The first Shantae game was initially designed for the PC or consoles comparable to the PC, such as the Sony Playstation. It differed significantly from the later Game Boy Color release in 2002, as the first design had plans for using 3D gameplay/environments with characters being sprites, as well as a number of features like being able to buy new hairstyles which would each give different attacks aside from the standard hair whip, various outfits that could be bought giving different effects, and summoning (as opposed to transforming into) animals such as a Monkey, Tiger, Elephant and even a Spider to help solve puzzles. Shantae herself also looked different, most notably her hair being black, as opposed to purple.