22 years later, a highly anticipated Game Boy Advance game has appeared

Year 2002. The world was still trying to recover from September 11th, Internet was taking its first steps and the consoles fighting were the GameCube, the PS2 and the Xbox. And, of course, the Game Boy Advance, which had been released the previous year. It was in that context that a group of Italian friends started developing their video game for Nintendo’s handheld console, ‘Kien’. Today, in 2024… they have finally finished it.

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The cursed game

When they started developing ‘Kien’, an action and platform game with RPG elements, none of them had the slightest idea of how to make video games. But they made an effort, suffered, learned, and finished it on time. There was only one problem: no one wanted to publish it, the cost of self-publishing it on Game Boy Advance cartridges was unaffordable, and the project ended up being forgotten in a drawer.

Finally, only one of the three friends remained with the dream, Fabio Belsanti. The others pursued different careers but he believed in the title. So much so that he ended up creating a company of educational video games but always with ‘Kien’ in his mind. And suddenly, one day, looking at the retro trend that has come back with strength, he decided it was time to turn his own nostalgia into the present of the industry.

He partnered with a distributor called Incube8, specializing in releasing new games for old consoles (like ‘Génesis 2’ for Game Boy or ‘Gunship DX’ for Game Boy Color) and together they finally released ‘Kien’, for $59.99. 23 levels, endless action and the promise of a constant challenge “that will please many and others not so much”. If I spend almost $60 on a game from 22 years ago, honestly, I hope I like it a lot.

And if you don’t have a Game Boy Advance but you want to play it to see what it’s about, you can get a digital file to play it on an emulator. No matter the variety.

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