Pinobee: Wings of Adventure

Pinobee: Wings of Adventure was developed by Artoon, which was founded by former Sega senior director Yoji Ishii in August 1999 with other ex-Sega staffers such as Yutaka Sugano, Naoto Ohshima, Manabu Kusunoki, and Hidetoshi Takeshita.^[3] Sugano, who co-directed and co-designed the game, stated that Ohshima conceived the game as a story that expressed the growth of the human heart.^[3] The story about a robotic bee brought to life by a grandfatherly scientist was inspired by the fantasy novel The Adventures of Pinocchio.^[4][5] The game's original main theme was that of the love between a parent and child, but this was eventually toned down.^[6] Ishii claimed that the transition from Sega platforms to the GBA and the game's development were smooth due to the handheld's 32-bit CPU and C-based programming. The new GBA hardware presented a unique challenge for the project team and was chosen as the best fit to represent the game's art style.^[3] The characters were created using pre-rendered CG models while the backgrounds were hand-drawn.^[3] The CG models differed little from their initial concepts, although the antagonists changed from living insects to robots.^[6] The game's world map was modeled after the Vincent van Gogh oil painting series Langlois Bridge at Arles.^[7]

Leading up to the release of Pinobee, it was shown at Nintendo Space World, the European Computer Trade Show, Jump Festa, and the Tokyo Game Show.^{[4][5][8][9][10]}

The game was published by Hudson Soft as a launch title for the GBA in Japan on March 21, 2001. A software bug that softlocks the game in two instances was found by consumers shortly thereafter. A workaround for the bug and an apology was posted by Hudson on its official Japanese website on April 11, 2001.^[11] Activision struck an overseas distribution deal with Hudson to release Pinobee alongside the GBA in North America and Europe on June 11 and June 22, 2001 respectively.^[12][13] Artoon and Hudson collaborated on a sequel titled Pinobee & Phoebee, released in Japan for the GBA on July 18, 2002. The game gives players the ability to switch between the titular brother-sister duo, each with unique abilities, in search of 20 heart pieces in every stage.^[14] Ohshima said Hudson suggested Pinobee could be enjoyable as a PlayStation game and a port of the original game was developed for it.^[15] Hudson began advertising both the port of Pinobee and the GBA release of Pinobee & Phoebee (including English language promotional artwork for the sequel) on its North American website in 2002.^[16][17] Konami acquired the distribution rights to the Pinobee series and displayed both games at its E3 booth in May 2002.^[18] Hudson released the PlayStation port of Pinobee in Japan in September 2002 while Konami handled distribution for North America and Europe in 2003.^[19][20][21] Pinobee & Phoebee remained exclusive to Japan.

The Game Boy Advance version received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.^[24] NextGen called it "A cute but ultimately underachieving entry in an already crowded market."^[33] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 25 out of 40 for the GBA original,^[28] and 27 out of 40 for the PlayStation version.^[30]