GB dr. mario makes its case

it had been a few years since i’d played dr. mario on NES. the next entry in the series was the version on GB which was released just a couple of months after its older brother. when i’d played the NES version i’d been somewhat bored at how limited the combo system was compared to classics
like puzzle league, but this time around i spent more time trying to make more-involved combos, in part because you get a familiar little bonus riff if you clear a certain number of pieces at once.

the combo system has turned out to be much more interesting than i’d originally thought, and i was more struck by the considerations of matching both horizontally and vertically than the first time around, although this rendition of the game itself didn’t grab me enough for me to want to invest a whole lot of time mastering the ins and outs of it. the presentation is perfectly fine for a game boy game, in terms of the graphics and sound, but the number of options is quite minimal, pretty much just your basic solo and vs. modes. i beat level 20 on the medium difficulty, but the higher levels of the high difficulty setting were incredibly cheap. i didn’t mention this in my previous post on the NES version, but as with that game at these levels the viruses are stacked so high that it really feels like it’s just a matter of luck whether or not you’ll be able to get the stack down to a point where you can actually just play the game instead of scrambling blindly. i don’t doubt that there are some dr. mario masters out there who can pwn even this level of difficulty, but for the average player it just feels unfair.

not much more to add. the game is a good portable version of the original NES classic, but with a host of modern alternatives this is a game that can be skipped over except by the most OCD of nintendo fans (like me) or those who have the nostalgia factor to contend with.

GB dr. mario makes its case for these links:
- as with the NES version there are little cut-scenes after levels 5, 10, 15, and 20 on high mode. instead of the viruses sitting in a tree and watching objects fly by, in this case they’re underwater and watching objects swim by. if you’re curious, here’s a video of the first three cut-scenes (the objects are a fish, crab, and flying fish) and a video of the final ending, which has an entertaining surprise twist
- review of 3DS VC release at nintendolife.com
- really trippy commercial from the 80′s
- entry at wikipedia
- apparently there was an operation-like board game

quarth quickie

i was in the mood for something quick and simple, so i spent some time with quarth, also for the original game boy. the game was one of the earliest released for the system, and although i’d heard about it a while back, one of the main reasons i was interested in playing it was because apparently it shares some similarities with the well-received DSiware game art style: pictobits.

quarth is an odd hybrid of a game. on the surface it mostly looks like a vertically scrolling shooter, except instead of enemies your ship is confronted with shapes that you have to “defeat” by shooting bricks at them and creating rectangles. so technically i suppose the game is more of a puzzle game than a shooter. the game is fairly low-key because you can choose which of the six stages you want to start from (plus a mode featuring randomly generated levels) and three levels of difficulty (which determine how fast the screen scrolls). you can also select among a set of ships, which modifies the background music and visuals.

the game itself is pretty ho-hum, however. creating rectangles square by square just isn’t a very compelling mechanic, and there isn’t much difference in playing the first stage at the lowest level of difficulty compared to playing the sixth stage at the highest level. at the higher levels you do have to strategize a bit more on when to use power-ups, which you earn by creating larger rectangles and which provide benefits such as increasing your firing speed or clearing the entire screen, but otherwise there isn’t much sense of progression to the game. all in all a forgettable early game boy title, but it’ll be interesting to see if and how art style: pictobits improves upon it.

quickie quarth links:
- review of 3DS VC release at nintendolife.com
- entry at wikipedia

bouncing around kirby’s block ball

it had been a long time since i’d played a breakout style game, so i recently played through kirby’s block ball for the original game boy. (in terms of the timeline, the game was released in mid-1996, after kirby’s dream land 2 and before kirby super star on SNES.) i’d played alleyway, also for game boy, quite a few years ago, and at that time i’d mentioned that according to wikipedia: “Years later, the game’s designer Gunpei Yokoi would reuse much of Alleyway’s source code (such as paddle behavior and adapted physics engine) for the Game Boy game Kirby’s Block Ball while working with Shigeru Miyamoto’s team.” the game has a completely different feel, though, and the games don’t share much in common beyond them both being successors to ye olde breakout.

