With the recent Nintendo Switch port of 2002’s hard-to-find Game Boy Color game Shantae, modern players can finally experience the platforming adventure series in its entirety. When Shantae first came out, it released to critical acclaim and audience indifference. It came out on the Game Boy Color… a year after the Game Boy Advance had already come out. Understandably, new games from the previous system were not in the public eye. Despite poor sales, however, the series has spawned four sequels and eye-popping prices for anyone lucky enough to have the original. Hell, even Switch physical games, lovingly produced by Limited Run Games, are expensive as hell now. Thankfully, all five games are available and affordable on the Switch eShop.
In the series, you play Shantae, a half-genie — child of a genie and a human — who protects Scuttle Town. At the start of each game, you can jump and whip enemies with your ponytail. As you progress, you unlock new abilities that help you traverse the world differently. Many of the games see you transforming into animals to better explore their worlds. As you explore, you collect magical McGuffin’s meant to push the plot along, fight giant bosses, and generally try to maintain the fragile balance of power in Sequin Land.
#5: Shantae (2002)
Scuttle Town is under attack! Risky Boots, notorious pirate queen, has bombed the area and sent her minions pillaging. She successfully steals the plans for a ‘steam engine’ from Mimic, a local inventor. Shantae, the resident guardian genie of Scuttle Town, takes it upon herself to stop Risky from unlocking the power of the steam engine and taking absolute control of the high seas.
The original may frustrate gamers who don’t remember (or didn’t enjoy!) its era. The game is challenging, with sparse save points and little direction. It controls slowly, particularly compared to later games in the series. Its platforming is weaker, and some of its exploration elements are downright irritating. Fast travel, for instance, is locked behind finding ‘warp squids’ in each dungeon. In a truly bizarre choice, some squids require late-game items or transformations to reach. So, rather than fast travel allowing you to re-explore later with new abilities, it is mostly just an endgame novelty.
That said, the bones of the game are solid. A lot of the series’ strengths come directly from this game. Shantae is NOT where you should start if you decide to give the series a shot. Still, as a classic game that inspired bigger and better things, it’s worth it for fans.
#4: Shantae: Half-Genie Hero (2017)
Mimic crafts the Dynamo, a device made to generate enough power for the town to protect itself. But Risky, of course, wants its power for herself. She attacks the town and steals the blueprints in a daring raid that gets Shantae fired by the Mayor. Meanwhile, though, a new half-genie guardian has moved into town: Holly Lingerbean, a snide and dismissive protector with a nefariou– oh, no, nevermind, she’s gone pretty fast. What was even the point of her? Anyway, Shantae seeks out the items needed to get the Dynamo working and protect Scuttle Town once and for all, a plan that will definitely work and won’t backfire at any point. Plot-wise, this is basically just a remake of the first two games in the series (collect X items to stop Risky; oops, she waited until you had them and then took them for herself!), but without the exploration.
In 2017, WayForward was looking to move the series from handheld to consoles. To that end, they crowdfunded Half-Genie Hero, a side-scrolling platformer. The game built off the critical acclaim of 2014’s Pirate’s Curse, which abandoned the exploratory aspect of the first two games. But, and maybe this is unpopular: It didn’t do so nearly as well as Pirate’s Curse. The levels are short, and many of the secrets you unlock require that you play the exact same stretch of level over and over and over again. Each ‘level’ is essentially 2-3 side-scrolling sections and (maybe) a boss. Initially, your playthrough is limited: Go from left to right. As you unlock more abilities, you can start exploring different parts of those levels. Parts blocked off by water or extreme vertical climbs become accessible.
The movement here feels good and the puzzles are solid; I just don’t love the design of game’s maps. Platformers live and die on map strength, and the ones here are too simple to be satisfactory to explore over and over again. That said, Half-Genie Hero does offer you a lot of bang for your buck, particularly in its Ultimate Edition, which includes a number of spin-off side-stories that let you play as supporting characters for the first time in the franchise’s history. Half-Genie Hero is a solid game, it’s just not particularly noteworthy.
#3: Shantae: Risky’s Revenge (2010)
Risky is back, this time with a plan to take down her new nemesis: Shantae. To that end, she steals a lamp from the Relic Hunter’s Expo. Mimic warns Shantae that awful things could happen if Risky unlocks the lamp’s power, so Scuttle Town’s now-fired guardian genie is off to collect and protect the magic seals Risky needs.
