Like a few other later Game Boy Color games, Shantae is GBA enhanced, meaning the game improves when played on a Game Boy Advance. Specifically, improved colors and a secret Tinkerbat transformation dance can be unlocked. These features, however, are not available on the Virtual Console version.
Despite meeting critical praise, Shantae was a relative commercial failure due to the fact that it was a Game Boy Color game released a year after the Game Boy Advance was introduced. However, it developed a large cult following, resulting in re-releases and sequels. Because of this, some refer to it as the Game Boy Color's swan song.
The original concept of Shantae was born in the year 1994, when Erin Bell created a female character while coming back from her camp counselor days. She named her Shantae after one of the campers. She also imagined she could use dances to summon animals to help her in her adventures. Matt Bozon liked the idea and picked up the character to flesh out her mythology and powers. Matt has mentioned two different stories about how he came up with the idea of the Hair Whip, Shantae's signature move; the first was that Erin sported her hair very long at the time and would frequently hit Matt in the face when turning around and the other was that Erin herself thought about it first.
According to the early concept art, Shantae was originally going to have the ability to transform into a tiger along with her elephant, monkey, & harpy transformation forms. The tiger transformation form ended up being replaced with the spider transformation form.