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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Fist of the North Star - BBBB - 0% (4)
Hyper Lode Runner - GBB - 33% (3)
NBA Jam - AAA - 50% (3)
Painter Momopie - AA - 50% (2)
Race Drivin - BAAGAGA - 57% (7)
Saint Paradise: Saikyou no Senshi Tachi - BB - 0% (2)
A pretty low-rated topic, but there's something kind of epic about Race Drivin' winning its topic. No other version of the game scored higher than 18% (the Genesis version). What a glow-up for the GB version. I wonder if any other much maligned games will ever get their redemption like this?
Games for this topic:
Battle Bull
Crayon Shin-Chan: Ora to Shiro wa Otomodachi da yo
J.League Fighting Soccer: The King of Ace Strikers
Jeopardy
Ninja Boy
Puyo Puyo
I'm simultaneously intrigued and worried about Puyo Puyo. Obviously, unlike Tetris, which is mostly just about shapes, this is a game about colour. Is this going to be at all playable on Gameboy? I guess we'll find out. As for Jeopardy, there's many different versions of Jeopardy on Gameboy (Jeopardy Platinum, Sports, Teen Tournament), but they are all the exact same game with different questions, so we're only going to rate this one but you can rate based on any version of the game.
Battle Bull - G
ReplyDeleteCrayon Shin-Chan: Ora to Shiro wa Otomodachi da yo - A
J.League Fighting Soccer: The King of Ace Strikers - B
Jeopardy - A
Ninja Boy - G
Puyo Puyo - A
Battle Bull is a fun game that kind of reminds me of Bomberman, though I suppose it actually has more similarities to Pengo. The basic gist of it is you're a bulldozer in a maze with a bunch of enemies. There are certain blocks you can push, and you defeat enemies by pushing a block into them so they get crushed into a wall. There are a variety of enemy types, some of whom can themselves push blocks or shoot at you, and to beat each stage you have to defeat a certain number of them (not usually all, when you defeat enemies sometimes more spawn elsewhere). Between stages you can buy upgrades with points, like increased speed or even weapons, though I do feel the weapons compromise the game system to some degree. The basic gameplay loop of finding a block to hide behind and then waiting for your target to get in range so you can squish them is satisfying, and I feel like the stages are generally pretty well-designed, even though they start introducing gimmicks like blocks that can only be pushed in a certain direction they don't get overly restrictive like we saw in Painter Momopie. There's also password support, which makes it a pretty decent choice for car trips and the like. A pretty decent title overall, definitely stronger than the first Bomberman game on the system.
Crayon Shin-Chan is an okay platformer. It's a fairly simple hop and bop affair that sort of reminds me of Parasol Henbee due to the urban stages where you can climb poles, though it's clearly not as good as that game. You can take only one hit, and although you can find powerups that let you attack, your attack is very slow so jumping on enemies is almost always preferred. The game can be somewhat tough, but extra lives are relatively plentiful and respawn if you die. On every stage, there's a minigame you can play, the whack a mole game is okay, but the red light green light and cycling games are both kind of annoying, luckily even if you lose them it kinda doesn't matter, you just get an extra life if you win. The other thing to note about the game is that it's very short, there's only 4 stages and it can be finished in about 15 minutes. It's an okay time while it lasts, but it's probably not something you'd ever go back to.
J.League Fighting Soccer is atrocious, easily one of the worst soccer games I've ever played. The game's fatal flaw is its controls, there are a handful of actions you can take at any given time, like passing, clearing, and shooting, but rather than coming up with some kind of sensible control scheme like, A = shoot, tap B = pass, hold B = clear, they instead have an insanely stupid system where A performs every action and B cycles through a list of actions. This obviously takes way too long to be practical and basically makes doing much of anything nearly impossible, though the game has tons of other problems besides this. Passes and basic movement are both incredibly slow and the slide tackle is way too good, so much of the game involves trading slide tackles back and forth, and shots are also awful, you can barely aim them and you generally just kick it straight to the goalie, and of course because passes are also bad don't expect any one-timers. The game even also manages to look bad because it has some weird system where the players change size, probably to indicate who you're controlling, but it'd look way better with an arrow or something. There's really nothing good I can say about this one, easily one of the weakest sports games of all time. Even Football International was way better than this.
Jeopardy is pretty much what you'd expect. The basic idea of the game translates to the Game Boy perfectly fine, and the questions actually seem somewhat more reasonable compared to many versions of the game. Admittedly, on my first playthrough I got Cats as a topic, which I know a ton about, but "Toys and Games" and "Shakespeare" were also pretty doable. The sound is a little shrill (though nowhere near as bad as Wheel of Fortune), but I do like the character animations, they're endearingly goofy. The game does have one big problem though, and that's the number of questions. The game claims there's 1500, but it took me only 3 games to see two categories that were duplicates. It looks like each category has 2 sets of potential questions, because I did see a couple duplicate categories that had different questions, but this is still a concerning level of repetition. I note that the console versions of the game have around 3500 questions, which is more than double the amount found here. Obviously, limitations based on the cart size exist, but it's still a problem. I suppose you could buy all four Jeopardy games for GB to get 6000 questions, as they are all effectively the same game but with a different question set, but this still feels kinda lame (and I can't do anything on Sports Edition). I think I'd still rather just play Lingo, which is a much more fun game and you virtually never get duplicates.
DeleteNinja Boy is a solid little action game. It's sort of like a beat-em-up, I guess, though viewed from a top down perspective. Basic gameplay is fairly simple, you need to beat enough enemies on each stage to open the door and move onto the next. Your main attack is just a basic punch, it does move you forward a little bit so it's not too bad to use, but there are definitely enemies who outrange it, though many of them can be jumped on or attacked with your special jump kick. You can also punch rocks to get powerups, which can give you extra lives, shurikens, or even lead to bonus stages and such. These are pretty important, as there is no health in this game, every time you get hit you lose a life, though you respawn instantly and lives are fairly plentiful. There's not too much else to say about it, the game is pretty simple overall, but it controls well and is decently fast-paced and varied. It's definitely one of the better early action games and it remains relatively unique even later into the system's life.
I'm kind of shocked, but Puyo Puyo is still playable without colour. I felt there was a decent chance that this game would be complete garbage because it'd be impossible to read your board, but surprisingly the shapes are distinct enough that it's still completely doable, after a few minutes to adjust I was still able to do stairs build no problem (and this is Puyo Puyo 1 so there's really no point using anything else). Of course, the presentation has also taken a big hit, all the voice callouts are gone, but at least the music is still intact and sounds good. I also have to note that if you play this on Super Gameboy, the pieces are totally colourized and it looks significantly better, though of course if you're playing on Super Gameboy you could just be playing the SNES version. Visuals aside, this is still Puyo Puyo 1. It's a good concept and it's still kinda fun, but it doesn't have a lot of depth due to the lack of offsetting, even the SNES version is not G IMO. Still, it gives me much more hope for Puyo Puyo Tsuu.