Blinx and the Tom Toms are back, and this time they're not alone! How does the sequel to the world's first 4-D game hold up? This is Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space. Facebook: / nitroradofficial Twitter: / nitrorad
Yes, in fact. I'm proud of the fact that it did such a thing 13 years before Sonic Forces! For bonus points, the creator of Sonic both directed and created the two BLiNX game! Might want to get the game if you have an original Xbox! (The games don't work well with an Xbox 360 for some odd reason, so playing them on the Original Xbox is the only option)
Yes you will for BLiNX 1! It's even available on the Xbox One marketplace for around 10 dollars! It's also available on the Xbox Series X! Don't bother with Xbox 360 backwards compatibility, as 's infamous for running extremely poor on there to the point of being unplayable. BLiNX 2 though, good luck cuz it's not available on the Xbox One or Xbox Series X as of this message, making the OG Xbox your only option, although that might change in the future.
I'm so glad someone actually gave a fair and optimistic review of the Blinx games. Blinx was one of my first video games growing up and I owe a lot to the series for getting me into video games as a whole. Hell, I remember when I heard it was getting a sequel, and I nearly exploded from hype afterwards. Blinx was truly my childhood, and it's sad that we never really got a third game. Thank you, Nitro Rad, for giving a fair review of my childhood. :)
Yeah, I'm a little confused on how this works legally. Dropping the trademark just means that NOBODY owns it, right? Couldn't a different company hypothetically just... pick it up? Not saying I think that would happen but it's not like when Microsoft sits on old Rare IPs and does absolutely nothing with them. Is it at least legally feasible for a company like say, Nintendo to pick up the character? :/
Artoon was dissolved into another company. Then THAT company dissolved into another... So Blinx is owned by some large company that I forget the name of now, but they're clearly not doing anything with it. Therefore, it would probably hold a relatively cheap price to buy the brand if that company cooperated. I want to revive Blinx so badly...
"Found you! Faker!" "Faker? I think you're the fake sweeper here! You're comparing your self to me? Ha! You're not even good enough to be my fake!" "I'll make you eat those words!"
Dude you smacking that Xbox disc tray to shut it is super relatable mine would jam so often that It’s almost the equivalent of blowing into Nintendo cartridges to get them to work
Even though Microsoft dropped the Trademark for Blinx, I wouldn't give up all hope on potentially seeing a sequel or reboot to the Blinx 'series.' There's always the chance that someone else could pick it up or Microsoft could snatch it back up if we showed enough support for a new Blinx game. I mean... if fucking Bubsy can get a brand new game in this time and age... a series that we all know most certainly did NOT deserve a comeback... then I suppose anything is possible.
with MS banking hard on backwards compatibility and by extension their early exclusives, and the resurgence of nostalgia platformers I really wouldn't be surprised if we see at least a remaster
Maybe I'm dumb, but this game scared the hell out of me when I was younger. I don't know why. The thought of stealth and not wanting to get caught terrified me
But they did drop it. Don't just talk out of your ass like it's fact without doing any research. Look at Microsofts trademarks and look under b. Blind isn't there, they don't own him or anything about him anymore.
Blinx is definitely a criminally unappreciated concept that holds so much potential to make a true masterpiece. This franchise could've been quite successful like Crash and Spyro if it were for better marketing strategies. It was well ahead of it's time with amazing concepts and it's presentation was quite amazing. Blinx is definitely the greatest mascot I've seen so far.
When I was a little kid, I loved blinx 1, and what made me love blinx 2 so much was the co-op. I played it basically everyday with my mom. Was it a perfect game? No, but the memories it left behind of me and my mom is what I always remember
I replayed the tom-tom levels so much when i was younger. It's straight up what got me into stealth games, despite there being not a whole lot of overlap compared to modern stealth games.
Even though the enemies from BLiNX terrified me when I was younger, I still loved to watch my mom play it. It’s a part of my childhood and I’m sad to see it go.
Tbh i played a lot of vs mode in a friends house when i was younger and i must say i really friggin enjoyed all the mechanics back then, and then playing the coop after the versus it was just such a fun time, i loved this game.
Hi! I was so hyped for Blinx 2! But somehow, its distribution was very limited where I lived back then. Some of my friends grabbed it but I couldn't find it anywhere! We didn't have a lot of game shop (even for my xbox it had to be shopped in a special store that was ordering it??) and online shopping wasn't very popular or developed and we had limited access to computers. I never got to play it, most of my friends who had it living quite far, but it never left my mind. I kept imagining how it could be... It's difficulty level and tutorial overuse aspect would have been a perfect first game for me, and the first one with some of the mechanics that boosted up thing in the second one, looks like it would have been a better sequel, mechanics wise. It could have been a very nice and fun game series if it lasted, it will always have a special spot in my heart. Thank you for your video!
