Blinx 2 unveiling soon?
Reports from Japan suggest it's well into development, and could make an appearance in the near future.
Back in November 2002, a little Xbox-exclusive game called Blinx The Timesweeper launched to critical and commercial indifference, despite a lot of plugging from platform holder Microsoft, for whom the game represented a first stab at character-based adventuring and an adventurous application of the Xbox hard disk technology.
Developed by Japanese firm Artoon, it saw a little cat by the name of Blinx journeying around time and space using his time-fiddling abilities to overcome obstacles - pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding and generally treating the traditional puzzling adventure like a dog-eared episode of Thundercats in a nippy VCR.
At the time, we were disappointed when it didn't deliver on the promise of the tech, but news emanating from Japan suggested that Artoon would continue to develop it, and give it another go a year or two down the line. Surprisingly enough, that's what we're on about today - as Japanese magazine Famitsu Xbox reports that Artoon is still busying itself with the sequel, featuring new abilities and the chance to swap sides, and will unveil it in the magazine soon.
From what we've read, it sounds like Artoon is opting for "expanded and improved" rather than a wholesale revamp. Blinx will still vacuum things up with his little time-hoover or whatever it is, toying with the flow of time to solve puzzles, but this time out players should be able to tweak his appearance, and even take control of the game's villains - in a new mode based around deceiving Blinx with slightly less well-intentioned manipulations of the space-time continuum...
Meanwhile, 1UP states quite matter-of-factly that Microsoft is preparing to show the game to North American journos very soon, but at the moment Microsoft is playing the old "We don't comment on rumours" card.