leaving the player with "just the core gameplay gimmick of the blob's different transformations". 1UP.com contributor Jeremy Parish predicted that the game's potentially frustrating, trial-and-error mechanics could subside once the player is over the learning curve and masters the limited toolset and simple interface. As reported by Stuart Hunt of Retro Gamer, "A Boy and His Blob proved to be a phenomenal success for Absolute Entertainment, going on to become one of the company's biggest hits and exceeding all the team's expectations". The game won "Best of Show" award for its debut at the 1989 CES. The advocacy group Parents' Choice Foundation awarded A Boy and His Blob with a Parents' Choice Award in 1990 for "portraying 'Positive human values', 'High quality software', 'Intelligent design', and the 'Ability to hold the player's interest'". Designer David Crane was particularly proud of the latter honor, which he appreciated both before and after becoming a parent himself. Legacy Since the original release of the game, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia has received scattered recognition from the media. In 2005, University of Houston newspaper columnist Jason Poland attributed the inspiration of the game's premise, in which a young boy befriends an outerspace being, to the central theme found in a slew of 1980s films including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Last Starfighter. The writer found this especially true for the former of the two features, in which the earthling protagonist supplies his alien cohort with candy. Poland explained that "although free from any Jelly Belly product placement, A Boy and His Blob encompasses plot devices from every '80s buddy sci-fi film and acts as an end cap to the entire film genre". The website GamesRadar noted A Boy and His Blob as a milestone in video games for having the first recognizable instance of an AI-controlled partner. Despite giving it such a low review score, IGN listed A Boy and His Blob as the 74th-best game on the NES, owing its inclusion to creative gameplay mechanics and a healthy mixture of action-adventure and platforming. A sequel to A Boy and His Blob was released for the Game Boy under the name The Rescue of Princess Blobette. The game once again follows the title characters as they attempt to save a princess jailed within a castle tower. Majesco Entertainment bought the rights to A Boy and His Blob after Absolute's closure. A