelly bean transforms Blobert into a hole, a play on the term "hole punch". A grape-flavored bean listed in the game's manual was only present in the version submitted to Nintendo. This flavor transformed the blob into a wall ("grape wall", a pun of Great Wall of China
) which would repel enemies. A Boy and His Blob proved to be "one of the most played games at Nintendo" once it was submitted to the company. In this earlier version, the player character could potentially become separated from the blob, thus making it impossible to proceed. A senior management member of Nintendo viewed this as a bug
, so Crane substituted the grape bean for a ketchup-flavored bean that would instead summon the blob to the boy's location.
A Boy and His Blob was officially licensed by Nintendo in the summer of 1989. Though standard NES games took six to eight months to develop, Imagineering completed A Boy and His Blob in a mere six weeks. Crane himself rented a room in a flophouse
near his office and put in several 16 to 20-hour days of the work on the project. After going without sleep for 48 hours in its last two days of earnest development, Crane flew to the CES
in Chicago
for trade demonstrations, then spent nights at his hotel fixing bugs. The game was released just prior to Christmas
in 1989 as Absolute's first game on the NES. Crane recalled the development process for Absolute's early games to be enjoyable, but explained that "under the rule of Nintendo, the publishing side of the game business was really tough", emphasizing how frequently game publishers went out of business in those years. The team was originally in talks with a writer-producer of the Transformers
animated features to simultaneously launch the A Boy and His Blob video game with a tie-in
toy and a film. However, the plans never came to fruition due to deadlines and difficulty in dividing production resources three ways between a game, toy, and movie. When A Boy and His Blob was released in Japan by Jaleco
in November 1990, it was retitled .
and Dragon
and Edward J. Simrad of the The Milwaukee Journal
all remarked the game as having fun, challenging gameplay and being a creative and original idea. The two reviewers of Mean Machines gave praise to the graphical quality of A Boy and His Blob, commenting, "Some of the backdrops are digitized and superbly coloured. The boy moves smoothly[and] realistically and the Blob himself is a masterpiece of animation." Simrad, who labeled the game as updated version of Crane's previous work Pitfall!, was not as impressed by the graphics, claiming that the programmer always preferred to use the available memory for the size of the maze.
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly
found A Boy and His Blob to be strictly average due to its few enemies and a lack of scrolling screens. Although they made similar, positive comments about its unique gameplay formula, one of the writers felt it "never fully realizes its potential". This opinion was echoed by Lucas M. Thomas of IGN
, who gave a more negative review of the game. "While the idea behind A Boy and His Blob was certainly unique, even praiseworthy," he explained, "the execution of the concept didn't exactly make for a very fun game." Thomas faulted the game's controls; its vast, empty environments; and a limited number of essential jelly beans to advance, leaving the player with "just the core gameplay gimmick of the blob's different transformations". 1UP.com
contributor Jeremy Parish predicted that the game's potentially frustrating, trial-and-error mechanics could subside once the player is over the learning curve and masters the limited toolset and simple interface.
As reported by Stuart Hunt of Retro Gamer
, "A Boy and His Blob proved to be a phenomenal success for Absolute Entertainment, going on to become one of the company's biggest hits and exceeding all the team's expectations." The game won "Best of Show" award for its debut at the 1989 CES. The advocacy group Parents' Choice Foundation awarded A Boy and His Blob with a Parents' Choice Award
in 1990 for "portraying 'Positive human values', 'High quality software', 'Intelligent design', and the 'Ability to hold the player's interest'." Designer David Crane was particularly proud of the latter honor, which he appreciated both before and after becoming a parent himself.
newspaper columnist Jason Poland attributed the inspiration of game's premise, in which a young boy befriends an outerspace being, to the central theme found in a slew of 1980s films including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
and The Last Starfighter
. The writer found this especially true for the former of the two features, in which the earthling protagonist supplies his alien cohort with candy. "Although free from any Jelly Belly
product placement," Poland explained, "A Boy and His Blob encompasses plot devices from every '80s buddy
sci-fi film and acts as an end cap to the entire film genre." The website GamesRadar
noted A Boy and His Blob as a milestone in gaming for having the first recognizable instance of an AI-controlled partner. Despite giving it such a low review score, IGN listed A Boy and His Blob as the 74th-best game on the NES, owing its inclusion to creative gameplay mechanics and a healthy mixture of action-adventure and platforming.