kirby’s block ball adds several key mechanics included, no doubt, to try to distinguish itself from other breakout successors such as arkanoid. like arkanoid, block ball adds powers, although not to the paddle itself but to the ball, activated by pressing the B button. the powers are inspired by the kirby games and are required for destroying certain blocks, although there are only four and they don’t feel particularly necessary. one of the bigger differences is that in some stages instead of controlling one paddle that moves across the bottom of the screen as in the other games you control as many as four paddles, one on each side of the screen. another big difference is that some bricks can only be broken when kirby does a “power bounce”, achieved by pressing the A button right as kirby hits the paddle. the power bounce also grants kirby extra speed, and invulnerability if he hits the spikes that border the stage. having to control more than one paddle and constantly press the A button to do the power bounce makes the game’s controls much fussier than other breakout-type games. others may enjoy the extra engagement, but i found the power bounces to be repetitive and tedious.

the game features ten stages each comprised of three normal stages, a sub-boss battle, and a boss battle. boss battles are exactly what you’d expect without much in the way of surprises, and each level has a high score target (called a “borderline”). in order to see the final stage and the actual ending you have to achieve the high score on every level, a feat that i quickly gave up on. the main reason for that is in order to get the high score you pretty much have to execute the bonus rounds in the levels perfectly. these are triggered by hitting a certain item and then clearing the rest of the level within a short amount of time, which proved to be overly difficult. of course a more-motivated player would actually try to improve her/his control over the ball, but even after playing through all the levels i didn’t feel particularly adept at making the ball go where i wanted it to. the game also features four mini-game type bonus levels that were more enjoyable, but don’t appear very frequently. so all in all, despite the always-cute kirby trappings, this wasn’t a particularly fun or memorable take on breakout. hopefully some of the other kirby spin-offs will impress me more.

bounce around these kirby’s block ball links:
- review of 3DS VC release at nintendolife.com
- page for the 3DS VC release at nintendo.com
- entry at kirbysrainbowresort.net, which includes scans of the instruction manual
- entry at kirby.wikia.com
- screenshots of the ending, at vgmuseum.com

radar mission detected

radar mission is an early game boy game (released about 6 months after that system’s launch) that was well on its way to fading into obscurity before the 3DS came along. since then the game has gotten renewed attention for two reasons: one, its “spiritual sequel”, steel diver, was one of the launch games for that system; and two, it was released on the 3DS’s virtual console just a few months after the 3DS debuted. the game had been on my radar well before then, though, because it was developed by nintendo R&D1, the group led by the legendary gunpei yokoi. yokoi and R&D1 were responsible for many of nintendo’s early games, including the first metroid and wario land games, and i’ve been slowly working my way through their entire output.

anyway, enough history, how’s the game? well, there’s a reason most people have never heard of it. the game consists of two distinct and pretty much completely unrelated parts. the first is simply the game known as battleship in which you place your ships on a grid and try to defeat your opponent by taking turns guessing where their ships have been hidden. the game adds some minor enhancements including an option to have near misses reported; this option makes the otherwise completely luck-based and dull game more palatable, but it still doesn’t make the game worthwhile and i quickly moved on to the second mode.

the second mode is much more entertaining. in it you take control of a submarine and in a first-person perspective you look out through your periscope, move through the water, fire torpedoes at ships, and evade enemies by ducking underwater. this mode in particular includes some impressive visuals and unusually good music, but, again, the gameplay is extremely limited and my interest in this mode was very short-lived.

not much more to say. the game only warranted a small amount of time, but it’s an interesting bit of nintendo history and it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to steel diver (although i have to admit i don’t really have high hopes about it based on my early experiences with that game). we’ll see.

radar mission links detected:
- review at nintendolife
- entry at wikipedia

game boy gallery: on the value of games, part 2 of 2

my last post recounted my first forays into the world of smartphone gaming and in it i sided with nintendo CEO satoru iwata in his claim that such games were really not affecting nintendo’s business in any significant way due to the huge difference in quality between these, what i call, “disposable” games and ones that are much more considered and worthwhile. it so happened that around this same time i’ve also been playing game & watch gallery, an original game boy game that collects four of the original game & watch games, each paired with a more-modern remake featuring mario and co. i’ve been interested in the G&W games ever since i saw mr. G&W in the smash bros. series, and i was interested in seeing how these primitive games, a significant number of which were developed and released even before nintendo’s first big arcade success, donkey kong, was created.

