I can’t say for certain that Super Mario Brothers was the first game in the platform scroller genre.  I can, however, tell you with some certainty that it was one of the early entrants, and remains among the most popular and definitive games in the genre.  Almost every platform scroller available today can trace its roots back to games like Super Mario Brothers, which depicted the plight of two Italian plumbers (who doesn’t know and love Mario and Luigi) as they chased the evil King Bowser. 

Like Super Mario Brothers, Boneyboy — which is the latest entry into this popular and crowded genre of games — will require you to control a character making his way through a variety of levels or worlds.  The action on each level scrolls horizontally or vertically as you run, shot, jump, and even swing from one level to the next.  So, does Boneyboy live up to the tradition of Super Mario Brothers and offer a lasting impression on the platform scroller genre, or will it be just another in a long line of semi-forgettable games that have cluttered the genre over the last couple of years?  Read on to find out the answer. 

Installation and Registration: Download the trial to access just a few of the thirty levels in this game.  Once you see the amazing graphics and exciting gameplay, you will certainly want to purchase the full game from Mobisation’s website. 

Registering the game once you have purchased it is a little more complicated than it most games.  After purchasing Boneyboy, you will receive an email with a link to download the full game.  Load the game via Activesync, but hold on, because you are not done yet.  The first time you try to run the game, you will be presented with a registration screen.  Jot down the purchase key on this screen and take it to www.mobisation.com.  Click on register and enter the code.  You will then receive a second email containing a registration code which will unlock the game.  Until you enter this registration code, you will not be able to play the game at all, even in trial mode.  Frankly, I found this all to be somewhat complicated and restrictive.

 Overview and Gameplay: It seems that Boneyboy’s evil twin brother, Mr. Nobone, has bewitched all of the jungle creatures for his own wicked purpose.  You must guide Boneyboy through the jungle, battling the creatures you encounter, as he collects coins and jewels and ultimately confronts Mr. Nobone in order to free the jungle creatures and restore order to his home.  Along the way, Boneyboy will face a myriad of traps, which will require him to run, jump, and even shimmy across vines.  Oh yeah, and don’t forget about the heli-jump.  You can make Boneyboy’s hair bone spin giving you the ability to leap over tall obstacles in a single bound.

Boneyboy contains 30 amazingly drawn levels.  As with many platform scrollers, the levels begin easier and grow increasingly more difficult as you progress through the game.  In order to assist you, Boneyboy can fire pellets at the jungle creatures in order to defeat them (or most of them can simply be avoided as well).  Grab a power up and your pellets become more powerful energy balls.  Boneyboy will also find a myriad of coins and jewels scattered throughout each level.  Collect 200 coins (jewels are worth multiple coins) in order to gain a free life.  I did think, however, that jewels were undervalued throughout the game.  Oftentimes, jewels would be in difficult to reach areas, and for all of the effort of finding and grabbing it, your reward would be worth only 2 coins.  These modest rewards did become frustrating.  The jewels should have been worth at least five or ten coins each.

As with many games in this genre, Boneyboy has a health meter which is comprised of colored bars.  This meter is located at the top of the screen.  Each time Boneyboy is touched by a jungle creature, his health will decrease.  You can increase Boneyboy’s health, however, by eating some of the various fruits you will find scattered throughout the jungle.

Graphics: Although I found Boneyboy to be a well designed platform scroller game, what really set it apart from a crowded field for me were the graphics, which were about the best I had ever seen in this genre.  Rendered in crisp 3D, the graphics vividly depict the jungle scenes which you must guide Boneyboy over, under, around, and through. 

The animation in this game is crisp and smooth.  I had no problems with it freezing or skipping, despite numerous creatures on the screen, all moving in different directions at the same time.  I was extremely impressed by this.  My favorite part of the game, however, is what I call the hallucination effect.  If certain jungle creatures touch Boneyboy, his vision will become blurred, making it difficult to gauge your motions, especially if you are jumping from one platform to the next.  Thankfully, this is only a temporary effect, but it did make for some interesting encounters in the game.  There are even weather effects, so watch out for the rain.