A sequel to A Boy and His Blob was released for the Game Boy
under the name The Rescue of Princess Blobette. The game once again follows the titular characters as they attempt to save a princess jailed within a castle tower. Majesco bought the rights to A Boy and His Blob after Absolute's closure. A Game Boy Advance
incarnation of the series titled A Boy and His Blob: Jelly's Cosmic Adventure was announced by Majesco in 2001. The game was ultimately cancelled. Majesco announced another sequel in 2005 as being in development for the Nintendo DS
by Skyworks Technologies, a company formed by Crane and Kitchen in 1995. The game's story was to take place six years after the conclusion of the NES release. It was to feature 3D models
, between 15 and 20 differently colored jelly beans, 15 levels, and a DS touchscreen feature for managing jelly bean inventory. However, Majesco's financial troubles delayed the game's release indefinitely.
A Wii
re-imagining of A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia simply titled A Boy and His Blob
was developed by WayForward Technologies
and published by Majesco in 2009. Crane was not involved in the new game's creation. That same year, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console
service in both North America and PAL regions. Another new title in the series was listed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2010 as being in development for the Nintendo 3DS
. WayForward later issued a statement that the listing was a mistake and that no new A Boy and His Blob was in production.
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
(NES). The game was published by Absolute Entertainment
Absolute Entertainment
Absolute Entertainment was a video game publisher based in Glen Rock, New Jersey and later in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Through its development house Imagineering, Absolute Entertainment produced titles for the Amiga, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive, Mega-CD, Game Boy,...
in North America and Europe and by Jaleco
Jaleco
is a Japanese video game publisher and developer established in 2006.The original Jaleco Ltd was founded in 1974. In 2006, it decided to become a pure holding company by renaming itself Jaleco Holding and splitting its video game operations into a newly created subsdiary that took its former name...
in Japan. A Boy and His Blob follows an unnamed, male protagonist and his shapeshifting
Shapeshifting
Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...
blob friend on their adventure to save the planet of Blobolonia from the clutches of an evil emperor.
A Boy and His Blob is a platform
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
-puzzle game that puts the player in control of the boy; its gameplay revolves around feeding his blob companion different flavored jelly bean
Jelly bean
Jelly beans are a small bean-shaped type of confectionery with a hard candy shell and a gummy interior which come in a wide variety of flavors. The confection is primarily made of sugar.-History:...
s to change its shape into various tools in order to overcome obstacles and traverse the game's world. A Boy and His Blob was designed and programmed by David Crane
David Crane (programmer)
David Crane is a video game designer and programmer.Crane started his programming career at Atari, making games for the Atari 2600. After meeting co-worker Alan Miller in a tennis game, Miller told Crane about a plan he had to leave Atari and found a company that would give game designers more...
. Licensed by Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
in the summer of 1989, development began and was completed in an intense six-week period. Crane has described the game's overall concept of a boy accompanied by a morphing blob as unconventional and wanted to try his own hand at implementing useful tools for the player.
Critical reception for A Boy and His Blob has been largely mixed. Though most reviewers agreed the gameplay was original, some felt it was poorly executed. The game won the 1989 Consumer Electronics Show
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
(CES) "Best of Show" and a 1990 Parents' Choice Award
Parents' Choice Award
The Parents' Choice Award is an award presented by the non-profit Parents' Choice Foundation to recognize "the very best products for children of different ages and backgrounds, and of varied skill and interest levels." It is considered a "prestigious" award among children's products, and has been...