i have to admit that at first i was a bit unimpressed. i enjoy arcade-type games (great favorites being galaga and the pac-man games), but although i thoroughly enjoyed the minimalist LCD visuals and basic beep ‘n boops, i couldn’t see myself being interested enough in the gameplay itself to even bother trying for the 1,000 points required to completely earn all the game’s stars, i.e. in-game achievements, one given for each 200 points earned.

my initial lukewarm reaction was quickly superseded by appreciation and enjoyment, which were followed soon by levels of enjoyment i only feel when playing some of the greatest games of all time. individually each of the games have their own, distinct appeal (even when comparing the classic and modern versions of the same game, the latter featuring variations that are incredibly well-designed riffs of the originals that at the same time keep the core gameplay intact), and no doubt picking favorites can be a matter of preference. but as a collection the game is a great, very well-balanced package and has an excellent amount of variety. when considering the games in comparison to the throwaway smartphone games i tried out, the differences are tremendous. in particular, despite their age the game & watch games have a sophisticated level of pacing. the action gets progressively more and more frantic as you near every additional 100-point mark and then eases up once you pass it so that it can start ramping up the difficulty again, and most of the games also feature a certain level of decision-making and having to constantly choose between pursuing a larger, riskier bonus or sticking to the slower, safer route.

although octopus and oil panic weren’t my favorites, i became fairly addicted to the modern version of fire (although the classic version is enjoyable as well), and the classic version of manhole. the modern version of fire, in which you have to catch falling toads, yoshis, and DK jrs with a trampoline, is pure twitch-action bliss. the classic version of manhole features a steep learning curve that perhaps could have been alleviated by slightly clearer design (being able to see the shadows of the figures as on the original LCD screens and in the post-game boy rereleases may help) but once the patterns are learned, recognizing them and keeping cool under the onslaught of pedestrians is wholly hypnotizing and satisfying.

which brings me back again to the question of the value of games. many of these G&W games have been rereleased on DSiware as standalone versions for $2, and although i can’t yet speak for the others, manhole is clearly worth the price. that release has become a bit obsolete, though, with the very recent release of game & watch gallery on 3DS’s virtual console for just a dollar more, but even as a standalone release manhole is miles away in quality from any of the smartphone games i’ve played thus far. at best the smartphone games feel like they’re about on the level of microgames (not even minigames!) from the warioware series, with very little of the accompanying charm, wit, or polish. the comparison isn’t quite fair, however, as the game & watch games were originally released for far more than their current price (i haven’t been able to find the exact original retail prices, but they seem to have been around $15-$20), but it’s always been clear to me, anyway, that as long as nintendo-level quality games remain exclusive to nintendo hardware i’ll stay loyal to them. even aside from that, until smartphones can support games at the level of sophistication of the best handheld console games (of which i’ve seen very little evidence thus far), there’s absolutely no reason that i can see why any even mildly serious gamer would replace a handheld console with a smartphone as his/her gaming platform of choice. this is all based on the current state of the gaming world which could easily change in the near future. i’m not making any bets, but i’m sure that nintendo is doing their research and will survive this period of uncertainty and will continue their long history of doing what they do best, even since their game & watch days: providing outstanding video game experiences. i’m looking forward to working my way through additional G&W games, and i continue to wear my nintendo fanboyism with pride.