Most impressive, however, was the 3D multi-layered landscape which overlapped paths throughout the game.  This means that one path can be in the foreground and intersect with a ramp in the background, meaning they are actually on two different planes (or layers)…just like in real life.  Imagine two roads traveling next to each other.  That is the effect created by Boneyboy.  Of course, this can be a bit disconcerting until you learn how to interact with it.  On several occasions, I thought I was jumping onto a ramp, only to find that I had actually been jumping from a spot in front of or behind it, causing me to completely miss the jump because I was on the wrong plane.  This makes for a considerably more challenging game.

Audio: I am not really sure what to say about the audio.  So, let’s start with the good.  I really liked the sound effects in the game.  They did not overshadow gameplay or the graphics, and were typically situationally appropriate.  Boneyboy will even respond to various attacks or events in the game with a variety of phrases and shouts.  He’ll even give you a shout as he plummets down a ravine when you run out of life.

The music, on the other hand, simply did not work for me.  It was a strange mix of what sounded like rap music and disco.  It came across a lot like breakdancing music from the 1980′s.  It just did not seem to fit the game at all. 

Controls: Like most platform scrollers, you will need two hands to play this game.  One hand will control Boneyboy’s movements and actions with the D-Pad or joystick.  The other hand will jump and fire using two buttons on your device.  I had a tough time getting used to the controls.  For the most part, these are fairly small devices, and two hands is just going to be a tight squeeze.

Nonetheless, the the controls worked out fine on my Dell Axim (pictured above) where the buttons were arranged in a manner which was conducive to this action.  In other words, since there are two buttons on either side of the D-Pad, I was easily able to set up the game (all of the controls are customizable) so that I could jump and shoot with one hand and move with the other.  No problem.  Like I said, a bit of a tight fit, but once you get used to it, it seems to work fine.

I found a completely different story on my Mogul (above), however.  Although the Mogul has a total of eight buttons on its face (not counting the D-pad), only two of these buttons were recognized by the game (the two buttons with the white dots were the only ones the game could utilize).  To make matters worse, the two recognized buttons were on either side of the D-Pad, meaning I would essentially need three thumbs to play the game.  I was thoroughly disappointed by this, and hope that a future update will take into account the various arrangements of buttons on newer devices (note that although you could play with the Mogul’s slide out keyboard, the game did not support the switch from portrait to landscape mode.)

Memory: Boneyboy requires a lot of memory to load the stunning 3D graphics.  I am not sure exactly how much was required, but if there is not enough available, then the game will simply shut down while it is loading.

Save: As many of you are (probably painfully) aware, I am extremely sensitive to the save options in the games I review.  Boneyboy’s save feature was relatively standard for this genre, and I was extremely satisfied by it.  During the course of a game, your game will be automatically saved at the end of each level  When you restart, you will begin at the level following the last one completed.  Additionally, there are five game slots, which means five people can play and store ongoing games at the same time.  This is extremely nice, as it means the whole family can enjoy the game without interfering with one another.

Conclusion: When you are the new kid on a crowded block, it is imperative that you offer something unique.  Something to make you stand out from the crowed.  This is exactly what Mobisation has done with Boneyboy.  Although the gameplay is nothing new, the 3D graphics are absolutely stunning.  In fact, I can truly say that I have never seen a platform scroller with such amazing visuals as the overlapping 3D graphics found in Boneyboy.    The graphics in this game have really moved the entire genre one giant step forward.  Now, if only I could figure out how to kill Bowser…oops, sorry, wrong game…I mean Mr. Nobone, the video descendant of King Bowser.

Vital Statistics:

Name: Boneyboy

Version: 1.0

Platform: WM6 and WM 2003SE

Also Available:  WM5, WM2003SE, Smartphone,

Developer: Mobisations.

Price:          $14.95

Available From: Mobisation

                           Pocket Gear

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