. A Boy and His Blob was followed by a sequel on the Game Boy
Game Boy
The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...
titled The Rescue of Princess Blobette. After two failed attempts to bring the series to Nintendo's other handhelds over the years, a re-imagining of Trouble on Blobolonia
A Boy and His Blob
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a 1989 video game developed by Imagineering for the Nintendo Entertainment System . The game was published by Absolute Entertainment in North America and Europe and by Jaleco in Japan...
was developed by WayForward Technologies
WayForward Technologies
WayForward Technologies is a game development company based in Valencia, California. Founded in 1990 by technology entrepreneur Voldi Way, WayForward started by developing games for consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis, as well as TV games and PC educational...
and released by Majesco
Majesco Entertainment
Majesco Entertainment is a video game publisher founded in 1986.-History:Majesco first made a name as a reissuer of old titles that had been abandoned by their original publisher. By cutting the prices dramatically and, eventually, arranging the rights to self-manufacture games for both Nintendo...
on the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
in 2009. That same year, the original NES game was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console
Virtual console
A virtual console – also known as a virtual terminal – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some operating systems such as UnixWare, Linux, and BSD, in which the system console of the computer can be used to switch between...
service in North America and PAL region
PAL region
The PAL region is a television publication territory which covers most of Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe...
s.
Gameplay
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
-puzzle game. The plot involves a young boy and his alien
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
blob friend (named Blobert) on a quest to save the latter's home planet of Blobolonia, which has been taken over by an evil emperor who only allows his subjects a diet of sweets. The boy and Blobert must traverse the subways and caves beneath the Earth and gain the necessary items before traveling to Blobolonia and defeating the emperor. They must evade dangerous obstacles like falling rocks, stalactite
Stalactite
A stalactite , "to drip", and meaning "that which drips") is a type of speleothem that hangs from the ceiling of limestone caves. It is a type of dripstone...
s, and stalagmite
Stalagmite
A stalagmite is a type of speleothem that rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions and the deposition of calcium carbonate. This stalagmite formation occurs only under certain pH conditions within the underground cavern. The corresponding formation on...
s, as well as deadly, snake enemies. A Boy and His Blob is not a side-scrolling game
Side-scrolling video game
A side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the gameplay action is viewed from a side-view camera angle, and the onscreen characters generally move from the left side of the screen to the right. These games make use of scrolling computer display technology...
, but rather presents the player with a series of single, interconnected screens. Despite being a platform game, the player-controlled boy is limited to simply running left or right. The player cannot jump or swim, and if the boy falls too long of a distance, he will die on impact.
Though the player directly controls the boy, Blobert is controlled by the computer AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
. The player must rely on the shapeshifting
Shapeshifting
Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...
blob to cross gaps, reach higher platforms, and overcome the obstacles and enemies. Blobert can change into several different tools when the player feeds him flavored jelly bean
Jelly bean
Jelly beans are a small bean-shaped type of confectionery with a hard candy shell and a gummy interior which come in a wide variety of flavors. The confection is primarily made of sugar.-History:...
s. A licorice jelly bean, for instance, will change Blobert into a ladder, while an apple jelly bean will turn him into a jack. Whistling at Blobert causes him to change back to his original shape and continue following the boy. The player is encouraged to experiment with the jelly beans and their effects to navigate the puzzling game world. Scattered throughout Earth's caverns are various treasures and diamonds that increase the player's score and can be used to purchase vitamin
Vitamin
A vitamin is an organic compound required as a nutrient in tiny amounts by an organism. In other words, an organic chemical compound is called a vitamin when it cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from the diet. Thus, the term is conditional both on...
s at a drugstore located within the game world. Vitamins can be used in conjunction with a special "VitaBlaster" gun, which is in turn used on Blobolonia to complete certain tasks. Also found on the map are extra jelly beans and peppermint
Peppermint
Peppermint is a hybrid mint, a cross between the watermint and spearmint . The plant, indigenous to Europe, is now widespread in cultivation throughout all regions of the world...
s, which increase the player's lives.
