Shantae - A Gaming Diary

This is a series I've really wanted to tackle for a while.  I really like the Shantae games, but I haven't really spent a ton of time with them overall, only playing through Risky's Revenge and about half of 1/2 Genie Hero in the past.  And about 1/5 of the original, I got through the first dungeon at least I'm pretty sure.  But for the most part, the original, Pirate's Curse, and Seven Sirens have kind of been rotting on my shelf for many years at this point.  And with the sixth game now releasing and subsequently being a disaster, thanks LRG, I spent a lot of years defending you and now it's just all bad all the time.  I have my issues now with the "forever physical" crowd in general but like, the worst thing about the panic over the death of physical media is how many people are getting conned by organizations like LRG because they want things physical.  I digress.  I look forward to hopefully doing diaries and reviewing all the other Shantae games but for now, let's talk about the original Shantae!

Review

Shantae is a good little video game.  The godmother of all indie Metroidvanias, Shantae's greatest strength is in its presentation.  During a playthrough, you will probably find yourself asking at least a couple times "how did they do this on a Game Boy Color".  In many ways it feels very modern, Shantae does not feel overly different from how it feels now on modern consoles for better or for worse.  But there are a couple notable pain points, namely in the boss design, and for as much as Shantae elevates the hardware, the hardware ultimately lets down Shantae, as it has numerous gameplay quirks caused by the Game Boy screen crunch.  That being said, I really enjoyed my time with Shantae, despite its flaws, and look forward to playing the remaining games in the series eventually.  7.2/10 

Diary

6/7/25

Man, Shantae looks incredible.  Like, in the context of Game Boy Color games, mind, it obviously doesn't look incredible by today's standards.  But it's really amazing how detailed and expressive the character sprites are given the hardware.  A lot of them look pitch perfect to how they look today, it's crazy.  And the towns feel so alive because of the clever use of just a handful of sprites in an over the shoulder view, it's so wild to me how impressive this game is.  The over-the-shoulder segments in particular just look like they could've come out a modern Shantae game.  Uncontroversial take: Shantae is the prettiest Game Boy game of all time.

Maybe, hear me out, this is the good ending.

This game is a lot harder than I expected.  Like, I'm starting to realize why this has sat in my "unfinished" pile for so long, other than having a broken 3DS. specifically with a broken B button.  It's rather difficult to play games without a b button, especially Game Boy games.  So, a big reason is that save points are pretty few and far between, so you have to redo a lot of progress if you run out of lives.  And, you know, I say this every blog entry, I am bad at every video game.  So I've had to redo a lot.  But just like, Shantae struggles in combat in this game, she has such a problem with basically every enemy and I know it's because they want to incentivize buying upgrades and items but it's been an uphill climb so far.  But we persevere, I want to beat this game before I start doing the other Shantae games I've either never played or never finished.  Thankfully the game is pretty generous with continuing, you restart with all the money, items and progress you had upon death.

This is the first instance of ret-2-go in the game, and it's from an NPC. 

It's really amazing to me how identical this game is to modern Shantae.  Like they got it in one.  The humor is on point, every character really feels like themselves, the visuals are basically identical other than having to be on a Game Boy Color.  And WayForward's unique visual style is already so recognizable, I had to laugh at points because they knew what they were about.  Gotta respect it, tbh.  I love this visual style so much and it's just insane to see how it's already so present from the outset.  And the music, man, so many iconic tracks that are already present.  I'm always amazed Burning Town originates on the Game Boy, it's such a complex track for the hardware.  It's kinda sad that it took so long for WayForward to make Shantae a success, I wonder what happens in the alternate timeline where for some reason people buy a Game Boy Color game in 2002.  Would Shantae be in Smash?  Who knows!?

6/8/25

I'm really starting to get into a flow with this game.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still dying a considerable amount, but it's steadily becoming less.  I feel like I understand the gameplay more now than I did previously.  A big thing is that I'm getting better about using items, before I was hesitant to use them because everything was dying to Shantae's hair in one or two hits but now it's like "I'm just making this harder on myself for no reason".  I also found a minigame I can get a lot of gems on so I can now just grind out money and not have to worry, that's nice!  The Up + B input to use items feels a little finnicky but I'm getting there.  I also got this really cool kick move that's been putting in a lot of work, it gives me a better option for dealing with stuff in the air than "time your hair attack so that it hits the enemy in the air."  And the couple health upgrades I've picked up have been really helpful.