You can tell that the original Shantae didn’t exactly light up the sales charts by how long it took its sequel to come out. Risky’s Revenge dropped eight years later, to a very different gaming environment. Released on the Nintendo DSi, the series skipped two handheld generations completely. Right away, you can feel the difference from the original. Shantae moves faster, attacks faster, and has more options. The world is easier to navigate, as fast travel points open easily and are well-spaced, and exploration is solid.
Risky’s Revenge is a little too slight to compete with the two best games in the series, but it’s still a worthy and enjoyable entry. It welcomes new series regulars to the cast, including Ammo Baron and Squid Baron, two recurring lesser villains in the franchise. This is also where the series’ cheesecake tendencies started to get amped up. It was hard to be horny on the Game Boy Color, but the DS had more than enough technology for it.
#2: Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse (2014)
Risky Boots needs help. Unfortunately, at the end of Risky’s Revenge, she destroyed Shantae’s magical powers. In doing so, she freed the undead Pirate Master, a dread ghoul who became so powerful it took the combined might of many full genies to stop him. Now Risky has lost her crew to his curse, and the only person left who can help her is a powerless half-genie who doesn’t trust her.
Pirate’s Curse is very close to the top of the list for me. It is far-and-away the best-looking game in the series to me. Admittedly, I love great pixel art, so that may be a controversial statement. It has a solid story, which includes letting Shantae team up with regular series-nemesis Risky Boots. Their chemistry is genuinely fun here! And is feels legitimately great to move around in its world. Because it eliminated dancing and animal transformations, many puzzles have been replaced by faster-paced platforming sections. These are more challenging, but I definitely found them more engaging as well.
That said, Pirate’s Curse has one glaring flaw to me: As with Half-Genie Hero, the game is broken up into a series of distinct ‘worlds’, each of which are largely linear adventure game levels. Playing through the same basic section over and over looking for all the extra items I needed to collect to get the ‘good’ ending ended up feeling a bit grating, particularly given how fast enemies respawn. No matter how good the game felt at its best, at its worst, the feeling of just running in a straight line over and back, trying to spot the little visual clues, ended up frustrating me by the end. It’s an excellent game, but with a small flaw that holds it back a bit for me.
#1: Shantae and the Seven Sirens (2019)
Shantae and her whole supporting cast have been invited to Paradise Island for a ‘Half-Genie Festival’. There, half-genies from across the world will gather to perform, show off their powers, and meet one another. But during the opening ceremonies, they’re all kidnapped except for Shantae. Now she has to explore the underwater city beneath the island and unlock the mystery of the sirens rumored to inhabit it. Why did they kidnap the half-genies? Where did the city come from? And maybe most importantly: Where is Risky Boots?
Seven Sirens is a delight. The game returns to the series’ roots, giving you a big, explorable map with distinct biomes. But where earlier games had mostly the same group of sections and the same bosses, Seven Sirens updates the series into a full-on Metroidvania with all-new locations and fights. Five entries in, changing up the bosses and some of the enemy design was a good idea, as was playing more explicitly into the Metroidvania genre. While the series had often been classified as such, Seven Sirens is the first game to really fully unlock the genre’s toybox, and it shows in the game’s excellent map, powers, and puzzles.
Seven Sirens has one gargantuan flaw, though: It’s super easy. Initially released as an iPhone game, it minimized the platforming that had defined much of the series. It made some other changes to make it a little friendlier. As with Half-Genie Hero, players could easily pile up cash, buying upgrades quickly and rushing down enemies. That said, this didn’t bother me as much as it might have if the game’s exploration weren’t so good. The combat here is definitely on the weaker side because of it. Thankfully, I still had a great time delving into the underwater city in which much of the game takes place.
Should you try the SHANTAE games?
Yes! These are largely very solid games — even the weaker entries have a lot to recommend them. If you’re a fan of Metroidvanias, Seven Sirens is the strongest game in the series. But if you’re looking more for platforming adventure and just want the smoothest combat and movement, go with Pirate’s Curse. You might fall in love with the feel of the games and decide to go back from there, as I did. Regardless, if you have a hankering for classic platforming adventure games, this underappreciated series might be your ticket to a great time.