Development
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia was developed by Imagineering, the in-house developer of Absolute EntertainmentAbsolute Entertainment
Absolute Entertainment was a video game publisher based in Glen Rock, New Jersey and later in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Through its development house Imagineering, Absolute Entertainment produced titles for the Amiga, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive, Mega-CD, Game Boy,...
. The game was chiefly designed and programmed David Crane
David Crane (programmer)
David Crane is a video game designer and programmer.Crane started his programming career at Atari, making games for the Atari 2600. After meeting co-worker Alan Miller in a tennis game, Miller told Crane about a plan he had to leave Atari and found a company that would give game designers more...
with help from his former Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
colleague Garry Kitchen
Garry Kitchen
Garry Kitchen is a programmer who is perhaps best known as the author of Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker for Commodore 64.He was also the president of Absolute Entertainment throughout the company's life, and then pulled the plug and became the founding president of Skyworks Technologies in 1995...
. Kitchen was the president of the Activision spin-off company Absolute, which began self-publishing in 1988; Crane joined Kitchen at Absolute around the same time. Crane described the concept of a boy accompanied by a shapeshifting blob as "an off-the-wall idea". Crane stated that Blobert's design was heavily influenced by the characters Gloop and Gleep from the Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
cartoon The Herculoids
The Herculoids
The Herculoids is a Saturday morning animated television series that was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The show debuted on September 9, 1967 on CBS...
. In terms of gameplay, Crane's goal was to advance the adventure genre as he had done with the Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
game Pitfall!
Pitfall!
Pitfall! is a video game released by Activision for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is the second best selling game made for the Atari 2600, with over 4 million copies sold.-Gameplay:...
. Since the release of the sequel Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns is a platforming video game originally released for the Atari 2600 video game console in 1984. It is the sequel to the popular Pitfall!. Both games were designed and written by David Crane and published by Activision...
, adventure games on the market had grown to include useful tools for players to collect and utilize in their environments. However, Crane found displayed tool inventories "not very elegant" and decided to implement tools in a different way. After coming up with the game's premise, a wishlist of the blob's object transformations was written and brainstormed with artists, who then converted them to computer graphics. Transformations were chosen based on how they would appear on screen due to the NES
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
's graphical resolution. According to Crane, objects such as the bridge and ladder were "a must", but many ideas were scrapped because their nature would not be immediately obvious to the player. Puzzles that could be solved using the objects were created after the various shapes were finalized.
A total of 14 jellybean flavors were implemented in the game. To ease the game's difficulty level
Difficulty level
In general usage, difficulty level refers to the relative difficulty of completing a task or objective.In computer and video games, the term specifically delineates the ease or difficulty with which an average user may complete a game or a part of a game. Arcade games as well as many early console...
, the flavors were named specifically as either puns or alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
to help the player remember them. For instance, the punch-flavored jelly bean transforms Blobert into a hole, a play on the term "hole punch". A grape-flavored bean listed in the game's manual was only present in the version submitted to Nintendo. This flavor transformed the blob into a wall ("grape wall", a pun of Great Wall of China
Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...
) which would repel enemies. A Boy and His Blob proved to be "one of the most played games at Nintendo" once it was submitted to the company. In this earlier version, the player character could potentially become separated from the blob, thus making it impossible to proceed. A senior management member of Nintendo viewed this as a bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
, so Crane substituted the grape bean for a ketchup-flavored bean that would instead summon the blob to the boy's location.
