This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Astro Rabby - AAAA - 50% (4)
Boxxle - GGBG - 75% (4)
Final Fantasy Legend - AAAG - 63% (4)
NBA All-Star Challenge - ABBAA - 30% (5)
Revenge of the Gator - GGGGGG - 100% (6)
Shanghai - AAAGG - 70% (5)
As a relatively obscure import, I was happy to see 4 ratings for Astro Rabby.
Games for this topic:
Aretha
Castlevania: The Adventure
Kwirk
Penguin Land
Tennis
Trump Boy
We have our first Japanese-only RPG here in Aretha, though I figure on GB these games are somewhat more simplistic to play than they might be on other systems. This game is also fairly well-known and there are a bunch of walkthroughs out there. Trump Boy might be a little bit harder, it seems like this is a conversion of a Japanese card game called Daifugo / Millionaire, if you want to look up the rules for it.
Aretha - B
ReplyDeleteCastlevania: The Adventure - B
Kwirk - A
Penguin Land - B
Tennis - B
Trump Boy - A
Aretha is an extremely weird and janky game which was clearly designed by people who didn't really understand how RPGs were supposed to work. It does a few good points but it's burdened by a ton of flaws. We'll start with the good stuff first, because there's not a lot. It looks and sounds pretty good, and in the options you can set the character movement speed to fast, which lets you zoom around the map. You have 8-way movement and aren't restricted to tiles like in many early RPGs, so movement feels quite nice. Now onto the problems. Almost everything regarding this game's progression and gameplay is nonsense. We'll start at the beginning. You start with no money and equipment, and you will do 1 damage to all enemies in this state, so you must first get equipment. This is done using a credit card, which lets you borrow money to a certain limit. You need to immediately borrow the maximum amount of money, which is 30k. This is effectively all the money you'll have for a while, because enemies at this point only drop 100 per fight. You need to buy the Main Gauche and Passport with this money. If you buy anything else, you softlock the game. This is because the Main Gauche is the only weapon the main character can use that is sold here (it is also, notably, not the most expensive weapon in the shop) and the Passport is a key item, and this will use up about 20k of your money. If you instead bought the Hand Axe, which you cannot use and cannot sell (you can't sell items in this game), you simply have to restart as there will not be enough money available. If you bought the Main Gauche, then stayed at the Inn twice (the Inn costs 10k per visit), you also softlock and have to start again since you won't be able to afford the passport. You should, actually, never use the inn since it's too expensive, you can talk to your grandfather twice for a free heal, this is the only way you should ever heal in the entire game. Conveniently, you get an item that lets you warp back to the first town at any time (even in dungeons), which you can use to heal. You might think you can simply grind encounters for a very, very long time to make the money, but you can't, since there are only a finite number of encounters in the game. See, once your level reaches a certain point (at this point in the game, it's 7), encounters stop spawning. You level pretty fast, so you can only make maybe around 3000-4000 before there are no encounters left, so it really is a softlock if you waste your money. Anyway, assuming you avoid this pitfall, there are tons of other issues too.
Aretha cont'd
DeleteCombat is insanely simple, you can only attack, defend, and run. Items exist, but can't be used in battle, and you do eventually get access to magic, but not for a long time. Damage is completely static in this game. All monsters deal damage equal to 1/10th their maximum hp, so if a monster has 30 hp, it does 3 damage. Armor exists, but the player's defense stat does nothing at all so it is completely worthless. Monsters actually do have a functional defense stat, which causes them to sometimes take less damage, though most monsters have 0 def. Attacks can also very occasionally miss, and enemies can use spells, but their spells basically always fail so it's usually a free turn if they attempt it. This generally makes battles extremely static. If I'm facing an enemy who has 90 hp and I do 30 damage, I know using simple math that I will take 18 damage in this battle (I will kill it in 3 turns, during which time I'll be hit twice for 9 damage each). You can also run from all encounters except the handful of scripted battles with a 100% success rate, so you never have to fight random encounters unless you want to grind. In theory, this makes it easy to run through any dungeon even if you're on a low level, but there are some mandatory battles eventually that essentially force you to be at a certain level due to how the combat works. Still, this means healing items are totally useless (since you can only use them between battles), since you can just run from every encounter to enter scripted fights with full health. Speaking of dungeons, every time you enter one, the enemies on the world map are replaced by the enemies in that dungeon. This can be annoying if you enter a dungeon that you're not supposed to go to yet, though you can just enter a different dungeon to "fix" the overworld. If it's not clear by now, all of this game's mechanics are janky and strange like this. It is still sort of playable if you use a guide, but it's also not particularly engaging due to how static and simple it is. It's a shame because if they had just gotten the basics down a little better (ie, running from battle sometimes fails, some degree of damage waiver, using items in battle, enemies giving better money and never despawning) this easily could have been at least A.
