When Balan Wonderworld landed on consoles and PCs back in 2021, it's safe to say the reaction to the game wasn't exactly positive. Critics gave it low to middling scores, with the consensus being that it had failed to live up to the previous efforts of its creative leads: the former Sonic Team members Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima.
Nevertheless, we felt there was something to Balan Wonderworld's colourful, theatrical aesthetic and its memorable character designs that could've worked inside a more focused and polished experience. So when we saw that Game Boy Demakes had published an animated mockup of a fictional Game Boy port, we were excited to see the results. And honestly, it has us wishing for the days when 3D platformers would often receive a 2D counterpart on less powerful hardware.
The mockup shows some beautiful pixel art of the lead character Emma, the farm-themed stage from Chapter 1, and the Negati (the shadowy enemies present in the game). It also features a fantastic chiptune remake of the main theme from frequent Game Boy Demakes' collaborator beatscribemusic, who produced four chiptune covers in total for the animated demo.
If you want to play around with the ROM, you can find it here (available for free of course). You should also check out GameBoyDemakes' Patreon, where they post about their latest creations.