Game Boy Memories Part #1
May 3rd, 2009
A few Tuesdays ago marked the Gameboy’s 20th Anniversary and as usual I’m late to the party. It’s not because I wasn’t aware of this momentous occasion, rather I’m usually fashionably late. By the time the topic came to me, I needed a few days to reminisce and then finally wait until my writing groove came about. And anyways, where was Nintendo? You’d have thought they’d be joining in the festivities of their biggest money spinner. Despite their no-show and my markedly late arrival, I think it’s time we unpack the memories, here are my personal favourites;
Original Game Boy
My first Game Boy was a Game Boy Pocket. I bought the system in a pack with Super Mario Land and a small carry bag for around $AUD120. Pokemon was one of the key reasons I wanted a Game Boy. My brother had saved up enough for his transparent GBP and Pokemon Red, and sure enough, I wanted one too. Pokemon wasn’t the only game that caught my attention though, I’d previously completed chunks of Donkey Kong Land years earlier, as well as sampling the amazing Zelda: Links Awakening (one of the best in the series). These titles as well as odd bits of Tetris, Mario, Kirby among others all intrigued my small mind.
When I did finally purchase Pokemon, perhaps a good few months later, it was my 3rd Game Boy game, alongside Mario Land and Ducktales (a B&W iteration of the Capcom NES classic). I blasted through Mario Land in a few short days after I picked it up. The speedy pace, and similarity to the original made this an ideal obstacle course to flex my platforming prowess. Ducktales was slower, focusing instead on exploration. Like all the Disney licenses handled by Capcom, Ducktales shared notable Capcom traits. For me, a fan of the series, the well characterized sprites were a highlight, but of course, it’s difficult to ignore divine chip tunes like the famous ‘The Moon’ track. Very iconic that.
Pokemon was a magical game for me. I don’t think I’d every gotten so much millage out of a single title. As I read on a design student’s blog elsewhere (sorry mate, I lost the link, you stopped updating), Pokemon was the ideal Game Boy games because it was really a game for young boys. Pokemon succeeded in digitizing the essence that made the activities of young boys enjoyable, such as adventuring, collecting and playing. Pokemon was the digital playground of its era, and I lost many hours to it.
Zelda: Links Awakening and Wario Land followed suit not long after (it might have been before – little vague). The box-art for the Mario Land titles presented an imagery that weakened my Nintendo-loyal heart. I never ended up purchasing Super Mario Land 2 (the title with the most endearing box-art of the lot) until just a few years ago, the title was difficult to find on store shelves for some bizarre reason. Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land on the other hand wasn’t, it was quite readily available, so I settle for it instead. Availability aside, this game had my interested piqued, I mean, who after all is this Wario character, besides some guy that wants to beat Bomberman at his own game
Wario ended up being one of my personal favourite Nintendo games. The series has always always delivered a strong villainy fibre to it, not just in the designs itself, but by the way the move set represents the design. Wario was a large, Italian tyrant whose anti-hero role was best characterized by the fact that he doesn’t just stomp on heads, he literally attacks enemies. His repertoire of ramming, stomping, ground thumping and apprehending harmless creatures spoke more villainy than his domineering appearance ever could. The two qualities worked together to separate him from another Luigi.
Zelda: Link’s Awakening ushered me into this real-time world of adventuring. It’s a title so far ahead of it’s time, no wonder it was re-released for the Game Boy Color 4 years later. Link’s Awakening is most memorable for diverging from norms. Portablizing a brand new, console-sized game world – an incredible task. Allowing you to steal from the local store and then renaming you to THEIF for the rest of the game as punishment. The inclusion of appropriate 2D platforming elements. In fact, swooping through Wikipedia reveals even more series staples that began on the Game Boy, wow, I’m impressed; item-trading side-quests, assigning weapons to controller buttons, fishing, flying around by rooster and the use of the ocarina. Damn, I want to go back and relive his title.
There were other games that I enjoyed during my childhood. I think Legend of the River King should be the last significant title I point out. My brother and I rented this niche-ly little fishing game during the phasing out of all B&W Game Boy games. The title’s similarities the much loved Harvest Moon series instantly struck a chord, and even though the game is questionably a shoddy, arcane little RPG that wouldn’t garner a passing glance for many, like Harvest Moon, it’s also a niche staple that fits nicely alongside Survival Kids as a cute trio of classics.
