Exercise Ball Run (GBA 2005)

  Exercise Ball Run, was a game released in 2005 by "Solo solar Studios." It was their 4th game ever produced and would be the last game they would make before the "Round Rhonda" series took off, and was released on the GBA with a remake port being released on the GameCube near the end of the System's lifespan, which coincided with the decline in the popularity of Round Rhonda after the disastrous release of "Round Rhonda 5: Electric Shake" which had landed the company into deep trouble with the public under accusations of making a shameless rip off of "Um Jammer Lammy." Ironically, Exercise Ball Run itself was a rehashing of another game "Hoshoku No Ran" as a number of the staff at Solo Solar were alumni of "Fayto Games" in 1989 and took the idea to use after Fayto closed its doors in 1999.

   The game followed Britanny Blimps, following the same scheme of Apellative Alliteration that Solo Solar would come to be known for. The game follows her on her morning Jog, which ends up taking her all day to complete thanks to her new method of increasing "resistance" by expanding her body with bubbles along her path as a part of a guide on proper exercise tells her and she regularly quotes throughout the game. The game is divided into 6 worlds of Suburbs, Downtown, Park, Uptown, Redlight, and Industrial Park. Each world has 3 levels for a total of 18 levels. Each world would have a "Run" level, where the player runs the course of the world, a Time attack where the player has to beat a pre-set time to advance to the final level, which would be a race against 1 of 6 world bosses for each district, each of which was followers of the same Exercise guide as Brittany, and would always dramatically burst after being defeated by her.

  The gameplay remained relatively the same at each level. starting at the beginning of the level, Brittany had to run to the end of her level by pressing the A button repeatedly as to keep moving trying to move fast enough to maintain speed but not run off the right edge of the screen but not slow enough to fall out of frame. Along the way, she would pick up Bubbles and energy drinks. Bubbles increased her size and her pressure and would wear off over time. the bigger she was and the more pressure she had, the faster the screen moved, but the faster her "Integrity" (short for structural integrity) dropped. The player also got more points for being at the center of the screen which would increase the bigger Brittany was and would decrease the further from the center the player got, starting at 1000 for the center all the way to 5000 for the center, with each subsequent distance from the center losing 20% of the center reward (4000, 3000, etc.) She also lost it for getting too close to either end of the screen which became harder to do the bigger she got. To replenish Integrity, the player would have to drink energy drinks picked up along the way which functioned much like Health Pickups in other games. If the player overloaded on bubbles or let Integrity hit 0 Brittany would burst and the player would have to start the level over again.

  The game was not very well received in its initial release, with most review publications slamming it for it's "mindless" and "repetitive" gameplay loop and dated graphics, and other, more strict voices among the critics criticizing it for promoting unsafe inflationary practices by running in dangerous locations, particularly in the industrial park. The game managed to be only marginally profitable and would spur on the creation of the first few Round Rhonda games as the developers attempted to make a more interesting game. The game managed to rally a cult following, however, and in 2013 fans would come together to hold "EB-Con" where they rented out a hotel for a week and held a series of inflated foot races in a nearby field with the winner taking home $1000 and a chance to meet Creative Director "Arlo Golde" for an interview.

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Something I whipped up when my tablet got died a bit ago