Thanks to Ziggurat for the review code

Title: A Boy and His Blob Retro Collection
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $9.99
Release Date: 10/27/2023

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Story

In this double pack of retro adventures, you take control of a young boy who must guide a blob back to his alien planet and overthrow an evil king, before rescuing his lost love, Princess Blobette! All done through the power of jelly beans, of course.

Presentation

Remember the Bill and Ted set? Remember how thin and barebones that compilation was on the presentational front, with limited options, a basic UI, and weird quirks and bugs with the wrapper? Unfortunately, the Boy and his Blob set also goes with a very similar set of features for its compilation, meaning that there’s basically nothing in terms of extras or bonuses.

You have two screen scaling options to choose from, both of which are serviceable, but sadly the GB title lacks the extra screen scaling features from Xtreme Sports, meaning that the cool Dot Matrix filter/border combo doesn’t really look that great with the two scaling options you have here, and the NES game’s pixel perfect scale just makes the image laughably tiny, with a lackluster CRT filter and some basic borders to choose from.

Speaking of borders, the cool GBC/GB border styles from the prior two Carbon releases return, but just like in those games, they do not persist upon exiting out of the game, so every time you load up a title you have to toggle on the border of your choice again and again. You don’t have to do this with the filters or the screen size, and I’m completely scratching my head as to why this is still a persistent bug with the Carbon Engine several games in. It really shouldn’t be that hard to have the games save your border of choice upon backing out of them, and it just makes me opt to not use any borders at all if they’ll just keep vanishing.

On the plus side though, when bringing up the menu, (and the games will let you know they have a menu every time you boot them up or load a save state) you can view the current level maps for each game, making it pretty handy considering both titles have confusing areas to navigate, with the NES game in particular being very mean about this, and this feature singlehandedly makes things a lot better if you get lost.

Sadly, outside of a barebones how to play screen, there’s nothing in terms of manual/cart scans, detailed instructions on what each jellybean does, or any sort of game description, which seems especially confusing when you take into the account the resume of the guy who led these two games and how these titles even include their Japanese versions, which should a very rad addition, but one that won’t make any sense if this is your first time encountering them, due to the lack of said context. They just exist and the main character looks different, that’s all this set will demonstrate.

You also have a music player, but for reasons I’ll mention in a bit it is pretty much useless and even then, the versions of the songs in this player are quieter than the main menu’s loop of the song. There’s also a credits option, but it’s completely mute and will leave you in awkward silence if you decide to read it.

Now for how the games themselves look and sound, and well, if you know anything about David Crane, you’ll know that he was a pretty big deal in the Atari era, making some wonderful games like Pitfall. He had a distinctive character style for his 2600 games, and even in this NES game released years after that era, A Boy and his Blob looks incredibly basic, with decent work on the backgrounds but super simple sprites that wouldn’t look out of place in a 7800 game. Thankfully, that isn’t a bad thing, as the game still has a cute charm to it, and the blob that accompanies you even has a goofy expression on its face the entire time, switching to a frown if you misfire a jellybean at it. The game may not have too much visual variety, but I at least find it charming still, and one that leads it to being pretty memorable.

For the Game Boy game, imagine the NES title, but with simpler backgrounds and a black/green color scheme, and you have your sequel game. The sprites are almost identical and they’ve been scaled to fit on the portable screen, with a map made specifically for this game in mind. The new locale of the castle is pretty fun to look at and better than the dull caves of the original game, but otherwise Princess Blobette isn’t really that much of a visual downgrade or upgrade from the NES prequel, and at least the similar style gives both games in this set a connected identity.

The Japanese versions have a pretty radical change though, with the simple looking boy swapped out for an uncanny redesign that has much better animation frames than everything else in the game, and was the only sprite edit made to these two titles, meaning Blobert still looks just as goofy as he always has been, leading to a clashing style. I do find these versions to be pretty neat however, and I’m glad they were included, even if it’s annoying there was no context given in the collection itself.

Now when it comes to the soundtracks to both of these games… Whoo boy, that’s where you can sense the Atari-era design the most, as both titles have a microscopic amount of music. You have your title theme, a death theme, and a main theme that loops on end, over, and over, and over again. Thankfully, the song is pretty catchy, but even a good song that plays throughout the entire game will get on your nerves after a while, so be prepared. The GB title uses the same set of music, just pitched a bit differently due to the different hardware (though it does lack the alternate version that plays on the home planet from the NES game, just sticking with one version from start to finish)

Sound effects are mostly fine, being pretty few and fair between and consisting of little much than a simple whistle now and then or hitting the ground after failing a jump, but by some baffling error, the NES game has a sound emulation error.

See, when you beat the game, a sampled crowd noise is meant to play, as you celebrate your win over the evil king. Here on the Switch, the game makes a weird static noise as it fails to play the sample. Why a NES reissue in 2023 has a sound channel problem is beyond me, and honestly soured my enjoyment of the first game after I managed to pull off the famous speedrun route. Oh well, at least the Game Boy game doesn’t have any such samples to worry about, so that sounds just as it should.

Gameplay

While I’d like to say that this compilation had more to it than just the games, outside of the map, music player and UI aspects I mentioned before, you literally just have the two games and their Japanese versions. Not even any attempt at giving context to those japanese versions and why they were visually different, or any sort of gallery, just the ROMs thrown into the wrapper. Oh well, let’s see how these adventures hold up!

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A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia: Made by David Crane, the creator of Pitfall, this game tasks you with going around and collecting jellybeans and treasures on earth, in order to build yourself up for a big quest to liberate Blobonia from an evil king. Yes, this game is pretty massive, and both worlds have plenty of screens to fumble around with and explore. You have a bag of jellybeans, each with a different effect that they can pull off, and you cycle through them with the Select button, before throwing the one of your choice with the A button. Usually their effect is a rhyme or pun based off the flavor (Tangerines to Trampoline being my personal favorite), though Ketchup is just a respawn bean with nothing special associated with it at all.