Castlevania: The Adventure sucks. This is like a classic example of a bad Gameboy game, in that it's structured exactly like an NES game but way worse. This is by far the worst Castlevania game, it's missing almost all of the elements that make Classicvania what it is. For starters, the movement is horrid. You move like half the speed you do in the normal Classicvania games, resulting in atrociously stiff and slow movement that makes platforming feel terrible. There are also no subweapons, which removes pretty much all of the strategy from the Classicvania titles, as figuring out how to use your subweapons to overcome difficult situations is pretty much the entire point of the early titles. Despite being such a slow and limited game, it also runs quite badly, having a fair bit of slowdown whenever more than 2 sprites are on the screen. It's generally a fairly easy game as bosses and such have very limited patterns and health pickups are abundant (they drop from candles rather than being found in walls, another way it doesn't properly follow the conventions of the series), but there are some maddening parts like a sequence near the end of the first level where you have to do like 14 pixel perfect jumps in a row. About the only thing you can say for it is the presentation is decent, it looks all right and the music is good, but it's strongly recommended to just skip to the second Castlevania game on the system, which is actually pretty decent.
DeleteI've owned Kwirk forever, but I always disliked it. My main reason for this was that it was really short, with my recollection being of it only having 10 levels. This is false, it actually has 30 levels, though it's still a fairly small number in any case. The core gameplay is actually pretty decent, your goal is to move your character to the goal point on the map, but there's a variety of obstacles in the way, like spinners, push blocks, and gaps, and you have to figure out how to align everything so you can get through. The most clever puzzles give you control of multiple characters, which you can swap between at any time, letting you temporarily trap one and free them later, but they all have to make it to the end eventually. The biggest problem is that there's simply not a lot of it, or so it would seem. See, the game doesn't actually have only 30 puzzles, it actually has a vastly more respectable 327 puzzles. The game's other 297 puzzles are in the "heading out" mode, which tasks you with running through a gauntlet of 10 (or more, if you so choose) randomly picked stages from a set of 99, divided into 3 difficulty levels. These stages are set up so that each flows directly into the next, and you just keep going until the end. The thing is, for a few reasons, this mode is not nearly as fun. For starters, not being able to pick the puzzles to do kinda sucks. Unless you do all 99 in a row (which is pain), it's quite likely it will take a long time and a lot of duplicates to see them all. Secondly, the puzzles here are just not as clever. They use up less of the screen, are typically simpler, and the ability to control multiple characters never appears here. I can see why they did it this way, the idea was to add replay value so you could play the game in short bursts, but IMO the main mode already offers that decently well. I would easily have been willing to trade this mode to, say, increase the number of puzzles in the main mode to 100. It's still not nearly as bad as my memory of it, but I still like Boxxle and Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle a fair bit better.
Penguin Land is pretty bad. If this feels familiar, it's because we've somewhat already covered it on Saturn, where it appears as part of Sega Ages Memorial Collection 2, though there are some important differences between the versions. The gist of the game is the same as the arcade version (which was the one we played on Saturn), you play as a Penguin and you need to safely get your egg from the top of the stage to the bottom. The egg can only fall a certain distance without breaking, and there are also polar bears and other nasties that will break it if you're not careful. To aid you in dropping it, you can break the block in front of you with a button, Lode Runner-style, but you can't break blocks directly underneath yourself so you need to plan ahead. You can also jump and push blocks as well as the egg. When it comes to the Game Boy version there are two big differences. The first is that the game is somewhat easier. Level layouts are generally somewhat more simplistic and enemies are slower and less numerous. However, there is a huge downside, which is that vertically you can't see nearly as far, with it only being possible to see 1 row past where the egg will break, as opposed to like 5 rows on the arcade version. This adds a massive degree of luck / memorization to the experience, as there's no way to look down, so although you can see that the ground below you might be safe, you can't tell if it's a "dead end" where there's no way to save the egg if it falls to that location (and such situations are common). The combination of these two factors basically robs the game of any depth. Assuming you know the route to take, the levels are easy, but you'll take a lot of deaths figuring out the route as you can't plan ahead in any way. There is a level select, so functionally you get "infinite lives", but it's generally not particularly fun due to the lack of depth or skill.
