Shantae Kaizoku no Noroi on 3DS, Japanese version of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse. The hair-whipping genie in a pirate adventure with pirate abilities. Original Japanese version of an excellent indie platformer.
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Category
Platformer1 player7+
Description
Shantae, the lilac-haired half-genie, sets out to recover her powers stolen by the Pirate Queen across pirate-infested islands in the European version. Published by WayForward, released in Europe in April 2015. 2D exploration with pirate accessories replacing transformation dances, inventive bosses, warm humour. European version in English.
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
WayForward puts its whole animation budget into a head of hair. The heroine's hair whip has more frames than most of her attacks put together, her dances loop without ever showing a join, and every island gets its own architecture, minarets, salt caves, sunken palaces, in warm palettes that saturate the backgrounds. The pixel work here is dense, never retro out of nostalgia.
Jake Kaufman writes synthesised music that thinks in Middle-Eastern modes. The melodies lean on augmented intervals and rapid ornaments, carried by electronic timbres that own their artifice, and each island gets its own mode, lower towards the caves, higher towards the markets. The result sounds at once like a memory of a sound chip and like a dance actually being played.
The heroine begins stripped of what defined her. Deprived of her magic, she has to borrow the gear of a former enemy, hat, sabre, cannon, boots, and make progress with tools that are not hers. The story draws a real question from that dependency, since the pirate queen helping her is pursuing an aim entirely her own, and the ending forces a choice about what one is prepared to give back.
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse PAL is the European version of the third WayForward entry, released by Inin Games with a notoriously restricted print. Very high collector value: one of the rare boxed Shantae releases on 3DS in Europe, with the cartridge already appreciating sharply on the secondary market due to the franchise's absolute physical scarcity.
Is Shantae and the Pirate's Curse still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2014 on 3DS and known in Japan as Shantae - Kaizoku no Noroi, WayForward's project is an adventure platformer in the metroidvania vein, where the half genie dancer Shantae explores colourful islands by gradually unlocking new abilities. Deprived of her magic, she relies this time on pirate tools, from sabre to cannon, which open the exploration ingeniously. The warm pixel art, the sparkling humour and the spirited pace make for a charming adventure. The backtracking structure divides. An excellent platformer, recommended for fans of metroidvania and of expressive pixel art.
