Shantae

Upon its release, Shantae received favorable reviews but struggled to find an audience due to its launch a year after the Game Boy Color was succeeded by the Game Boy Advance. Despite this, it has since been recognized as a "cult classic" and is frequently included in lists of the best Game Boy Color games. The game later spawned a successful series of sequels. Re-released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 via the Virtual Console emulator, marking its debut in Europe. The original version was re-released for the Nintendo Switch in April 2021, with PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions released in June 2023.

• Title — Shantae • Developer — WayForward • Publisher — Capcom Entertainment WayForward Limited Run Games • Director — Matt Bozon • Producer — John Beck • Designer — Matt Bozon • Programmer — Jimmy Huey • Writer — Matt Bozon • Artist — Matt Bozon • Composer — Jake Kaufman • Series — Shantae • Platforms — Game Boy Color Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 • Released — June 4, 2002Nintendo SwitchApril 22, 2021PlayStation 4/5June 2, 2023 • Genre — Platform, Metroidvania • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — The player character, Shantae, traverses a forest area. Shantae is a platform-adventure game, in which players play as the titular Shantae, a half-genie who must travel across various areas in order to stop the evil lady pirate Risky Boots. Shantae's default attack involves using her hair like a whip. Shantae can also use gems obtained from defeated enemies to purchase items, such as life-restoring potions and damaging items with various uses, as well as learn upgraded combat moves. The game features five towns, with various areas filled with enemies and obstacles in between them. In order to progress through the game, Shantae must seek out various characters who will open up dungeons, with each dungeon containing a guardian genie that will teach Shantae a new dance. By using these dances, Shantae can transform herself into different animals, including a monkey that can climb on walls, an elephant that can smash objects such as boulders and tree stumps, a spider that can climb across webbing in the background, and a harpy that can fly in mid-air. Shantae must use these abilities to reach new areas or find hidden items. The game features a day and night cycle, with enemies becoming stronger during the night. During nighttime, players can collect hidden fireflies, with a reward available for collecting them all. Other collectible creatures include Warp Squids, which are squid-shaped items hidden within dungeons, and which can be given to larger mother squids in each town in exchange for the ability to instantly warp there. Finally, heart vessels can be obtained to increase Shantae's maximum health. The game also features various minigames, such as dancing or gambling, in order to earn additional gems.

The magical kingdom of Sequin Land was once protected by Guardian Genies, who won the land years of peace. With time, genies fell in love with humans and had children with them, half-genies with limited magical powers. For obscure reasons, genies ultimately vanished, with their children taking their place as protectors of the land. One of these half-genies, Shantae, is appointed as the guardian of the small fishing village of Scuttle Town, though the town's mayor does not realize she is not a full genie. Scuttle Town comes under attack by Risky Boots, the self proclaimed "Queen of the Seven Seas", and her pirate crew of Tinkerbat creatures. The pirates steal a prototype steam engine from Mimic, a former adventurer and Shantae's adoptive uncle. Mimic explains that if Risky retrieves four magical "elemental stones", she could power up the steam engine and create an unstoppable weapon out of it. Shantae resolves to travel across Sequin Land, determined to retrieve the steam engine and the elemental stones and stop Risky. With help from her sparring partner Bolo, her childhood friend Sky, and new zombie acquaintance Rottytops, Shantae gains access to dungeons containing each of the elemental stones. Upon retrieving the final stone, she is ambushed at the dungeon's exit by Risky, who steals the stones and escapes. Using a magical Spy Scope, Shantae locates and is transported to Risky's island hideout. There, Risky reveals she has constructed a massive robot, the Tinkertank, which she plans to use to conquer Sequin Land. Shantae destroys the Tinkertank and defeats Risky in a final duel, before both flee as Risky's hideout collapses. As Shantae escapes, she is magically abducted to a place called the Genie Realm, where the genies offer her a chance to remain with them as a reward for her courage. Realizing this would mean never seeing her friends again, Shantae declines and is sent back to Scuttle Town. Though disappointed that she had to destroy the steam engine, Mimic reassures her that it was probably for the best. Shantae decides to tell the mayor that she is a half-genie, who assures her that he is fine with it.