game & watch these links!
- there’s a lot of info about G&W games scattered around the web. wikipedia has a nice listing of all the games and a handy chart showing which games have been rereleased on which compilations.
- text from the instruction manual at world-of-nintendo.com and PDFs of the manuals of many of the G&W games at replacementdocs.com
- club nintendo recently made a version of the original ball G&W device available, and there was an accompanying iwata asks interview with the original G&W developers. awesome. i’m amazed at how limited the technology was at the time and how great the games still are today. incidentally, i hadn’t realized that there’s an iwata asks hub site, at iwataasks.nintendo.com; these interviews are often essential reading and are full of fascinating behind-the-scenes info.
- retroconsolegames.net has a listing of all the games with their release dates and rough estimates of current values as of 2009
- there’s some good info and photographs on nindb.net, gameandwatch.com, intheattic.co.uk, and game & watch information archive

flippin’ through revenge of the ‘gator

although i’ve never really played a pinball game in real life, i’ve enjoyed playing various pinball video games over the years, the most recent being the enjoyable pokeball pinball for GBC. i’ve been meaning to play through the well-regarded kirby’s pinball land, but i thought i’d tackle revenge of the ‘gator first, which preceded it by 4 years and was also developed by HAL laboratory.

i suppose i’m becoming somewhat of a pinball video game snob, because although the game is enjoyable it doesn’t feel very distinctive. the alligator theme is entertaining despite being fairly random, and although there’s just enough variety to the game mechanics i couldn’t help wishing that there was just a little more to keep me engaged; this is understandable as the game was released close to the game boy’s launch. the game features four screens and 3 bonus levels, although progressing from screen to screen gets a little tiresome. in particular, of the four screens you’ll end up spending most of your time on the one 2nd from the bottom, as progressing upwards from that screen takes some effort. also, the bottommost screen is the hardest of the four, so there’s a definite sense of resignation as you try to save yourself and get back to the 2nd screen. in the four main screens there’s a heavy emphasis on hitting certain blocks to get the “savers” that block the holes at the bottom of the current screen before attempting to progress upwards, and this also gets repetitive. the game features a 2-player mode that looks somewhat interesting, but lacking game boy buddies i didn’t get to try that out.

i’m always down for retro games and so i didn’t mind giving this game a try and playing until i earned a respectable score, but like many early game boy games it’s not a classic for the ages. hopefully kirby’s pinball land will be more engaging.

snap up these revenge of the ‘gator links:
- positive review at retrogamer.net
- good FAQ at gamefaqs
- scan of the box
- entry at wikipedia
- some random but cool colorized screens of the game

quick dip into qix

i don’t know where i heard about the game boy game qix (pronounced “kicks” apparently), but somehow i had gotten it into my head that it would be a fun old-school puzzle-type game. it is indeed one of the earliest GB games, but calling it a “puzzle” game would be fairly misleading: the game is, in fact, really an arcade type of game where you have a single screen and an icon that you move around to draw lines to block off sections of the board. (see the the article at wikipedia for more info on the game’s mechanics.)

i went through a funny progression with the game. when i first started i really couldn’t see the point of it, but once i got used to the premise i was rather enjoying myself, but then fairly soon after that my interest waned to the point where i had to put it aside. in terms of gameplay the central feature that’s so off-putting initially is the fact that you start with a completely empty rectangular board every stage, which makes it hard to feel like you’re making progress. and although the stages supposedly get more challenging as the enemies get faster and become more aggressive, the gameplay itself stays exactly the same and your tactics don’t change at all. of course this is generally true of all classic arcade games, but the main game element that sapped my interest is the fact that you only get the game’s biggest bonus if you “capture” 99% of the screen (75% is the minimum). it’s not too hard to get in the high 90′s every time, but waiting and trying to get 99% every time just gets tedious. it’s like the difference between playing pac-man and gobblin’ some ghosts, and playing pac-man and having to get every single ghost every time. but of course that analogy is only a casual one since in pac-man the difference in score between getting a few ghosts versus getting them all isn’t nearly as huge as the difference in qix between getting 98% of the board completed vs 99%. i’m sure there are many fans of the game out there who find that the thrill of chasing that 99% is central to the game’s fun and who are probably quite good at accomplishing it with the minimal amount of waiting, but i’m just too impatient a gamer to ever hope to join their ranks.

