So I've recently been reading through some old Nintendo Power issues I got my hands on. They serve as great little time capsules of a completely different era of games, as well as an interesting look at the things Nintendo prioritized at the time. All four of the issues I have are the months before and after the release of the Nintendo Gamecube. All of the big previews and reports are on its presence at that year's Spaceworld, each issue has several pages dedicated to a different launch game, they're making this console sound like it's gonna make Luigi real. And yet, this is kind of an awkward time for Nintendo when it comes to their console releases. The N64 is winding down with games like Madden 2002 and Tony Hawk 2, so there isn't a lot for Nintendo Power to try and sell their audience on. Because of this awkward middle period between the N64 and Gamecube, the GBA and GBC saw quite a lot of coverage. I mean, games like Pokemon Crystal and Advance Wars were always gonna get promoted heavily, but I noticed a lot of games that I'm pretty sure would have never gotten the features they ended up getting if it hadn't been for this vacancy. Every issue I read had multiple pages dedicated to Dragon Quest Monsters 2, and when it finally got a review from the outlet it got a 7. Lara Croft on Game Boy Color, several Jurassic Park games, Klonoa on GBA, Spyro on GBA, obviously these aren't all the same level of quality, but seeing them getting large previews or multi-issue game guides was just odd. Among those games, the one that stuck out to me the most was Lady Sia. See, all those games I mentioned in that previous sentence are all either well known or at least from series that are well known, and yet here's Lady Sia, a completely new game and character from a company that dealt almost exclusively with licensed games before this one. Each issue I have has a full-page advertisement for the game, and one of them even has a guide for the first two worlds of the game. Not only that but in the letters to the editor section, someone sends a message complaining about the lack of girl characters in games, and the editor's response has this quote: "...there's not a gamer alive who wouldn't call Joanna Dark, Samus Aran, or Lady Sia a hero." OK, so, the game literally hadn't even come out yet, so I think several living gamers wouldn't call Lady Sia a hero and be reasonable in saying so. But more importantly, this certainly gives an idea of how they were trying to make this game a thing, which is why I was so curious about it that I had to play it for myself.

So it turns out Lady Sia is incredibly basic. Like, to the point that I was pretty disappointed, it's a bad ending to the paragraph of setup I did and now it makes even less sense for me to have gotten this invested. It's a very basic platformer with very basic combat. You run-up to an enemy and mash the B and R button over and over until they die, they usually manage to get one hit in on you, but who cares because there's almost always a health pick-up nearby. Platforming is mostly okay, except you're weirdly slippery, which can trip you up but it's still completely manageable. The story is very generic fantasy, except there's also some technology, but I wouldn't call it steampunk, things just kind of show up in this game. Some bird enemies started showing up and they were really bad to fight, but I still made it past them and up to the end of the second world. That's when the Retroid Pocket I was playing this on decided to start having really bad controller issues and made the game basically unplayable. It was here that I had to decide if I wanted to do all the levels I did again on a different platform in order to finish the game, or just end my playthrough here. I simply stopped playing.

I guess if I had to give the game some points, the animation on the opening cutscene and the character sprites are kind of impressive, it's not a bad-looking game. I could see someone back in the day being won over on the visuals alone considering this is very early in the GBA's lifespan. If I were a child and the only game I had on the GBA was Lady Sia, I would finish it, I might even finish it a second time. Again, if I were a kid and this was the only game I had.

Nintendo Power gives this 4 1/2 stars out of 5, higher than the scores they gave to Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Mega Man Battle Network, and Pokemon Crystal, games that are also covered in the issues that I have. The score is high but no one in the review really says anything all that glowing about it. "It's not bad, just a little too straightforward" "The gameplay isn't very challenging, but that may just make the game more accessible to younger gamers" "With stylized art, great control, and a lot of variety in action, Lady Sia is a very pleasant surprise. The only thing that keeps me from giving it a perfect five is the repetitive music" I know Nintendo Power gives out high scores like candy, but there's so little about what the reviewers say that sells the score, even the quote of one person saying they would give it a perfect score. It's just a little baffling, trying to figure out why this game got pushed so hard, besides the most cynical and obvious assumption of being paid to do so. If so, I guess if a publisher like TDK interactive had to push any game, it would be their original property. According to MobyGames, RFX Interactive went back to licensed games after this until RFX Interactive closed down in 2003, along with TDK getting bought by Take-Two. There even was a Lady Sia 2 in development, and it seemingly got decently far in production until the closure of the studio. It's kind of sad now that I think about it, this developer that's only known for making licensed games trying out the start of a big new franchise, getting this big Nintendo Power bump, only to end up getting all that cut short due to the brutal nature of the industry. I don't think Lady Sia is a bad game, and I bet a sequel could have made things better, but regardless of quality, I find it to be a pretty interesting case of a game just totally falling into obscurity despite its best efforts. I know this isn't much of a review, but I felt like I needed to let people know about this strange obsession I've had over the past couple of weeks. I might even try to go back and finish Lady Sia someday, because I bet there is some cool stuff I haven't seen yet. I don't wanna let the Lady Sia fandom down.