Ah, but you may be wondering what throwing the jellybean would do, since clearly you can’t just throw one by itself! And yes, sure enough that’s what your happy go lucky Blob pal, Blobert is there for. Summoning him with a B button whistle, (or via a ketchup bean, which just teleports him to you) you can feed him your selected bean and have it do a variety of different effects to help you navigate both of the worlds.

From punching a hole in the ground to navigate lower levels, becoming a bottle rocket to fly above gaps or to the other planet, or creating a bridge to walk across, Blobert has a variety of techniques he can pull off, and a lot of them are just fun to goof around with, as the game is really just a set of goofy puzzles to solve until you feel ready to take on the big boss of the game. However, there are hazards and enemies scattered across both worlds, and they will not hesitate to kill the boy in one hit. Likewise, a long fall will also prove fatal, and you have a limited number of lives before you get a game over.

While I would wish that I could say there’s a handy save state or rewind feature to mess with here, sadly this collection only has the basic save and quit option from Bill & Ted and River City Girls 0, and it still manages to be terrible, as while the game will ask you before quitting out of a game, it will not ask you if you want to save and quit if you hit that option. Accidentally click on the save option after dying? You now saved on a death and screwed yourself, good for you.

This also means if you want to reload a state, which you’ll likely do a lot if you’re new to this game, you’ll have to save and quit, go back in, then go back out without hitting the save option before continuing the game again. Why the collection didn’t use the much better save state options from the Wayforward GBC ports, I won’t understand, but it makes dealing with this particular game in the set a lot more frustrating than it has every right to be. It can be outright miserable if you’re learning the game and hit a point where you have to reload a save state, only to use this clunky menu system over and over and over again until you get it right. Then on top of that, the screen border will go away each time you load the game up, so there’s no point in setting a border, either!

Still, if you know how to mess with the blob and use certain beans, you can break this game wide open, and with that, you could just fly on over to the planet the moment you start the game, and then use hole punches to goof around and clip into the ground and walk into the ending of the game, allowing you to beat this game in mere minutes if you so wish. Likewise, you can even do this just to goof around and see where you end up, or to make your own shortcuts. While some of this is clearly not intentional, the fact the game does let you go to the final area the minute you first start is pretty neat, along with just being open enough for you to play the game as you want to, and for that, I do find this NES game to be a fun classic, even if it can be rather obtuse to get into at first. I am very unhappy about the broken sound channel for the ending screen, though.

The Rescue of Princess Blobette: This is the game I’m more familiar with, and that I have an actual cartridge of. Taking place shortly after the original game, the duo must set out to free Blobert’s mate from a dangerous castle! And honest to god, this feels more or less like a remixed version of the first game, due to having the same soundtrack, the same sort of controls, the same beans, and the same game feel as the first game, only now everything is a lot more compact and in my opinion, much more fun for a casual playthrough. No vitamin gun to worry about here!

See, while you had both the home planet and the alien world to traverse in the original game, in Blobette you just have to focus on exploring the castle, and the map is much smaller than that of the first game, with the Collection’s map feature still available as a handy tool to give you a general idea on where you need to go next, making this the more approachable of the two games as you experiment and fumble your way towards clearing the game, using beans to solve puzzles much like you would in the original. Though I will note how this game seems to be a lot more mean with the blob at times, as he can outright bump you around when summoning him back to you, and the smaller size of the game screens mean that there are several situations in the game where it can be really claustrophobic to deal with him.

Still, the shorter game length at least means this one is over pretty quickly once you finally get the hang of what puzzles you need to do when, so Blobette really doesn’t have much else to make note of, as it’s just a shorter, portable-sized experience with the same control scheme. Consider this the fun bonus stage to the NES game, if you will.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the two Boy and his Blob games are pretty decent, if frustrating adventure games, with the GB one nudging out the NES title for me due to being a lot more compact and easier to figure out, and I’d love to recommend this double pack, except that the wrapper used for these games is just absolutely pitiful for the price, and these games deserved much better when it came to bonus content or any sort of quality of life features.

Not only do you have the godawful save state system from the Bill & Ted set that you can easily goof up, but the border options are still bugged and do not save properly, which is completely silly considering the LCD/GB filters work just fine, and this issue has persisted across all five Carbon Engine titles that I have reviewed thus far. It doesn’t help that these two games in particular are ones that you’ll likely need to reload often in if you aren’t used to the quirks, so having to menu around to use save states is just not at all fun, and honestly made me prefer just taking the deaths and only save stating when I was done with my play session, rather than to avoid getting stuck or dying to learn the game like I usually would.

Add in a very, very barebones list of extras, not even including the original manuals or any sort of historical context, and at the end of it all you have a pair of two OK adventure games in the most barebones wrapper imaginable, with one of them somehow having busted NES sample emulation in 2023. I was honestly hopeful that with Xtreme Sports turning out as a good Carbon title with proper save states and such, that this collection would incorporate all of those lovely additions and just make for a fun way to replay these games, but honestly, I’m just left wishing this set was just more than four ROMs thrown in a basic wrapper.

While the Map is a good step in that direction that at least provides some help to newcomers, it just isn’t enough to make these games as approachable as they should. If you like the Game Boy game, that one was handled pretty well with no emulation issues, but otherwise, maybe wait for some patches to drop and smooth this collection out to make it less of a headache to deal with.

I give A Boy and His Blob Retro Collection a 4 out of 10.