so all in all an entertaining-enough experience, if much more short-lived than i had anticipated. it turns out this is another nintendo R&D1 game, and incidentally it’s the nintendo game boy game that was released immediately after solar striker (well, in japan at least; not sure about elsewhere), which i also recently played. i actually only have a few more of their game boy games to play, so being the completist that i am i’ll probably try to track those down and give ‘em a whirl sooner than later. it seems there have been a few qix remakes over the years, some of which may be worth checking out, so i’ll keep my eye out for those as well. maybe. in any case playing the game wasn’t a total loss as there were some highly entertaining mario cameos, including mario in a sombrero, as an african warrior, and as a matador. haha.

quick qix links:
- entry at strategywiki of the game in general, with extensive strategies
- FAQ, also outlining strategies, at gamefaqs
- screenshots of four of the endings at themushroomkingdom.net featuring the aforementioned mario cameos. and here’s a youtube video of the best ending.
- on a related note, here’s a random sheet of the sprites
- PDF of instruction manual at replacementdocs.com
- hilarious commercial. first of all, it’s bizarre that they even made a commercial for such a non-action-packed game (although it seems that the game sold very well, perhaps riding on the tetris craze). and i like how the commercial gives you absolutely no idea how the game actually plays.
- scans of the box art at the game boy database
- official japanese site

not very struck by solar striker

among my many lists of games to play are all the ones by nintendo (hahaha). solar striker is an early game for the original game boy and is notable for several reasons. for one, it’s by nintendo R&D1 (the group that was headed by gunpei yokoi), and for another it still remains nintendo’s only foray into the shoot’-'em-up genre.

i haven’t played all that many shmups, but solar striker is pretty basic. as with my feelings of alleyway there’s a definite sense of the game being several steps behind its NES counterparts, not surprising since this was such an early game boy release. the game makes the most of the hardware, with catchy tunes, great graphics, interesting enemy designs and movement, a satisfying number of bosses and sub-bosses (although the latter are mindlessly easy to beat), decent variety in the level environments, and smooth play control with minimal slowdown.

there are several drawbacks though. since details on the game are scarce online, i’ll go into more detail than usual. first off, the powerup system is quite primitive: you start off only being able to shoot one stream of bullets; the first powerup doubles your number; after two more powerups you can shoot three at a time; and finally after two more powerups you get the best weapon which is twin lasers. there’s a definite sense of improved firepower with each upgrade, but it feels fairly basic. one major improvement, though, is that unlike gradius if you get killed you only get dropped down to your previous weapon instead of having to start from nothing.

1ups are fairly regular and come every 50,000 points, although again the scoring system is very basic and you don’t get any bonuses for hitting a certain number of enemies in a row, even if you defeat every enemy in a stage. enemy patterns are very regular and they’ll always appear at the same part of the screen. also, the pattern of the enemy waves is far too regular: they almost always spawn in columns down the left and right sides of the screen, either alternating or simultaneously. the patterns are so predictable that even though enemies have interesting movements the differences never really affect much of the actual gameplay since you can defeat them so easily.

my main problem with the game, though, is that there’s a sudden spike of difficulty, namely the boss at level 4. the lack of continues makes beating that boss a huge pain, but the rest of the game is pretty straightforward and the last boss is easy to beat. there are 6 stages total, and the game has a hard mode that you can access after you beat the game that as far as i can tell features the same waves of enemies just with more bullets. in most cases the boss fights feel the same in hard mode, although some are made only marginally more difficult. an interesting part of the game is that all (?) the bosses have a “safe zone”; if you position your ship there you’ll completely avoid getting hit. i’m not completely sure, but it looks like for the first three boss battles if you wait in that zone the boss will leave and you’ll be able to continue on to the next stage. it looks like in the fourth level even though there’s a safe zone you can’t skip past the boss, and i’m guessing the same is true for the fifth (and of course the last) stage as well.

all in all an interesting footnote in nintendo history, but a game that’s likely to “dwell in obscurity”, as they say. worth a quick runthrough, but unfortunately not a keeper.

somewhat striking solar striker links:
- entry at wikipedia
- good fan review at 1up
- ripped soundtrack
- guides at ehow.com and gamefaqs. i’m guessing the latter writer actually had the instruction manual because he refers to all the enemies by their actual names.
- game also featured in the game boy nintendo player’s guide
- official japanese site

samus returns in metroid II

i’ve been playing through boatloads of sequels lately, including metroid II: the return of samus for game boy. this was the last 2-D metroid game i hadn’t played (metroid prime 3 is the only other game in the series i hadn’t finished) and i wanted to try to get caught up on the series before the release of other M. i’d purposely avoided finding out too much about the game, so i wasn’t sure how it was going to bridge the stiffness of the NES original and the superlative pacing of its SNES sequel.

