The most delayed game in history just came out. For Game Boy Advance

• His name is Keen, and the game was supposed to come out 22 years ago on the Game Boy Advance.

• Now, finally, it has found a publisher and is now available to purchase in its original format.

How long does it take to develop a video game? It depends on who you ask. If it’s Rockstar, GTA VI has been in development for almost ten years. If it’s CD Projekt Red, they’ll tell you Cyberpunk 2077 took about seven years to make, and if you ask Eric Barone, he’ll tell you Stardew Valley took him four years to make. Now, if you ask the Italians at AgeOfGames, they’ll tell you Kien took 22 years to release.

And it was done on a console that no longer has any official support or releases and is purely retro and collectible: the Game Boy Advance.

StoryIt was 2002 when five twenty-year-old Italians decided to create the first Italian video game for the console at the time: Game Boy Advance. They met by chance, and their name was Fabio Belsanti., Luciano Iurino, Cristiano Convertino, Giuseppe Campanella and Giuseppe Grassi. These five got their hands on the first Game Boy Advance development kit from Italy and started developing their game “Kien”. They even made a statement to the press and all that.

The thing is, none of the five were programmers.

All wrong. The company they created had a capital of 500 euros and used the partners’ personal computers for development, as Belsanti claims in his “memoirs”. They got some money after they had done a project for the Abruzzo National Park, completed the design of the game and then began looking for a programmer. In his own words:

“We have to remember that we are talking about a time when the Internet was just emerging, when remote work was almost impossible and bringing an international professional developer to Bari (a city in Italy) was a pipe dream.”

After several candidates bordering on the “surreal” and “writing several stories about aspiring “illusionists”, they found a suitable developer who, as Belsanti explains, said: “I don’t know if I can do it, but I’m ready to fight.” to the death to finish this project! Today, only Belsanti continues the project. The others have turned the page.

Autumn. After some time in development, the game was finished. Between late 2002 and early 2004, the studio signed several contracts with publishers to release the game. “In all the contracts, the overall product estimates and sales estimates were initially very good,” says the Italian businessman. “The problem was that Game Boy Advance cartridges weren’t exactly cheap to produce ($15 each), which made the forecasts unreliable.”

As the developer explains, publishers told him things like “we’ll have to wait for publication, possibly for years. Kien is a great game, but the only games that sell on the GBA at the moment are definitely Nintendo games or strong IPs. A new IP is too risky for now…” The team was eventually disbanded, and the project remained unpublished for over 20 years.

Until now. Because Keane has finally found a publisher: Incube8 Games, a company that specializes in releasing games for classic consoles. The game is finally available for purchase on the Game Boy Advance, yes, on cartridge, for $60 on the distributor’s official website. “On a romantic level, the idea of ​​a game being released on the original console is just magical,” Belsanti tells The Guardian, where he also confirms that he’s working on a spiritual successor.

Image | Incube8 Games

In Hatake | This is how I created my own real retro zone: eight consoles connected at once, with visual enhancements and no cables in sight.