Blinx 2 was one of my favorite games to play with my brother back in the day. We would swap off being first player when we swapped between Time sweepers and Tom toms, saying that we were the "leader" of the group so we were the first player. We never made it fair but it was still loads of fun
I will say besides what you said about Halo Combat Evolved (which has aged extremely well at least to me. Ahead of it's time I argue at least) you did a great job with the review. It's disappointing that the sequel couldn't be a mix between the challenge of the 1st game but improving the said mechanics for new fans. Honestly, Blinx is pretty underrated. I know Halo did steal it's thunder (Which I love that series a lot don't get me wrong.) but I believe Microsoft shouldn't have dropped the series honestly.This series I am definitely gonna try out once I get the money to buy the games.(I already bought the 1st 3 Halo games recently so i'll have time to save up money go play Blinx.) It's ashamed that Microsoft (as of late) besides Halo and Gears Of War have been ignoring their other IP's. I mean hell, one example is Fable. The series in itself is pretty much dead because of one delay that kept going on eventually leading to that said developer's demise. And you know honestly, with how bad Halo is doing in terms of sales I think we need something like Blinx again. I would definitely respect Microsoft more if they gave Halo a break and experimented more. Unfortunately, that means little to nothing to Microsoft because to them it's all about money.(It's why Halo keeps going on even though to me and many other people the series has been going downhill since 4.)
Personally I find first person shooters don't hold up as well and become outdated much faster than platformers do. Mostly because in a platformer it's a lot easier to incorperate many different ideas, where 5 Halos later, it's a continuously better looking, better playing game, making the first game feel aged.
NitroRad Yeah, I guess I understand where you're coming from. And while the sequels (besides Halo 4 & 5 for me) did improve Halo's formula I still think on it's own it's a solid game from beginning to end. I guess you can say we can agree to disagree. I do agree however with Golden Eye 007. That has aged horribly and that's why I can't get into it nowadays.
Boneax _ Probably. I didn't notice it to be honest. I thought Halo 3 controlled pretty smoothly in all honesty. Though yeah, funny thing that's actually my favorite Halo game in the series. 2 was really fun but 3 I loved playing from beginning to end with my big brother.
i dunno man, halo 5 has horrible aim mechanics, and while there's a plethora of movement mechanics off spawn the gameplay has less depth and diversity as chaining these easy to use movement mechanics is now more advantageous in many situations than aggression and damage output. imo halo 2 still has the the most intuitive and freeflowing mechanics and h1 still has the biggest skillgap with its mechanics. many shooters do age, but because of the level design, music, narrative and world building i feel like doom 1 and 2, quake 3 and bungie halos hold up in a way most shooters don't. Visually halo holds up less than blinx, though i'd say it's the other way around when in comes to most other elements of the games design. another comparison that i can think of is on the ps1 most games visually look better than ape escape 1, but ape escape 1 blows most platformers (of that era; aside from crash and spyro) out of the water, despite other games looking more polished.
So I just called The United States Patent and Trademark, giving the serial number of the BLINX trademark and they confirmed that its status is canceled/dead. Meaning that as long as someone goes to the proper process of getting the trademark they can claim it as their own.
Honestly I think Blinx 1 is one of the best games of all time. The level of detail and polish that went into that game is astonishing!!! Down to the little animations for certain actions and the sound effects for everything. Honestly if you love and have played Blinx as much as me you'd see what I mean
if you freeze time at these cannons u can sweep the rockets/bullets/fire arrows the cannon throws. I find it pretty useful cuz they are strong projectiles against enemies
"a lengthy tutorial sequence tthatreally babies you through all the game mechanics." That sounds familiar.... *hits myself with a Kingdom Hearts 2 case*
At least KH2 has a Skip Cutscene thing which makes that whole part like 15 minutes long and you never do it again. Also when you think about it it's not really babying you about the *game* all that much it's just a really slow story buildup. You can just mash the tutorial boxes and do whatever afterwards.
I always liked Blinx 2 better. It was my fave game growing up :) My twin sister and I loved the co-op mode, and it really is a lot more fun 2 player. I also loveddd the customization factor, and I would always dream of a blinx 3 where you could also customize player 2. So much fun, and so many memories :)
So watching this and your other Blinx review, it's nice to finally see these games get some love. A lot of people I watch seem to really dislike them both with a passion. So it's just really refreshing to see another opinion.