A Boy and His Blob was officially licensed by Nintendo in the summer of 1989. Though standard NES games took six to eight months to develop, Imagineering completed A Boy and His Blob in a mere six weeks. Crane himself rented a room in a flophouse
Flophouse
A flophouse , doss-house or dosshouse is a place that offers very cheap lodging, generally by providing only minimal services.-Characteristics:...
near his office and put in several 16 to 20-hour days of the work on the project. After going without sleep for 48 hours in its last two days of earnest development, Crane flew to the CES
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
for trade demonstrations, then spent nights at his hotel fixing bugs. The game was released just prior to Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
in 1989 as Absolute's first game on the NES. Crane recalled the development process for Absolute's early games to be enjoyable, but explained that "under the rule of Nintendo, the publishing side of the game business was really tough", emphasizing how frequently game publishers went out of business in those years. The team was originally in talks with a writer-producer of the Transformers
The Transformers (TV series)
The Transformers is an animated television series depicting a war among giant robots who could transform into vehicles, other objects and animal-like forms. Written and recorded in America, the series was animated in Japan and South Korea...
animated features to simultaneously launch the A Boy and His Blob video game with a tie-in
Tie-in
A tie-in is an authorized product based on a media property a company is releasing, such as a movie or video/DVD, computer game, video game, television program/television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property...
toy and a film. However, the plans never came to fruition due to deadlines and difficulty in dividing production resources three ways between a game, toy, and movie. When A Boy and His Blob was released in Japan by Jaleco
Jaleco
is a Japanese video game publisher and developer established in 2006.The original Jaleco Ltd was founded in 1974. In 2006, it decided to become a pure holding company by renaming itself Jaleco Holding and splitting its video game operations into a newly created subsdiary that took its former name...
in November 1990, it was retitled .
Reception
Critical reception for A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia has been mixed. Many reviews published during the game's original release positively regarded the game's premise of a boy advancing by using a blob companion as a tool-set. Staff for the magazines Mean MachinesMean Machines
Mean Machines was a market-leading multi-format gaming magazine released between 1990 and 1992 in the United Kingdom. Its style was popular with gamers of the time for its irreverent humor, anarchic editorial tone and style, and its sometimes outrageously outspoken reviews.- Origins :In the late...
and Dragon
Dragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...
and Edward J. Simrad of the The Milwaukee Journal
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state...
all remarked the game as having fun, challenging gameplay and being a creative and original idea. The two reviewers of Mean Machines gave praise to the graphical quality of A Boy and His Blob, commenting, "Some of the backdrops are digitized and superbly coloured. The boy moves smoothly
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly
Electronic Gaming Monthly
Electronic Gaming Monthly is a bimonthly American video game magazine. It has been published by EGM Media, LLC. since relaunching in April of 2010. Its previous run, which ended in January 2009, was published by Ziff Davis...
found A Boy and His Blob to be strictly average due to its few enemies and a lack of scrolling screens. Although they made similar, positive comments about its unique gameplay formula, one of the writers felt it "never fully realizes its potential". This opinion was echoed by Lucas M. Thomas of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
, who gave a more negative review of the game. "While the idea behind A Boy and His Blob was certainly unique, even praiseworthy," he explained, "the execution of the concept didn't exactly make for a very fun game." Thomas faulted the game's controls; its vast, empty environments; and a limited number of essential jelly beans to advance, leaving the player with "just the core gameplay gimmick of the blob's different transformations". 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
contributor Jeremy Parish predicted that the game's potentially frustrating, trial-and-error mechanics could subside once the player is over the learning curve and masters the limited toolset and simple interface.
As reported by Stuart Hunt of Retro Gamer
Retro Gamer
Retro Gamer is a British magazine, published worldwide, covering retro video games. It was the first commercial magazine to be devoted entirely to the subject. Although launched as a quarterly publication, Retro Gamers soon became a monthly...
, "A Boy and His Blob proved to be a phenomenal success for Absolute Entertainment, going on to become one of the company's biggest hits and exceeding all the team's expectations." The game won "Best of Show" award for its debut at the 1989 CES. The advocacy group Parents' Choice Foundation awarded A Boy and His Blob with a Parents' Choice Award
Parents' Choice Award
The Parents' Choice Award is an award presented by the non-profit Parents' Choice Foundation to recognize "the very best products for children of different ages and backgrounds, and of varied skill and interest levels." It is considered a "prestigious" award among children's products, and has been...
in 1990 for "portraying 'Positive human values', 'High quality software', 'Intelligent design', and the 'Ability to hold the player's interest'." Designer David Crane was particularly proud of the latter honor, which he appreciated both before and after becoming a parent himself.
