Pinobee: Wings of Adventure
Pinobee: Wings of Adventure, known in Japan as Pinobee no Daibōken or Pinobee: Quest of Heart, is a platformer for the Game Boy Advance, developed by Artoon and published by Hudson Soft. The game was released as a launch title for the system, on March 21, 2001 in Japan and June 11, 2001 in North America. A version was developed for PlayStation in 2002, simply titled Pinobee outside Japan.
A sequel, Pinobee & Phoebee, was released only in Japan in 2002.
Development
Pinobee: Wings of Adventure was developed by Artoon, which was founded by former Sega senior director Yoji Ishii in August 1999 with other ex-Sega staffers such as Yutaka Sugano, Naoto Ohshima, Manabu Kusunoki, and Hidetoshi Takeshita. Sugano, who co-directed and co-designed the game, stated that Ohshima conceived the game as a story that expressed the growth of the human heart. The story about a robotic bee brought to life by a grandfatherly scientist was inspired by the fantasy novel The Adventures of Pinocchio. The game's original main theme was that of the love between a parent and child, but this was eventually toned down. Ishii claimed that the transition from Sega platforms to the GBA and the game's development were smooth due to the handheld's 32-bit CPU and C-based programming. The new GBA hardware presented a unique challenge for the project team and was chosen as the best fit to represent the game's art style. The characters were created using pre-rendered CG models while the backgrounds were hand-drawn. The CG models differed little from their initial concepts, although the antagonists changed from living insects to robots. The game's world map was modeled after the Vincent van Gogh oil painting series Langlois Bridge at Arles.Leading up to the release of Pinobee, it was shown at Nintendo Space World, the European Computer Trade Show, Jump Festa, and the Tokyo Game Show.