Last week I had the chance to catch up with the good folks at Majesco, who allowed me to sample the upcoming Wii-exclusive, A Boy and Blob. But before I can relate my experience with this remake/sequel of the incredibly cool David Crane NES game, I invite you to hop into the Way Back Machine with me, so that you can fully understand the special place from which I draw this preview.

A Boy and His Blob first came into my life quite a number of years after its 1989 release. I was face deep into Street Fighter II, and between learning combos, getting punched in the face, and pouring all of my summer job checks into the local arcade, I decided I needed a break. A friend and I took a trip to Funcoland and cleaned up on some cheap NES titles. A Boy and His Blob was among them.

I had previously heard of the game, but simply didn’t care to play it as it wasn’t my genre; shooters, fighters, and beat ‘em ups were my early areas of interest. I gave it a try, however, after wading through a handful of forgettable patently offensive titles (including SNK’s Athena), and was absolutely hooked.  The visuals were simplistic (not too far removed from Crane’s Pitfall, in fact), but it was all about the gameplay.  Unlike the majority of the titles released at that time you needed your brain – - not Contra-like firepower  – - to overcome challenges.

Majesco’s re-imagining takes that stellar gameplay (which consists of feeding your Blob jellybeans to transform him into a ladder, trampoline, parachute, or other level-cleaning tool), and pairs it with stunning hand drawn 2D graphics that blurs the line between game and interactive animation. In short, it’s everything that A Boy and His Blob fan could ever want. Talking points of the awesome kind after the jump.

A Boy and His Blob, judging by the bit I played, is awesome.  With it’s thoughtful, experimental gameplay that’s based on the trial and error of adapting Blob to the appropriate form needed to ace a situation, the game won’t get the big hype of a Halo 3, but it’s infinitely more satisfying if you want a game of a different type. There’s no twitch gaming here folks; the ol’ gray matter rules all here.

An example of a typical challenge you’ll face: You’re walking along with the blob at your side when you encounter a pit with spikes. What to do? Feed Blob the appropriate jellybean and he’ll transform into a trampoline that you can use to leap to an overhead platform and cross over. Blob can turn into 15 different items, which will come in handy across the game’s 40 stages.

The hand drawn sprites are simply gorgeous. Not in a bad ass way like in King of Fighters XII, but in a softer, more subdued manner. The boy, the blob, and the numerous enemies are well animated, resulting in extremely fluid movements. The pinnacle of the animation? When you press up on the Wiimote, the boy hugs his blob in a way that a small child hugs a beloved pet. You simply have to see it in motion to understand the beauty of the moment.

A Boy and His Blob is due to hit the Nintendo Wii later this year, and it looks to be one of the rare games that crosses demographics to touch the casual and core audiences alike. Even if you never played the original, if you’re a fan of offbeat titles that stray from the norm, A Boy and His Blob should place high on your want list.