A Boy and His Blob (1989)

  Rage Mage Reviews!

A Boy and His Blob, sub-entitled Trouble on Blobolonia, was released in 1989 from the sweaty, unwashed butt crack of Jabba the Hutt. Over time, sitting in its petri dish, it evolved into a barely playable puzzle-platformer. I mean, I’ve had strokes more exciting than A Boy and His Blob.

Was the trouble on Blobolonia the fact that they couldn’t make a decent video game if they tried? I guess I’ll never know because nobody on planet Earth has ever beaten this game. Nobody has ever wanted to. They even child-napped the creator of Pitfall and forced him to develop this game by threatening to make him play it after it was finished. But, c’mon. The guy from Indiana who made Pitfall? Not the wisest choice of programmers, unless they wanted something with a higher degree of pent up frustration and shouting than sitting through a marathon of the O’Reilly Factor.

The only way to get from one soul-deadeningly empty screen to the next is by walking. Yes, walking. Doesn’t get much more cutting edge than that. The downside is that all of the floors in this game are slipperier than Hillary Clinton trying to evade indictment. You’re skidding around constantly. But, ironically, when confronted by an obstacle in your path to victory, you do exactly what Clinton does: shapeshift. This is accomplished by “simply” feeding your blob jelly beans.

See how I put quotation marks around the word “simply”? That means I was being sarcastic. While it might seem easy to toss candies into a gaping hole, what isn’t easy is that this blob couldn’t catch a jelly bean if its life depended on it, even thrown underhanded. Why would it jump when you throw a bean at it only to miss catching it entirely? Why? And if it lands on the ground, forget it. Blob be too proud to eat a jelly bean off the ground. It’s a good thing you only have a limited number of them.

And oh yes, each of the flavors change the blob into some bizarre and unhelpful shape: cinnamon jelly beans turn it into a blowtorch, licorice jelly beans change it into a ladder, and so on. You’ll inevitably forget what each flavor does which means A Boy and His Blob is an exercise in endurance through trial and error. Guarantee you won’t remember that tangerine jelly beans turn the worthless protoplasm into a trampoline which launches the kids so high in the air that when he hits the ground it immediately breaks every bone in his body. Satisfying, yes. But you won’t beat the game that way. In fact, you’ll give up on beating it long before you let the kid get murdered again and again by every caterpillar, swimming pool and stubbed toe in existence (literally everything in this game will kill you).

The 8-Bit Review
Visuals: 2/10
It’s like somebody scraped the tiny shred of talent off of Mila Kunis’ acting career and then made a painting out of the feces that were left to be used as a poster selling antidepressants.

Audio: 1/10
The music audibly feels like getting shot with a semi-automatic. And then after you’re dead, getting shot some more. At least the soundtrack is only looped infinitely. It’s little more than five minutes long because that’s how many minutes it takes to replay the same song over a hundred times.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEg7bsoPbHs&w=420&h=315]

Gameplay: 2/10
The game has a unique idea going but the idea itself doesn’t go anywhere. Yeah, you throw jelly beans. Big deal. There’s so much trial and error that cycling through the different flavors is like trying to find a smiling employee at Walmart: tedious. It’s like childhood celebrities. They got fame but they don’t know what to do with it.

Narrative: 1/10
Why does the boy have a blob? It’s his frickin’ amputee brother fed on a diet of pure sugar.

Accessibility: 4/10
Easy controls belie a more sinister agenda: making you regret paying for this game.

Challenge: 4/10
This game is hard but for none of the right reasons. It’s hard because you’ll feed the blob a punch flavored jelly bean to make a hole in the ground and then step in it and fall 50 feet to your death. Makes you wanna give the blob a punch flavored punch in its stupid grinning face.

Replayability: 1/10
I would rather drown in a swimming pool of boxer-briefs recently used by fat Italian men than play this game again.

My Personal Grade: 2/10
A Boy and His Blob sucks, which was enough to earn it a remake for the Nintendo Wii. But, hey! It did win the Parent’s Choice award! So there’s that. You want a cheap trick on how to beat A Boy and His Blob? Check it:

Aggregated Score: 2.1

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