Hands On: Pinobee: Quest of Heart

Pinobee is Hudson Soft's bee-based side-scrolling platformer for the Game Boy Advance. The version shown on the floor at Space World only contains three levels and serves as more of a graphical showcase than as an actual game.

The game features prerendered 3D models that have been turned into sprites, similar in style to Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. The three levels on display are extremely simple, with only a few enemies and not much else to do besides hop around and collect items. Your bee can do triple jumps, allowing you to reach high platforms without much difficulty. You can also hover and dive down onto enemies with a butt-stomp-like sting maneuver.

The graphics are the real star here, as the gameplay is far too early in its development to evaluate. The game is nice and colorful, and the intro features some nice, large pictures of the prerendered bee character. Let's hope the gameplay is brought up to speed before the game is released.