What do you get when you cross belly-dancing, monkey-based platforming, and more Aladdin iconography than Disney lawyers could shake a legal stick at? Well, some funny looks, for sure; but you'd also get Shantae, one of the biggest success sto🌌ries in independent game development of the past two decades.
1𝄹68澳洲幸运5开奖网: The 10 Best Genies In Video Games
If we had three w෴ishes, we'd wish for three more fantastic video game genies.
Initially conceived as a collaborative project between indie extraordinaire WayForward and Capcom, the former opted to continue the plucky half-genie lass' adventures long after the latter had moved on. Under their guidance, Shantae has hip-swayed and hair-whipped her way through five mainline games, and they're (almost) all modern classics.
5 Shantae
When the original Shantae hit the GameBoy Colour in 2002, it did so far past the end of the system's lifecycle, that perhaps doomed it to obscurity from the outset. WayForward was absolutely struggling to find its footing here, but a lot of the basic elements players love about the franchise are indeed present, from the Metroidvania structure and lavish animation to the animal transformations, and the charmingly eccentric characters all put in appearances.
Sadly, though, that's where the positives end, because the camera is craned so far in on Shantae that, unfortunately, it makes for a nightmarish and limited-view platforming. Top this off with some labyrinthine overworld design, unrelenting difficulty spikes, and a total lack of any mapping or guidance system, and you are more-or-less totally fine skipping over this title. Better things await!
4 Shantae: Risky's Revenge
After Capcom dropped the IP, WayForward shopped their purple-haired golden girl around for the better part🌟 of a decade, but there were no immediate biters – perhaps because the first game failed to make any real dent. However, Shantae eventually found a home in the DSiWare shop and hit the handheld in the holiday of 2009, showing far more refined graphics and animations with greater fluidity, all while maintaining the stylish pixel art of the original title.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Best Platformer Games Of All Tim﷽e
The platformer is one of the oldest and most beloved genres of all time. If you're a f💫an of them, these are the titles yoꦡu NEED to play.
Jake Kaufman delivers a stellar selection of banging tunes for the soundtrack, and even the writing is funnier. Regarding the gameplay, the world now flows together with much more cohesion, save points are liberally dispensed, and there are so many NPCs dropping progress hints that the only way your direction could b🐈e any clearer would be colossal neon arrows.
3 📖 Shantae: Half-Genie Hero ဣ
Half-Genie Hero represents a bit of an experimental period for the franchise because, after three straight Metroidvania titles, WayForward opted to go for a slightly different route and went for a conventional, straight platformer. Gone are the joined-up overworld and dungeons, and instead, Shantae's mate Sky has her pick from a list of stages on a world map.
WayForward attempts to mix in some of the series' prior trappings despite this linearity, and while you can easily beat each of the five stages in less than an hour, the game's duration is padded out by characters in the central hub that demand various progress-barring items to be delivered. Get ready to revisit that same damn burning town, the mermaid factory, et al up to three times to nab everything, and while it does start to grate, it's certainly mitigated at least in part by a handy-dandy warp dance.
Half-Genie Hero is buoyed immeasurably, however, by its graphics, as the devs had a real handle on the appearance of this universe at this stage, and the bouncy 2D hand-drawn look has yet to be topped. Kaufman's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:infectious, danceable beats also return – and, as a value proposition, its generous six DLC campai🃏gns make it more than worth a look.
2 Shanta꧋e and The Seven Sirens ඣ
After the mixed fan reception to Half-Genie Hero's sudden diversion from the series' norm, WayForward course-corrected with 2019's Seven Sirens. Initially made available on the Apple Arcade, this is a truly fab adventure that combines the best parts of all that came before it, marrying the great art style of Half-Genie Hero to the Metroidvania goodness we'd come to expect.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 9 Best Mermaids In Video Games
Thesꦫe underwater undine are anything but underwhelming!
Over the course of the adventure, you'll mingle with other half-genies for the first time, which builds on the lore (we still don't, however, get to see Shantae's mum.) The exploration and combat are as tight and responsive as they've ever been, and the addition of fully animated anime cutscenes done by Studio Trigger themselves elevates the whole package.
1 Shantae and the Pirate's Curse
Pirate's Curse is not only the peak of what the Shantae franchise has to offer but also a masterclass of platforming game design in general. This installment is often cited as the definitive Shantae entry, and it's evident why: poking around in all its nooks and crannies feels sublime, and the art style strikes a marvelous balance between Half-Genie Hero's dazzling smoothness and the pixels of Risky's Revenge.
Narratively, it takes a bold move, as Shantae is forced to team up with Risky Boots when a greater evil threatens all of Sequin Land. At the end of Risky's Revenge, Shantae's powers are sapped, so she needs to rely on Risky's pirate equipment, and the cutlass, boots, and jumping cannon all lend unique quirks to the platforming.