E3 06: The Ant Bully Preshow Report

Based on an upcoming film of the same name, Midway will be showing off a platforming game called The Ant Bully at this year's E3 in Los Angeles. You'll play as Lucas Nickle, a little boy who makes the mistake of torturing the residents of an ant hill in his backyard. In response, a wizard ant magically shrinks Lucas down to the size of an ant, so he must learn his lesson and live life as the ants do.

Over the course of the game, you'll slowly evolve into an ant and learn ant skills like stamina, strength, and climbing, and you'll be able to scale sheer vertical surfaces and lift objects many times your size. You'll also fight with ant allies against traditional ant enemies like wasps, mosquitoes, spiders, termites, pill bugs, and of course, humans, including an exterminator as the final boss. Your ant allies can help you by linking together to form bridges and ladders, as well as catapults to help you get around environments like the Nickle backyard and a frog pond. Other missions will have you flying on the back of a wasp, or hang gliding from one high surface to another. Weapons like a staff, bow, lava silk squirter, and seed bombs will help you combat enemies and hazards in 18 different missions based on the plotline of the film.

The Ant Bully is scheduled to ship in July on the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, and the PC. A Wii version of the game is slated for November of this year as well.