I'm also just, generally, getting better at traveling by night.  Shantae has a day-night cycle in it, which is very impressive for a Game Boy game that it can even handle the natural shifting between day and night, this game feels so ahead of its time I swear.  But at night, enemies becomes way more dangerous, getting a buff to their health and, maybe this is a placebo because of it, feeling more aggressive and dangerous.  A large part of Shantae has been learning which fights are worth fighting and which ones you should try and run from.  It doesn't always work out that I CAN run from them, mind, the Nagas have sonar attacks which do chase you down, but I'm bouncing out of combat at any chance I get if the opponent is too tough.  Unfortunately it seems like the Metroid-esque enemy infinite spawn points were only for the first bit, as far as I've seen, so we doing this for real now, training wheels off.

I got the silly little monkey!  I can guarantee you if I had heard about this game back when it was new, I would've pushed for it so hard finding out that it was a game where you shapeshift into animals.  I almost bought Tak 2 when I was a kid, having never played the first one or even knowing what it was, just because the ads promised shapeshifting into animals.  Probably for the best I didn't, mind, I had a bad habit of getting frustrated as a kid and blaming the game for being bad.  I really like that Shantae uses her shapeshifting powers in place of traditional upgrades.  There's just something way more cute and fun about being able to transform into a monkey as opposed to getting a high jump, wall jump, and morph ball.  Who doesn't love a monkey!?  Exactly, best morph ball in a gaming.  I don't remember if I said that about the chicken too in Guacamelee, I might be repeating jokes.

I'm sorry this entire section was just screenshots of cute girls. 

I've been kind of tempted to replay Risky's Revenge after this, the only Shantae game I've ever finished.  Yes, the only one I've ever finished is the second one, which was the obscure DSiWare release.  It's been so many years that I'm really curious how I feel about it vs. the other Shantae games now.  Because so far, I feel like I'm strangely liking this one more?  Like not a lot more, but definitely more.  And I know they cover a lot of similar, if not the same, beats so, it'd just be interesting, y'know.  I should add that to my list.  Or maybe I just do it after this, get the Shantae tag I made for this to have some use right away.  We'll see, I guess, I do have a system for these things.

6/11/25

The color dungeon was really cool.  Like, I know it's kind of a silly thing to be impressed by, oh, a dungeon built around color puzzles, Game Boy Color games NEVER have those.  But I liked the mechanics of having certain enemies that only interact with certain colors and not being able to interact with other colors, it's a neat concept.  And I love the theming that it's an electric dungeon, and all these enemies are completing a circuit with Shantae when she's a specific color, it's super clever.  The only disappointing part about this dungeon is really the problem all these dungeons have: there's no map.  I get lost very easily in these dungeons because I'm never quite sure what rooms I have been in/cleared.  This dungeon being an entirely vertical design did not help either.

I am definitely farther now than I have been previously.  I know when I played this in the past, I never got to the second transformation, likely because I was bad.  The Naga Wasteland is a pretty big difficulty spike from the forest, y'all.  But now I have the cute little elephant, always excited about a game with an elephant.  I like how strong the elephant feels like right out the gate.  Its ability to easily one shot certain foes is such a handy trick and the game shows it off immediately by having the dungeon be full of these incredibly strong rock monsters.  Especially in a game that makes you feel so squishy, as Shantae often does, it makes you feel so powerful to suddenly have a big tank that can crash through enemies, great game design.

Rottytops is in this game!!!  I kinda figured Rottytops would show up eventually because so far every notable character from later entries has showed up, but it's still nice to actually see her.  Rottytops is literally my favorite Shantae character, she's so cool and so unique and I love her dynamic with Shantae.  Like it's so interesting to have an intelligent, hot zombie with an irreverent sense of humor and a clear attraction to the main character that either makes her want to kiss her or eat her brains, it's so fun.  And I love her caravan of intelligent zombies so much as well, gives this cool nomad vibe to her, it's fantastic.  Her racing minigame can go die though.  Or I guess undie?  Re-die?  I don't know, it's been the worst part of the game so far and the first point in it where I've felt the need to save scum.

