Blinx: The Time Sweeper is a 2002 platform game developed by Artoon in partnership with Microsoft Game Studios Japan and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox. Advertised as "The World's First 4-D Action Game", the game focuses on the titular character, an anthropomorphic cat called Blinx, who is on a mission to prevent the end of World B1Q64 and rescue its princess from the evil Tom-Tom Gang. Blinx is outfitted with the TS-1000 Vacuum Cleaner, with which he can slow, speed up, record, reverse, and stop time. Blinx was positioned by the gaming press as a mascot character for Microsoft to use to compete against Nintendo's Mario, Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sony's Crash Bandicoot, though the character was never used as such officially by Microsoft.
The game received mixed reviews. A sequel, Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, was released in 2004.
Gameplay
Blinx: The Time Sweeper is an action-platformer, with the player controlling the titular character of Blinx. The player is initially equipped with the TS-1000 Vacuum Cleaner, which can sweep up parts of the environment (referred to in-game as trash), gold crystals, cat medals, and time crystals; they are also able to shoot out collected trash. The player can purchase better vacuums with their collected gold to sweep larger objects. By collecting at least three of the same time crystals, the player gains one time control related to the crystals collected, receiving two if four are collected. The player can also receive up to three retries by collecting red hearts in the same manner.
Using time controls, the player can affect the level in one of five ways: reversing time (REW), speeding up time (FF), slowing down time (SLOW), pausing time (PAUSE), and recording their movements for a period of time to create a clone of themselves (REC). The time controls do not affect the player, allowing them to maneuver through the stage as the control is being used. If the player is defeated and has a retry, a process similar to the REW time control occurs, although the player is also reversed to a prior state before they were defeated. Each stage must be completed within a 10-minute timer by defeating all enemies in a stage and entering the goal gate. One of the companies they would approach was Artoon, founded three years prior in 1999 by Sonic the Hedgehog designer Naoto Ohshima alongside various Sega developers. The team loved the idea of a cat that could control time, especially in combination with the processing power of the Xbox, and formed a partnership between them and Microsoft's Japanese-based Microsoft Game Studios Japan to work on the idea.
Development of Blinx began under the codename Pelon, with it quickly progressing along as the two teams communicated. Ed Fries, the vice president of publishing at Microsoft and executive producer of Blinx, would later state that the game was "the most promising game [they] were developing" for Japan, and that the focus was more on how the game played, rather than the creation of a mascot for the Xbox. The idea of the titular character Blinx serving as a mascot came later in development as the game took shape, at one point even being suggested to CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, but the team would quickly refocus the mascot concept as being for Japan only. The game's soundtrack was composed by Mariko Nanba and Keiichi Sugiyama, credited as WaveMaster Inc., a subsidiary of Sega.
| Allgame = 2.5/5
| Edge = 5/10
| EGM = 7/10
| Fam = 31/40
| GamePro = 3.5/5
| GameRev = C+
| GSpot = 6.3/10
| GSpy = 2/5
| GameZone = 8/10
| IGN = 8.8/10
| OXM = 7.4/10
| rev1 = Entertainment Weekly
| rev1Score = C
| rev2 = Maxim
| rev2Score = 8/10
Blinx: The Time Sweeper received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Although the graphics were generally praised, the game's execution, notably the control method, was considered to have resulted in the game being too difficult.
GameSpot editor Greg Kasavin gave it a score of 6.3 out of 10, noting that players get a sense of relief from completing a level, rather than enjoyment or satisfaction. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it 7.5/5.5/8: the second reviewer found the game to be tedious and repetitive, but the third believed that "issues aside, the unique style and play mechanics make [it] stand out". In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 31 out of 40.
GameSpy suggested that Blinx was proposed as a possible mascot for the Xbox system, rivaling Nintendo's Mario and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and since the main character of Halo: Combat Evolved (Master Chief) was considered too violent (and also lacking an identity behind a visor), the officials wanted a "friendly, furry face" to lead the sales among the younger clientele. Due to the game's unpopularity, it never achieved the suggested goal and Master Chief is unofficially seen as the mascot, As of 2004, the game sold over 600,000 copies worldwide, despite not selling as well as Microsoft had hoped in Japan.