Wow, that’ll do more for now, I’ll continue my personal retrospective in the next post.
Tags: game boy land, Legend of the River King, mario, Pokemon, wario land, zelda
My Christmas Present to You:: Super Mario Land 2 Retro VIDEO Review
December 22nd, 2007
With only a couple of sleeps left until Christmas I thought that It’d be a great time for me to share a surprise that I’ve been working on recently. Over the past few weeks I have been fiddling around with some video software so that I can start releasing video content for the website.
After much time wasting I finally figured out how to get everything to work. So over the past few days I’ve started and finished my first production with long time friend and retro gamer; Matty Jay. Basically I wrote the text and edited the video while he did the voice work. Now, this is our first ever attempt at video production and overall I am very happy with it. Although we definitely want to lift the standard for our next piece. Undoubtedly our biggest problem (much like an amateur video production people) was with our voice recording, we went through 3 microphones and should have planned our recording better. We did it all in one good take rather than 3 or 4 perfect segements which means that Matt made a few slight mistakes. Which I then tried to cover up when editing the audio but (perhaps) just made it worse. ><
But it doesn’t matter, we can fix these problems for next time. So here is our retro video review of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. You can watch the You Tube stream below:
Merry Christmas guys, I’ll continue to post content over the next few days. We’d love to hear any sort of constructive feedback from you readers.
What was Your First Video Game?
December 9th, 2007
Know Your Roots
This expression, I hold with great importance. People that believe in this statement are people who are proud of what they have become and hence have great respect towards the things that shaped them into the person that they are today. I am one of those people and for me video games is one of those things that has shaped me into who I am today.
It is important for us not only as gamers but people to look back at our past and place things of this nature in high regard. So hence I want to talk about the first games that I owned.
I remember when I was selecting my first two games for the NES. My brother and I had a set limit of money to spend. So we spent our money wisely we bought a 3-in-1 cart because it was only a bit more expensive then a single game but it was 3 games! After we made that decision we didn’t have much left to spend so we were forced to buy one of the cheapest games in the cabinet. So we chose a game entitled Totally Rad, probably because of the sweet name I’d say.
3 in 1 cart: Super Mario Bros, Tetris and Nintendo World Cup
You gotta say, this cart is absolutely awesome. Not only did it have the two most defining games of the era but it also had the sweet Nintendo World Cup. As a gamer I shouldn’t need to introduce Tetris or Mario to you but I do want to briefly mention that the NES version of Tetris. Anyone that remembers this version of Tetris will no doubt remember the part of the game (I forget which part) where there were the set of Nintendo characters each playing a musical instrument, yay!
A lot of people probably haven’t heard of Nintendo World Cup. It was part of the Kunio-kun series which basically means that each of the players had the same character design as River City Ransom’s bad asses. Before each match you could set 4 variables for the computer AI, for example should the your team mates shoot for goal etc. Much like other NES sport titles NWC was unique in gameplay to work around the NES’ limited hardware. Unlike modern soccer games you control only one player and when you don’t have the ball you call to your team mates for them to pass the ball. By controlling one player it stops the camera from constantly moving from player to player which probably would have killed the NES as any camera panning in this game made the sprites often flash white and caused some slow down.
Totally Rad
Now considering that this game was one of the cheapest NES games on sale that day this game is actually a better than average 8 bit platformer. Totally Rad was made by the not very successful developer Jaleco. There is a storyline in there about a kid that can use magic and his girlfriend being captured but its not very interesting. This is made worse by the totally lame (pun) dialogue. The translators have tried to make things interesting by using teen slang and outdated words like gnarly and tubular. But despite the lame story the game plays quite well. Its not as frustrating as your typical unfair NES platformer and the game has quite a consistent balance throughout.
The game’s main selling point is the set of magic powers that you can use to heal, go invincible and turn into animal-esque creatures. It is very similar to the abilities in other NES platformers like Megaman.
So what about you? What was the first game that you owned?
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