I first played A Boy and His Blob many years ago following one of my frequent trips to the rental store. As a child, I found the premise of a jellybean-scarfing, shape-shifting blob fascinating. As an adult, my enthusiasm for the concept has not lessened at all. Ideas like this one are absolutely what video games are all about.
Although I played the original game quite a bit, even in my youth I couldn't help but feel the execution was a little off. The hit detection was horrible, there was really no direction in the story, and many of the experiments that the development team tried with the blob's various forms simply fell flat.
Looking at the possibilities in the remake's debut screenshots, however, I find myself overtaken with the same excitement I felt when I was first introduced to the concept in 1989:
Gallery: A Boy and His Blob
Thanks to the recent release of LIT, I'm pretty confident in the ability of WayForward to give us something worth playing. In addition, twenty years of industry game development between the first Blob and this one will surely result in a better realization of the original vision - particularly in the mechanics that were so frustrating back then.
A Boy and His Blob will hit the Wii this fall, at which point we'll find out whether my optimism is justified.
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