A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a platform-puzzle video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System developed by Imagineering and published by Absolute Entertainment in North America, Nintendo throughout Europe and Jaleco in Japan.  Designed by David Crane, the creator of Pitfall!, the game follows a boy and his shapeshifting blob friend on their adventure to save the planet of Blobolonia from the clutches of an evil emperor.

Players control the boy protagonist with gameplay revolving around solving puzzles by feeding his blob companion different flavored jelly beans to alter its shape into various tools in order to overcome obstacles and traverse the game’s world.  The premise of the game involves the boy and his alien blob, Blobert, on a quest to save Blobert’s home planet Blobolonia.   Blobolonia has been taken over by an evil emperor who only allows his subjects a diet of sweets.  They must traverse the subway system and caves beneath Earth and gather the necessary items before traveling to Blobolonia to try and defeat the evil emperor.

The concept of a boy accompanied by a shapeshifting blob was heavily influenced by the characters Gloop and Gleep from the Hanna- Barbera cartoon “The Herculoids”.  David Crane wanted to incorporate a unique gameplay mechanic into the game to advance the adventure genre as he had done with the platformer genre with his Atari 2600 game Pitfall!.  Since the Atari 2600 the adventure genre had evolved to include useful tools for players to collect and utilize however Crane did not like the use of inventory menus finding them a less than elegant way to switch between items and decided to implement the selection and use of items in a different way.