I've talked a lot about how ahead of its time Shantae feels, how it honestly barely feels different from the modern games, but I'm starting to butt heads with the Game Boy-ness of it.  The screen crunch is ROUGH, I feel like I'm never safe jumping from a higher platform because I'm not sure what is at the bottom.  For a lot of the game this wasn't a huge issue but now that I'm entering the late game, as it were, the platforming is becoming significantly more precise and as such my potential for just dying from a jump I couldn't see increases.  This isn't a Shantae specific problem, of course, the hardware let down tons of Game Boy games and, especially Game Boy platformers.  I genuinely think Super Mario Land 2 would be up there with like World and 3 in the discussion of greatest 2D Mario if it wasn't for the screen crunch making it just categorically worse.

6/12/25

Just an absolute demon.

We got spooky in this part.  You'd think the last part would be the spooky part on account of the zombies, and it kinda was, but this part had an entire haunted house themed dungeon.  Lots of spooky skeletons adorning the walls and cobwebs everywhere and ghostly creatures, it was a really cool atmosphere and I enjoyed it a bunch.  It also had a really fun gimmick where enemies would walk on by you no problem if you hid in the shadows giving it a bit of a stealth vibe to it as well, it was neat.  But then after I finished up that, I move onto the next area, assuming we're out of the spooky, and then there's all sorts of actual demons all over the place!  Just horrible shadow goblins everywhere!  Just an unusually spooky part of the game!

The spider powerup in Shantae is such an interesting one, I'm curious how they did it on the Game Boy, tbh.  The spider clings to the background and climbs around on webs or walls or what have you.  It's a very unique take on wall climbing but more than that, it's just incredibly impressive that it works.  WayForward did sorcery on the Game Boy Color and it's kinda crazy because their output before Shantae is not super noteworthy.  Like you'd expect from how advanced Shantae seems, that Shantae was the magnum opus of a developer who had been defining the GB/GBC for years and new intimately what they could do with it but like.  WayForward made very few real video games before Shantae, it was primarily activity packs and interactive storybooks with a couple licensed platformers in there.  Though bizarrely their adaptation of Wendy the Good Witch is actually kinda fire, containing an ahead of its time gravity shifting mechanic.  They got so much out of so little.

My face when I have to do a boss fight in this game.

I don't think I like any of the boss fights.  Granted I've only fought 3 of them so far so maybe the game turns it around in the close but like.  Boss fights seem to go on for way too long, and it's not always clear if what you're doing is correct.  This is kind of a general issue with Shantae, it's not always super obvious if your attacks are effective because of the wide range of enemy animations present in the game.  Like it's neat that basically every enemy type has its own specific flair to how they get hit, but sometimes enemies flash when they're being damaged and other times they get knocked back and other times they get stunned and still other times nothing happens, really.  This wide range of enemy responses to getting hit makes it pretty ambiguous if what you're doing is even working, and this is especially true during boss fights.  Every boss so far I've been like "okay, something is happening when I hit the boss but it doesn't feel like the boss fight is necessarily progressing, maybe there's a puzzle here I'm missing" and so I try to change up my strategy to solve the puzzle and it turns out, no, I just need to hit them for like 10 minutes.  Go figure!

I feel like next time I update this, I'll have beaten the game.  I don't have a lot left and as I've mentioned previously in my post on Guacamelee!, I have this weird thing with Metroidvanias where once I'm able to fight the final boss, my interest in going back through the game and collecting stuff decreases considerably.  It's unfortunate for Shantae though that you need the final transformation from the fourth dungeon to really go through and get 100%, meaning you're locked out of a lot of upgrades until just before you can face the final boss.  I do kind of want to go through and do another run through with the last transformation though, as I'm pretty sure it can fly?  So it'll make going back through the world really convenient, presumably.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, though!

6/14/25

I indeed got the ability to fly!  The Harpy transformation is, other than the screen crunch obviously, the first time I feel like this game feels old.  You have to aggressively button mash to keep yourself in the air, which even playing on a more ergonomic device is tiresome.  I cannot imagine playing with this transformation on original hardware, I feel like that would be rough.  But it makes traversal so much easier, I can just fly over entire maps.  The game tries to put enemies high up so you can't just fly over everything to get to places faster but it doesn't usually work out that way, the Harpy is just really overpowered and makes backtracking through the games' world so much easier, if I wished to go back into it and 100% the game someday it'd be a breeze.

I'll just say what we're all thinking, Risky wore it better. 

