Sea Boy (USA) (Prototype)
The following is a demo of Sea Boy for the Game Boy Advance by Rival Dreams. While Dark Eden’s direction was led by Jools Watsham and Kynan Pearson, Sea Boy’s direction was led by Ian Dunlop. Ian’s other projects, such as Walker for the Amiga, would fit right at home with the likes of Dark Eden. Unlike that game, Sea Boy sports a cartoony atmosphere similar to Yoshi’s Island and Plok. Being new to fatherhood, Ian developed an affinity for these style of games. The protagonist is even based on his own son.
Sea Boy in appearance looks simple enough, however, in reality it’s a very rare breed of game: it’s a puzzle physics platformer. The object of the game is as follows: relocate fish to the striped section of the stage. The game starts simple enough and slowly introduces more concepts, adding layers to the gameplay. In one level, it merely involves moving fish, the next, you must leverage the concept of water displacement. Then there’s man-eating fish, and so on.
Like with the Dark Eden build we also published, this build of Sea Boy is slightly different to the one covered in the Time Extension article. For starters, the Fishionary evidently has placeholder fish: each fish has a stock photo of Nemo from Finding Nemo. Additionally, the lava island lacks graphics. This is because those images were partly concept art featuring various elements which never made it into the game. Regardless of its completion, Sea Boy is teeming with passion and personality. The game design is multilayered and the water physics is impressive for the Game Boy Advance. It’s a shame this game was never picked up. Thankfully, the public can now enjoy it for the first time!
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Game Boy Advance
File: SeaBoy.bin
BitSize: 12 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1658376
CRC32: C822B1BC
MD5: 33C513111814B0AC9C1375BB20DDB0B9
SHA1: 5A00075F187D294EE7E1E711172D28A76046BA53
SHA256: DB0D245C809DF48E10ACCCB128E4BD4077DD5E8BDF95976149F114DBA145EA59
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
ROM Entry Point: EA00002E
Logo Code: Ok
Title: SEABOY
Serial: AGBJ (Japan)
Maker Code: 01 (Nintendo)
Fixed Value: 0x96 (Ok)
Unit Code: 0x00
Device Code: 0x00
Reserved 1: 0x00000000000000
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Complement: 0x19 (Ok)
Reserved 2: 0x0000
----| Backup Media |-----------------------------------------------
Chip: EEPROM_V122
Size: 4/64 Kbit
Special Thanks
Massive thanks to Ian Dunlop for sending this in for release!