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Title: It's Mr Pants
Release Date: 2004
Developer: Rare
Publisher: THQ Quote- IGN GameBoy
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August 12, 2004 - All right, gang, a show of hands. How many of you remember last year when Rare made the sneaky announcement about It's Mr. Pants, a game that the studio had in development for the Game Boy Advance? It was almost exactly a year to the day when the revelation was made that the company's unofficial mascot, the trouser-donning 'stached fellow with a derby Mr. Pants, was to get a GBA game of his very own.
But unfortunately, that's all we got. After that one announcement, Rare clamped down into silence mode on the project, and thus began the mystery of exactly what was to be It's Mr. Pants for the Game Boy Advance. No amount of poking and prodding towards the blokes in the UK would make them crack and let slip any potential tidbits of Mr. Pants' gaming debut.
Well, it's been a year. And after 365 long, agonizing, almost torturous days of waiting, we can reveal, finally, the ridiculousness that is Rare's latest game for release in 2004: It's Mr. Pants. And boy, was it worth it.
But first, a little background. More than three years ago, back at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2001 (just before the release of the Game Boy Advance in the US), Rare demonstrated four GBA games at Nintendo's booth. One of which was a Donkey Kong-branded puzzle game titled DK Coconut Crackers. Though the Nintendo/Rare relationship broke down before the company could release any GBA games, DK Coconut Crackers pretty much hit the skids early -- whatever the reason, the game disappeared from release lists and was quietly removed from Nintendo's line-up.
When Rare and THQ paired up last year and made the shocking It's Mr. Pants announcement, many people made the intelligent speculation that the mysterious game was the revival of DK Coconut Crackers. After all, the list of games in the THQ/Rare line-up mirrored the same line-up that Rare had demonstrated at E3 just a couple years before. The only addition was It's Mr. Pants. It just made sense.
Anyone who speculated that It's Mr. Pants is a retooled DK: Coconut Crackers: Give yourself a cookie.
So. The game. How to explain. Well, It's Mr. Pants is a traditional puzzle game in the Tetris sense where the challenge is to piece together specific shapes of specific colors on a flat playing field grid. The idea is simple: form rectangles of larger than 3x2 (squares of 2x2 are too small) to make them disappear from play. The It's Mr. Pants pieces can be rotated in 90 degree variations, exactly like Tetris "tetrominos," important to get these tiles into the littlest slots on the field.
You can't place same colors on top of each other, but you can place other colors on top of already placed shapes to remove them from play. This mechanic comes into play more often than to simply remove garbage shapes; it's crucial to do this in order to remove multiple rectangles from play and to score those strong combinations for the huge score.
There are three variations on the main gameplay mechanic. In "Puzzle," the challenge is to remove all shapes from play with the set amount of pieces. In "Wipeout", you've got two minutes to remove all shapes from play with an infinite amount of pieces. And in "Marathon," the challenge is to constantly place and remove shapes as long as you can, trying to keep the session alive as the playfield gets eaten away from the outside in. The game's cartridge save system records puzzles completed, the best scores in each mode, and all the collectibles earned during the challenges.
So, it's a traditional puzzle game for the Game Boy Advance. Sort of.
The game's charm is its carefree style and presentation. It's full of squigglevision animation, crayon-drawn backgrounds, and floating underpants wherever the game designers can fit it. The levels are just full of crazy, tripped out imagery and music, complete with Mr. Pants singing between levels. Yes, Mr. Pants SINGS!
The craziness of It's Mr. Pants can't be appreciated until you experience it for yourself. We've captured a ton of screens and video of the final version of the game in action. THQ's prepping this game for a stateside release much sooner than you may realize, so be sure to add the game to your wishlist to be the first to know when this game's shipping to stores.
---------- Videos: IGN 1IGN 2IGN 3This message was edited by Octarine Skye on Aug 18 2004.
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