I don't know if we are supposed to be surprised by the reveal that Risky Boots is the "Bandit Town Protector Genie", I know from later Shantae games that subtlety is not exactly the Shantae series vibe.  They'd make a lot of very direct jokes about how it's clearly Risky in disguise and nobody notices it.  But I did not immediately recognize that fact because the Game Boy graphical limitations actually do a good job of hiding that she is just Risky in disguise.  It is a very interesting little nuance to the game that definitely would not exist in later entries and I just think that's a little neat.  It wasn't until she refused to tell us her name that I was like "oh okay, this is Risky, the color palette makes sense now, lol."

Forgot to take a screengrab of the DK barrels, have this weirdo.

The ice dungeon ran into the screen crunch problem big time.  The core gimmick of the dungeon is DK style barrels where you launch from barrel to barrel, trying to reach your final destination without hitting a wall or launching into a pit.  The main problem is that you can't really see anything that far out from you, meaning that you're basically always blind launching.  I don't really mind having to memorize patterns, mind, like it'd be boring if it was just very obvious on where you needed to go.  I just don't like that I can launch myself directly into death without knowing beforehand because the screen is small.  The ice dungeon boss, also real bad, the biggest instance of "game being unclear" I've encountered thus far.

Thankfully the final area of the game was pretty strong.  The Tinkerbat Factory is your classic "use all your skills" dungeon, it has various obstacles that you must (or at least, it's intended for you to) use specific transformations to progress.  There's pipe mazes that you can only get through as the monkey, there's obstacles needed to be smashed by the elephant, there's a wall climbing section for the spider, etc.  I'm always fond of this kind of dungeon, I like when a game really lets you use all your tools at the end to really show how well the player knows their skillset.  I just kinda wish it went on longer, tbh.  Paradoxically, despite the rest of the game being like it is, the Tinkerbat Factory is short and easy, with a checkpoint every other room that you reload from if you game over.  And it's not like a dungeon where you're locked in, either, it's a place you can leave from at any time, it's just weirdly generous for a game that has otherwise been not unkind but definitely a little extreme at times.

The final boss rules though.  It starts out as a puzzle fight that pretty effectively communicates to you what you have to do, a rarity in this game, against this giant steam punk mech.  And it uses the monkey form a lot which it's the best form so good, you know.  But then the second phase is just a one v one with Risky that's really fun, Risky is kind of a tricky boss fight, as you would expect from a pirate.  She does a lot of switch-ups, she'll prep an attack and then be bluffing or she'll go from nothing to attacking without giving the player a wind up.  It's very in character for her to constantly be switching up, I like it a lot.  It also is a boss that both tests the players' pattern recognition and reaction time, I'm not good at the latter but it's nice to go at the end "how good are you at the game".  Or you can be like me and just use your items.  Risky's got nothing on a spinning death ball.

And we end off the game with Shantae giving up everything she ever dreamed of!  To run it back, Shantae has a lot of insecurity about the fact she's only a half-genie.  She feels like she's lying to people and that she's somehow inadequate because she isn't a full genie.  And after saving the world from Risky Boots, as well as freeing the genies that were imprisoned in each of the dungeons, the genies give her the option to ascend to full genie-hood, the one thing in her life that she has always wanted.  But doing so means sacrificing her life, she will no longer be bound to the mortal realm and may never see her friends and family again.  So with a heavy heart, she chooses to decline their offer, stating that she would rather become a full genie in a way that allows her to keep the things most important to her.  The genies send her back to the realm of the living, and credits roll.

Shantae was fun!  I think presentation-wise, it is a great swan song for the Game Boy/Game Boy Color, it manages to do so much on the system that seems impossible.  Shantae is a character that has long been pseudo-associated with Nintendo, and I think looking at this game you can kinda see why.  Shantae manages to manipulate what a console can do far beyond what seems possible, in the same way that, despite the Mario Galaxy games being on inferior hardware, they look just as good as some of the HD games that were concurrent.  Unfortunately, that same system lets Shantae down a little bit, the screen crunch can make gameplay rough, the very simplified control means it's a bit annoying to do everything that it wants to do, and just in general you can tell it's not as big as it wants to be.  Other than a couple pain points though, it's a fun experience that I'm glad to have finally gotten through and I look forward to playing more Shantae in the future!  7.2/10