I thoroughly enjoyed Blinx 2, I especially loved the customization (though I wish you could've customized the entire team cause proportions of the others were OCD inducing) and the more action gameplay, not to say I didn't enjoy the first game I loved them both, though the Tom tom levels were annoying but i did love their powers. And I agree if they scaled down the tutorials it would've made it better. I really wish somebody would revive the series, cause it was charming and had so much potential.
Why did Microsoft abandon this? Yes it's very much a product of the 90's/early 2000's but they are in desperate need of new IPs and a game with unusual time or space mechanics can really show off a systems prowess and feel fresh
To be honest, Microsoft has done a pretty abysmal job handling their IPs over the years outside of Halo, Gears of War and...I think that's about it. So it's not that much of a surprise that they never made a third game with the Blinx license, let alone before Artoon became Arzest.
Looks like a case of the devs listening to their child fans a bit too much regarding the first game. "The game is too hard!" "Cute characters are dumb. I wanna look cool!" "I wanna be a bad guy *WiTh a gUn!"* And they took all that kind of feedback too far in some ways.
The game was too hard to be fair. But I think they handled lowering the difficulty the wrong way. In Blinx 2 there are tutorials for EVERY ACTION. There are literally tutorials on how to jump or move the camera. All the puzzles are overexplained--as soon as you approach a puzzle a popup appears and tells you just how to solve it.
@@luigi7834 Those tutorials should have been confined to an "Easy" mode. Yes, overall the game's difficulty was really watered down. They didn't find the sweet spot. Blinx should have always been a straight platformer with the vacuum as a combat weapon, with no time puzzle elements. It would have been awesome that way.
@@Mario_N64 Okay, wow, didn't expect a response so quick! Gotta disagree with some of what you said--I think the time puzzles and mechanics are part of what help differentiate Blinx from any other 3D action mascot platformer. In the first they required thinking on your own and using the time powers to mess with the environments. In the second one you just do what the pop up says
@@luigi7834 It's just that the difficulty became punishing about halfway through the game. They should have tweaked it better, not tone it down so much in Blinx 2. Maybe some difficulty settings. Or some tutorial levels.
So I just called The United States Patent and Trademark, giving the serial number of the BLINX trademark and they confirmed that its status is canceled/dead. Meaning that as long as someone goes to the proper process of getting the trademark they can claim it as their own.
It took less than 10 minutes for me to do this, though originally I didn't know I had to have the trademark's the serial number so I wasn't able to get a definite answer the first time I called. Yet once I did find it and called them back they were able to give me a definitive answer.
It's a shame big developers are too scared to do something creative and unique. Nah, they want to do the most "trendy" and appeal to the "largest demographic". So goodbye Blinx the Time Sweeper and hello FPS, quick-time events, Pre-order DLC, broken games on release day, Micro-transaction, online multiplayer dominated gaming of today. :/
Yeah, but that is understandable considering video games are a business, and money talks. If you're a CEO of a professional video game company, you're going to want to stick with what works and try to be the most up to date as well. Even if you can take a hit or two, you wouldn't want to, as you'd want to maximise sales and profits as much as possible.
Looks more like my kind of game than the first one which I found boring and confusing I prefer that it gives you just the two powers at the start and the others later on so it doesn’t chuck them all at you at once and overwhelm you, also always enjoy a character creator the platforming looks more varied and the fact you actually keep the sweepers you buy this time is much better instead of the bizarre decision to force you to re buy them in the first blinx
Looks more fun and varied to me and less confusing wasn’t a fan of the first one at all, will definitely play the sequel as the platforming and pretty much everything else has been improved and it’s always fun customising your own cat character instead of being forced to use the default one
I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of how the health system was added out of practically nowhere, solving one more issue from the first! Regardless, as a fan of both games, I think you nailed exactly what makes these titles good, and I'm happy there's someone out there who's put it together in such a pleasing format. Thank you.
I also love how he didn’t even get it in a badass way either, like most characters with scars got them from these intense life-or-death battles against vicious creatures. Blinx just happened to jump at the wrong time and got scraped by a pebble.
I think maybe a new Blinx game with an Monster Hunter esque "Mission-System" would probably have done something. Customize your Timesweaper, go on missions, maybe release some updates and bonus missions or weekly/monthly challenge missions... It could have been cool, so sad there will never be a sequal... did anyone "pick up" the trademark yet? Or what does "dropped" mean in this context. Like it's gone and no one can use it ever again?