Legacy
Since its original release, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia has received miscellaneous recognition from the media. In 2005, University of HoustonUniversity of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
newspaper columnist Jason Poland attributed the inspiration of game's premise, in which a young boy befriends an outerspace being, to the central theme found in a slew of 1980s films including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
and The Last Starfighter
The Last Starfighter
The Last Starfighter is a 1984 science fiction adventure film directed by Nick Castle. The film tells the story of Alex Rogan , an average teenage boy recruited by an alien defense force to fight in an interstellar war. It also featured Dan O'Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, Robert Preston, Norman...
. The writer found this especially true for the former of the two features, in which the earthling protagonist supplies his alien cohort with candy. "Although free from any Jelly Belly
Jelly Belly
The Jelly Belly Candy, or simply Jelly Belly, is the maker of The Jelly Belly and other candy, formerly known as The Herman Goelitz Candy Company...
product placement," Poland explained, "A Boy and His Blob encompasses plot devices from every '80s buddy
Buddy film
The buddy film is a film genre in which two people of the same sex are paired. The two often contrast in personality, which creates a different dynamic onscreen than a pairing of two people of the opposite sex. The contrast is sometimes accentuated by an ethnic difference between the two...
sci-fi film and acts as an end cap to the entire film genre." The website GamesRadar
GamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
noted A Boy and His Blob as a milestone in gaming for having the first recognizable instance of an AI-controlled partner. Despite giving it such a low review score, IGN listed A Boy and His Blob as the 74th-best game on the NES, owing its inclusion to creative gameplay mechanics and a healthy mixture of action-adventure and platforming.
A sequel to A Boy and His Blob was released for the Game Boy
Game Boy
The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...
under the name The Rescue of Princess Blobette. The game once again follows the titular characters as they attempt to save a princess jailed within a castle tower. Majesco bought the rights to A Boy and His Blob after Absolute's closure. A Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
incarnation of the series titled A Boy and His Blob: Jelly's Cosmic Adventure was announced by Majesco in 2001. The game was ultimately cancelled. Majesco announced another sequel in 2005 as being in development for the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
by Skyworks Technologies, a company formed by Crane and Kitchen in 1995. The game's story was to take place six years after the conclusion of the NES release. It was to feature 3D models
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
, between 15 and 20 differently colored jelly beans, 15 levels, and a DS touchscreen feature for managing jelly bean inventory. However, Majesco's financial troubles delayed the game's release indefinitely.
A Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
re-imagining of A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia simply titled A Boy and His Blob
A Boy and His Blob
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a 1989 video game developed by Imagineering for the Nintendo Entertainment System . The game was published by Absolute Entertainment in North America and Europe and by Jaleco in Japan...
was developed by WayForward Technologies
WayForward Technologies
WayForward Technologies is a game development company based in Valencia, California. Founded in 1990 by technology entrepreneur Voldi Way, WayForward started by developing games for consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis, as well as TV games and PC educational...
and published by Majesco in 2009. Crane was not involved in the new game's creation. That same year, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console
Virtual console
A virtual console – also known as a virtual terminal – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some operating systems such as UnixWare, Linux, and BSD, in which the system console of the computer can be used to switch between...
service in both North America and PAL regions. Another new title in the series was listed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2010 as being in development for the Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 3DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo. The autostereoscopic device is able to project stereoscopic 3D effects without the use of 3D glasses or any additional accessories. The Nintendo 3DS features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS series software, including Nintendo DSi software...
. WayForward later issued a statement that the listing was a mistake and that no new A Boy and His Blob was in production.
External links
- A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia at Nintendo.comNintendois a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....