The game was considered for development by WayForward as far back as 1997. An archived version of the company's official website showcases a very different approach to the game, which was at the time considered for development on PC or PlayStation, in full 3D with traditionally animated characters moving in a 3D background. Shantae was presented as a troubled genie born without magic powers, who had to save the world from the Jins, powerful beings once sealed who escaped at the beginning of the game and planned to drain all magic from the world. Back then, her magic was capable, as envisioned by Erin Bozon, the original creator of the character, of summoning animals, but transformation was already planned, as Shantae could turn into a harpy. Her dances could also launch attacks and she had different outfits with different characteristics. In the idea of Matt Bozon, who created the game's universe based on Erin's character, at the beginning, the game was planned for the SNES. He and Erin pitched the game with help from veteran programmer Jimmy Huey, who worked with WayForward at the time. After the completion of Xtreme Sports, Voldi Way, the founder and owner of WayForward, greenlit a Game Boy Color version of the game. As Huey had already built a graphics engine for Xtreme Sports, this engine was adapted to suit Shantaes needs. This allowed the game to showcase rare effects on GBC games, like parallax scrolling and transparency effects. In the first four months of development, the team created most of the animation, and Huey programmed an art-capturing tool that could take full-colored animation frames, turn them into three-color chunks and reassemble the whole on the GBC's screen.

The Game Boy Game Pak for Shantae needed 4 megabytes of ROM and battery-backed RAM to work properly, making it expensive to produce. This factor deterred some publishers, alongside the fact that launching a new intellectual property was considered dicey. WayForward tried to find a publisher for years, before Capcom eventually picked the game for release. Capcom, however, held the release for months, during which the Game Boy Advance was released. It is rumored that the game had only one run of 20–25,000 copies. WayForward saw when the game was played on the Game Boy Advance, the console's screen had a tendency to darken the colors, so they added a Game Boy Advance enhancement that brightened the screen and added a few bonus features.

In 2000, the sound was developed using the Musyx audio format, but WayForward chose to switch during development. The soundtrack featured about 20 songs at the time, and was composed by Jake Kaufman. Kaufman ultimately used the Paragon 5 GameBoy Tracker to create the music. Paragon 5's CEO, Paul Bragiel, served as music producer, and Stephane Hockenhull performed music replay. The soundtrack to the game was released in January 2019 by Fangamer in a red vinyl format, with a limited edition purple variant published by Limited Run Games.

Precise sales figures for the game have not been made public, but according to Bozon, it sold poorly; he said that he had heard that 20–25,000 copies of the game were produced, which did sell out, but that a second print run did not get made. Matt Bozon has refused to blame Capcom, the publisher of the game, for responsibility in the game's failure. This was despite Capcom holding it for 8 months after completion, with the game finally releasing when the Game Boy Advance was already in its first year of existence. He says he went in "very naive", believing that if the game was good, it would sell anyway. Bozon believed that from a creative standpoint, he never really settled on a target audience, with the character being "iconoclastic", "too sexy to be a kid's brand, and too girly for a male gamer brand". Also, before the game was even released, Bozon claims that he had come to understand anyway that the game "would probably not sell", as during WayForward's search for a publisher, many market analysts were skeptical at the idea of having a female lead character, and Bozon ultimately acknowledged that they probably "genuinely knew their markets". He still did not give up, as he felt that Shantae had to exist, "even if it was just to reach out and see if there was an audience reaching back."

Several plans for a Shantae sequel were made, including Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution for the Game Boy Advance, and Shantae: Risky Waters for the Nintendo DS. On September 15, 2009, a sequel titled Shantae: Risky's Revenge was announced, and revealed as a downloadable DSiWare title on Nintendo of America's 2009 Holiday lineup, with a tentative 2009 Q4 release date. Details on the 3-part episodic sequels were revealed in the November 2009 issue of Nintendo Power. However, plans for the episodic release were cancelled, and the game was instead released as a stand-alone sequel for DSiWare on October 4, 2010. The game was later ported to iOS, Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. A third game, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, was released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop on October 23, 2014. Later the game was also released on Wii U, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Amazon Fire TV. A fourth title, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch; it is the first HD game in the series. The game was successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter and PayPal, receiving nearly $950,000, more than doubling its initial goal. A fifth game, Shantae and the Seven Sirens, was released for Apple Arcade in 2019, and for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020. The previously canceled sequel, Risky Revolution, was later released in 2025 as the sixth game in the series.