THE MAKING OF SHANTAE
IF YOU HAD THREE WISHES, WOULD YOU USE ONE OF THEM TO INTERVIEW MATT BOZON, CO-CREATOR OF SHANTAE, ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF HIS BELOVED ACTION-ADVENTURE SERIES? NO? OH. WELL, WE DID. GET READY TO (HAIR) WHIP IT GOOD AS WE SAVE A DANCE FOR SHANTAE
When it comes to classic gaming, it seems as though education is a must, according to Shantae series director and Wayforward creative director Matt Bozon. “As kids we all strove for straight As so we could cash our report cards in at Showbiz Pizza to get [game] tokens, which we’d drop on games of Frogger, Donkey Kong and Spy Hunter.” This steady oldschool diet continued at home with Atari 2600 titles like River Raid and Pitfall!, before inevitably moving onto the NES and The Legend Of Zelda, Metroid and Castlevania – games from which
Shantae seems to take more direct inspiration.
Matt first met future wife (and creator of
Shantae) Erin Bell Bozon at the famed California Institute Of The Arts (Calarts), while both were enrolled in the character animation program and immersed in the early SNES releases –
Actraiser, A Link To The Past, etc. “Videogames weren’t really an established job path at the time for animators, so I feel like we both sort of stumbled into it.” Mutual friend of Erin and Matt, Rob Buchanan, brought them in on a freelance job working for Voldi Way – a ‘one-man studio’ who had formed a small team (Wayforward Games) to develop 1994 edutainment title Mickey’s Ultimate Challenge for SNES. Both joined the staff a few years later, where over 50 games were developed and shipped prior to beginning work on Shantae – many of which were education products based on the likes of The Berenstain Bears and Casper, but others were more inspiring. “A lot of these early games were exciting to work on,” remembers Matt, “because we were able to introduce iconic characters into gaming for the first time, such as The Muppets and some of the early Marvel Super Heroes products. But I really wanted to get back to Nintendo and make something more like the games I’d grown up with.”
Wayforward was initially co-owned by an educational company, but when the initial CDROM bubble burst said arrangement came to an end. “Voldi refocused the studio on games,” Matt recalls. “We grew from half a dozen to around 20 employees.” Within this small studio, Matt formed a two-person group known as The Pocket Team, focusing exclusively on Game
Boy software – work for hire on games such as WWF: Betrayal and Sabrina The Teenage Witch. Eventually this team expanded, and their first original title was the 2000 release, Xtreme
Sports, “a sort of self-parody sports RPG”. With programmer Jimmy Huey available, the time was right to start working on Shantae – a pitch from Erin back in the Calarts days that was originally proposed as a Super NES and then a PC title – now to be developed as a Game Boy Color game over a span of two years. A belly-dancing, hairwhipping genie that transformed into different animals in order to assist in navigating the game world, the character was undeniably game-ready.
The now-iconic genie’s first adventure took direct inspiration from Super Metroid. “Shantae would change forms that granted traversal abilities and new attacks, and featured a female hero like Samus,” Matt explains. “The level design and game structure were inspired by The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past – only turned on its side.” Inspirations outside the world of gaming included manga like Ranma ½ and Nadia: Secret Of Blue Water.
“Considering that her origins are inspired by Samus,” adds Matt, “you can imagine our excitement at seeing Shantae appear as Samus Aran’s ‘Spirit’ in Super Smash Bros Ultimate!”
Ultimately, a lofty expectation was set for Shantae. “Our goal was to raise the animation bar and try to technically surpass anything that had been made on handheld up to that point,” Matt says. Inspired by the “drool-worthy” animation of Metal Slug, Darkstalkers and Earthworm Jim, the Game Boy Color was pushed to its limits by Jimmy. “We were determined to match the Neo Geo Pocket Color in animation quality, and see if we could push even more colours by layering sprites,” Matt continues. “[Jimmy] found ways to get more tiles, colours and even the illusions of parallax scrolling and translucency using age-old and often impractical tricks from his Vic-20 and Apple II days. If we could imagine it, Jimmy would find a way to do it!” Looking at the original Shantae it’s difficult to argue that Jimmy and Wayforward didn’t pull off their stated goal – few Game Boy Color titles even come close to the quality of its visuals.
Still, this wasn’t easy to achieve, given the limitations of the GBC. “It’s hard to explain,” says Matt, “but when forced to consider everything on-screen as a real-time jigsaw puzzle it can really bring out the best in developers.” The game world in Shantae is made of 8x8 pixel tiles, but was optimised on enormous 256x256 ‘mega tiles’. It’s similar to The Legend Of Zelda, where “entire rooms could be stamped down as gigantic tiles, making for a bigger world”.