DeleteMost of the early sports games we've looked at on Gameboy have been pretty decent, but that trend does not continue with Tennis. Most pre-Mario Tennis games are pretty flawed in various ways, this game avoids some of the pitfalls but falls into others and is also just too simple for its own good. For starters, one thing this game does get right is the swing control. When you press the button, you contact the ball pretty much immediately and can resume moving fast, unlike some old tennis games where you have a lengthy swing animation and only contact the ball towards the middle or end. This does go a long way towards making the game feel more responsive. The bigger issue is shot placement. Simply put, you hit the ball out way too often in this game, making it unsafe to aim for the corners. For example, a very important technique in any Tennis game is to be able to hit a shot "up the line" when you're in the corner. This is typically done by holding towards the edge, for example if you're in the bottom left corner you would hold left to hit the shot towards the top left corner. However, this just causes you to hit the ball out here. Don't think holding nothing will work either, that results in hitting the shot back towards the middle, and holding right aims a little further right, but it's basically the same. This means if you force the opponent to return the ball from the corner, you know exactly where they're returning it to, so when you serve, you always just aim for the corner, then rush the net for a volley to the opposite corner that scores basically every time. In the event that a rally does get going, it also almost always ends with someone hitting a good shot that gets past the opponent, but then also goes out because way too many balls go out in this game. The third problem is that there's no shot selection here. Both buttons do the same thing, with the only control over the type of shot being how high the ball is when you hit it, though this barely matters as the lob shot never goes high enough to really matter (you can still return it from the net with a smash), which ensures that the "rush the net" strategy has no counterplay. This is still a little better than some other early atrocious Tennis games, and I could see the argument for A if you were being super generous simply because the controls are ok, but I also can't see it staying interesting for even a single complete game, let alone any significant length of time.
DeleteTrump Boy is not a bad game once I figured out how to play it. The main mode is a conversion of a Japanese card game called Daifugo that somewhat resembles President. The gist of this game is that it is divided into hands where each player can play multiple cards. Despite the name, there are no trumps in this mode, suits are irrelevant, only the numbers on the cards matter, which are ordered 3 to Ace, then 2, then Joker in terms of value. When a card has been played, if you're next in line, you can play any card of higher value than it, or pass (even if you could play a card). Once no one else can (or wants to) beat a card that has been played down, the person who played the last card leads the next hand with any card they want. It is also possible to play multiple cards at a time, if you have several cards of the same rank. For example, if you were leading, you could lead a pair of 5s. This makes everyone else play pairs, so if you had a pair of 7s you could play, but if all you have is an 8, you cannot. Obviously, low cards are really bad since they're hard to play, you want to get rid of those ASAP, generally you try to win a round so you can dump a low card when you lead, and you save doubles and triples until near the end when other players likely can't counter them so you can win multiple tricks in a row. When someone runs out of cards, they earn points based on how early they went out. The first person gains 10 points, the second gains 5, the second last loses 5, and the last loses 10 (the 2 in the middle don't gain or lose any points).
Trump Boy cont'd
DeleteWinning a hand is very beneficial, if you win you become the Daifugo, and the player who came in last has to give you their 2 best cards, while you can give them any two cards (usually your two lowest unless they're a pair). The person who came second becomes the Fugo and can do the same with the second last player, but with only one card. As you might imagine, the game has a significant momentum aspect since the winner of the previous hand has an advantage in the next hand, which definitely adds a significant degree of luck, the player with the best hand at the start often has a good chance to win the whole game, but it's still a fairly interesting game and there's definitely some strategy to it. The AI is also pretty decent. There are actually 2 additional games in the package, but they're not quite as intricate. The first is called Speed. This game is played with 2 players, who each have 4 cards which are played face-up (this means you can see the opponent's cards). Two cards will be dealt out, and you can play any of your four cards overtop of them if they are either one higher or one lower, so for example if the displayed cards are K and 10, you can play 9, J, Q, and A. After playing a card, you can then play more cards if they follow the same rules. So if a 10 was dealt, and I have a 9 and an 8, I can play the 9, then the 8. Both players play at the same time, which is where the speed aspect comes in, if you both have a 9, you want to be the one to play it first. After playing one of your cards, you can also draw a new card to replace it, and the winner is the one who runs out of cards first. In the event that neither player can play, new cards are dealt and play continues. This game is okay, but I don't feel like there's much strategy, so I don't think it stays interesting too long. The last game is concentration, which you probably know all about by now. You have to match the cards, suits don't matter, so say, matching any 2 5s is a match. This is a versus mode, and whenever one player makes a match they keep going. For both speed and concentration, you can select the level of difficulty for the AI, and they vary quite a lot. Anyway, the other two games are okay but Daifugo is clearly the main appeal. This is sort of a hard package to rate, Daifugo is pretty good, and this package is clearly way better than something like NBA All-Star Challenge, but I kind of wish they had included another one of the more strategic card games like Hearts or Spades or something to round out the package. As such, it's not bad for an early title but it will clearly be surpassed by later efforts that simply include more games.