it turns out that in retrospect the game functions as an extremely good bridge to the SNES game, and in many ways holds up better than the original. samus is much more limber and has new abilities that have become standard, including crouching and shooting down while jumping, and the additions to her arsenal have also become core powerups in the series. in the interest of avoiding spoilers i won’t mention which ones in particular are included, but suffice to say they’re often among my favorites in the series.

as for the drawbacks, the main criticism of the game is that it’s very linear, and that instead of open exploration you’re often progressing from one area to the next. at the beginning of the game i wasted time wandering around because i didn’t know beforehand how the game was structured, but even after i was well into the game i didn’t find myself missing the backtracking much at all. i definitely wouldn’t want every metroid game to be so linear, but i don’t mind it occasionally. the game is pretty generous with the energy and missile recharge stations and save locations so the frustration factor is quite low, and the graphics are quite good for a game boy game. i agree with one of the other common complaints which is that the music definitely pales in comparison to the rest of the series.

overall this ranks somewhat low in terms of the whole metroid series, but as with nintendo’s other franchises that’s not so much because the game itself is subpar, but rather it’s due to the extremely high quality of the other titles. the now-famous ending was fun to see, and now that i’m caught up on the main story of the series i’m really looking forward to playing through other M, although i’m still debating about whether or not i’m going to finish up MP3 before then. depends on how much i get sucked into it. given the mixed reviews of other M i’m unsure of how much i’m going to like the new take on the beloved series, but i’m trying to avoid reading too much about it and trying to keep an open mind. we’ll see.

the return of metroid II links:
- entry at wikipedia
- review at nintendolife.com
- good page on the game at metroid recon including screenshots, a scan of the manual, and mp3s
- entry at metroid.wikia.com
- collection of maps
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- screenshots of the endings at vgmuseum.com
- video of the best ending at gamespot.com

top 10 game boy and game boy color games … so far

as my third entry in my continuing series of top 10 “so far” lists (top 10 gamecube games was the most recent one), here’s my list of top 10 game boy (and game boy color) games. i find the relatively primitive aspects of the game boy to be tremendously appealing (with the exception of its god-awful screen), and it continues to amaze me how much darn good clean fun the developers managed to pack into that tiny machine. top 10 lists for the game boy are rather hard to find, particularly ones that don’t include game boy color games, so for now i’m lumping GB and GBC games together although in the future i’ll probably separate them. nintendo power’s 20th anniversary list provides a good point of comparison, so without further ado here it is (with, as before, the links to my corresponding blog entries):

TOP GAME BOY AND GAME BOY COLOR GAMES
(SO FAR …)
#	my list	NP’s list
1	tetris	tetris DX
2	pokemon yellow	the legend of zelda: link’s awakening
3	the legend of zelda: link’s awakening	pokemon red/blue
4	toki tori	the legend of zelda: oracle of seasons
5	the legend of zelda: oracle of seasons	the legend of zelda: oracle of ages
6	super mario land 2: 6 golden coins	pokemon gold/silver
7	kirby’s dream land	super mario land 2: 6 golden coins
8	mario’s picross	donkey kong
9	balloon kid	wario land 3
10	wario land: super mario land 3	kirby’s dream land 2

glad to see that NP recognizes how timeless tetris is (although they chose its GBC update tetris DX over the classic original). a fair number of the rest of our lists overlap as well, and in several other cases NP picked sequels over the originals that i prefered (e.g. kirby’s dream land vs kirby’s dream land 2). i’ve played through the majority of the games on NP’s list and at least parts of the remainder and i don’t see them as likely to invade my list, except for possibly oracle of ages. but there are plenty of other classic game boy titles that i haven’t gotten to yet, and plenty of room for newcomers in my list of favorites. onward! to further game boy (and game boy color) glory!