The technical feats didn’t end there. “Enemies were also designed to use multiple sprites that would never exceed ten sprites on any given horizontal scanline,” explains Matt. “That meant their designs and every individual frame of their animation has to fit into an ever-changing Tetromino-like arrangement.” Monsters’ attack patterns are designed to avoid each other’s scanlines, allowing the sprites to display.
“Palette shifting, collision tiles and the lost art of individual tile prioritising were all put to use,” Matt says. “It was fun figuring out how to get the most from every pixel, tile and colour index.”
Before the fruits of these labours could be shared with the world, though, Shantae needed a publisher, and Matt pitched it to industry titans Capcom at E3 “figuring it was a long shot”. But the team were “beyond thrilled” when CEO John Beck informed them that he’d signed a deal with Capcom, who had liked the look of Shantae and its similarities to its own game Mega Man Xtreme. “After that, Capcom were hands off, but they were a huge help getting the game into stores. As it turned out, we’d been a bit too ambitious with the game,” admits Matt. The amount of animation, music, levels and the save battery required the most expensive Game Boy Color cartridge that Nintendo could manufacture, which Matt notes may have scared retailers off, but Capcom had a bright idea. “[They] did some clever distribution to get the pricey cartridge into stores. I heard that Shantae shared a shipping container with Resident Evil Gaiden, making it more attractive to retailers. So Shantae might owe some of her success to Leon S Kennedy and Barry Burton!”
Notably, Shantae was eventually released in 2002 – a full year after development had completed but, more crucially, at a time that the Game Boy Advance was already well-established on shop shelves. “We were concerned that Capcom may want to cancel the game if the rumoured ‘Project Atlantis’ [a Gba-like system that never came to fruition] suddenly became real,” admits Matt. Wayforward was working on the now-shockingly expensive Wendy: Every Witch Way, a Game Boy Color title intended to link with a cartoon series that never saw the light of day. In order to elevate the status of the orphaned game with its publisher, Wayforward added extra levels which unlocked if the cartridge detected that it had been inserted into a GBA. “We did the same for Shantae,” reveals Matt, “though we didn’t have any cartridge
space to spare so couldn’t unlock extra levels like the ones added to Wendy. We were able to just barely squeeze in the Tinkerbat transformation and brighter colours for the non-backlit GBA.”
Critics and gamers were kind to Shantae – as well they should have been, as it remains an impressive game to this day. “Nintendo Power magazine rated us similarly to Super Mario Sunshine that month, so we felt pretty good about that!” adds Matt. “It was very rare to hear from fans back then, but we’d receive a few pieces of fan art or handwritten letters. We really treasured those and still have them after all this time.” With the rise of social media it’s a lot easier to be in touch with players, and Shantae certainly has a large, committed fanbase. Matt reflected on why this is, “The games are fun and light hearted, they speak the same sort of videogame language as the products that inspired them. But beyond this, Shantae herself is an endearing character. She’s such a joyful, kind-hearted, playful and relatable character that I think it’s hard not to love her.
She fights for what’s right, admits when she’s wrong, and keeps moving forward with the help of her friends and family.”
As Shantae was entering the last stages of its development, the team at Wayforward began working on the movie tie-in The Scorpion King, which laid the groundwork for the never-completed Shantae Advance. “Capcom also gave us a Dolphin dev kit to encourage a Gamecube sequel, but work-for-hire jobs led us almost entirely into the handheld space after that,” continues Matt.
Thankfully, the advent of Nintendo’s Dsiware service led to the eventual 2010 sequel
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, which was itself followed by Shantae & The Pirate’s Curse on the Nintendo 3DS in 2014. Following these, a successful Kickstarter campaign saw the series leap to home consoles two years later with Shantae: Half-genie Hero, an expansive and attractive take on the character with 2.5D graphics reminiscent of Wayforward’s seminal
Ducktales Remastered. Last year saw the release of Shantae And The Seven Sirens, which – alongside playable cameos in the likes of Blaster Master Zero and Runbow – has kept the character in the popular consciousness.
With the original Shantae’s recent release on the Nintendo Switch, the entire five-game series is now available on the hybrid console, a fact that Matt is understandably enthusiastic about. “Having every game appear on Switch is fantastic, especially when you consider that each game was built on very different technology by different teams of talented people over a 20-year span. It’s fun to jump in and out of each game just to see how the series has changed. It’s also a reminder of the fans who have supported
Shantae all this time and allowed us to keep making these games. Some of them started out as youngsters and are all grown up and making creative content of their own. I hope that Shantae will continue to put a smile on the faces of players all over the world for years to come!”
Looking at the growth of the series from its already-impressive roots – not to mention its continued enthusiasm from its passionate fanbase – we can safely say that wish is very likely to come true.