I'm not even an Xbox owner but I still remember seeing Blinx's design vividly on the boxart of the first game at every single game store I went to for years when I was a kid. I didn't even know the second game existed until Nitro Rad put this review up. But knowing more about the games from these reviews, I have to say Blinx and the unique world he was apart of could've easily had several other incarnations. Like, the series had Ratchet and Clank levels of potential, just maybe not quite as combat focused. Just imagine how amazingly fun and creative they could've gotten with the chronological manipulation powers on modern consoles with how far game dev tech has come. I think to survive the series probably would've had to made the transition to multi-platform releases at one point but that's hardly a bad thing. I can picture a platformer in this style doing exceedingly well on the Switch.
God these old Xbox games are my childhood. I remember going shopping on my Birthday when I got the Xbox and of course, I chose Blinx and fell in love with it. These videos bring back so many memories. Thanks for making these videos!
Blinx 2 may be heavily inspired by sonic adventure 2, But wait! What if Sonic forces is heavily inspired by Blinx 2? Think about it. Armies? Character customization? Hmmmmm...
Cool, another person who remembers BLiNX! Might want to search up "BLiNX Weebly", if you want to see an in-depth fansite with some official BLiNX things you haven't seen before, and a discord server that has a whole group of BLiNX series fans!
Man, playing this online when it first came out was soooo much fun. There is no way to sum up how insane a Team Deathmatch with Time and Space minipulation gets :)
Something I never could get my head wrapped around is that Blinx 2 felt... unfinished. It seems like they added a lot of more in-depth mechanics - like the TomTom stealth sections.. and team management - but just didn't seem to flesh them out or implement them fully. The biggest detail of this is how the Time Sweeper sections have their own music for every stage.. wheras TomTom only has one music track for the whole thing. To me, it felt like Blinx 2 would've had a lot more features going for it, but for one reason or another.. they just.. didn't.
it said they dropped it, not wrote it off. Theoretically someone could grab it and try to revive it. This isn't like with Megas XLR on Cartoon Network (whose CEO at the time seemed to show a special contempt for it given how opposed he was to even Adult Swim trying to air it. Like he REALLY didn't want anyone having it.) which was written off and will probably never be brought back (not that it's stopped the creator from trying to get the IP back, he still hasn't given up yet.) All it sounds like it needs is a willing dev and someone to buy the IP.
Would love to see more of this character. I like the design, and I especially love the focus on time mechanics, which had always gotten me. Just realized that Blinx is a lynx...
He 'aint a lynx, not with that long 'a tail, no I think he's just a cat besides one of the defining characteristics of lynx's are their mutton chop like tufts drooping down their cheeks, I don't see those on Blinx do you?
Can you please do some reviews of the Crash games, namely Wrath of Cortex? You're an exceptional reviewer by the way, you don't take yourself too seriously, with light inside jokes and objective viewpoints. One of the very few review channels I can watch without leaving because of the personality ^.^ Also upload more often when able, this retro-review stuff is great
Honestly when I played the first game when I was young, how to progress wasn't immediately intuitive and I didn't like it that much, and didnt play it much, while the 2nd game I played some years after that grabbed me by the throat and I enjoyed it a lot. I think everything was just shifted in a more kid-accessible direction is what happened.
Blinx 2 might've ripped off Sonic Adventure 2. But working together with your own Blinx OC with Blinx... HMMMmmmMM... Totally doesn't sound like Sonic Forces.
I've never played blinx but honestly those guys who were like "oh its an embarrassing piece of game history" like honestly who the hell do you think you guys are? leave your goddamn opinion out of it. It honestly feels like they are baiting backlash with that, or maybe freakin games journalists are too busy trying to be like Yahtzee and AVGN and they think negativity is all it takes.
I feel the arrogant opinion definitely could have been left out of that article. If it were an opinion piece, then that'd be fine. But it was an article about the abandonment of the Blinx property, it was written to report news. It didn't need the author's 'tude lol.
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, It was a game that was charming but not one that I experienced much of, on account of not being the person playing it. I could tell it wasn't necessarily an easy game, but something about it made me like it. Maybe it's just my bias as a person that likes cats and the suck cannon from the Ratchet & Clank games.
I always loved both blinx games and was happy with the changes made in 2 as well as the coop function. Playing the game with my brother was so fun and the stealth missions took the perfect amount of teamwork to get by