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New games up shortly!
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Dec 2, 2023 03:18
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Welcome to the Game Boy Game Club, for December 2023. The end of 2023 marks two years (!!) since the GBGC was resurrected. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed to this thread over the last two years with comments and memories about the games each month, fond reminiscence of times spent with the GB/GBC/GBA, or suggestions for future games for us to play through. I'll confess, as the year draws to the close I had contemplated whether or not to keep the club rolling come 2024. I'd considered instead starting up a Nintendo DS club, which might be my favourite Nintendo console ever (don't tell the SNES) or perhaps even moving to a general Handheld Gaming Club covering the wide and wonderful variety of games and handhelds out there. That might still happen some time next year, we'll see, but time and time again I keep looking into the library for these systems and finding titles that I'm curious to try - there's certainly no shortage of stuff I'd still love to get to. Thanks once again, let's close the year out with some weird and wonderful games. Game Boy - Kid Dracula   I think there've been multiple times this year where in my head I've gone "We should do Kid Dracula next month. Wait, did we already do Kid Dracula? Hmm." We have not done Kid Dracula. Let's do Kid Dracula! Konami released Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun for the Famicom in 1990. A cute parody of the Castlevania series, the game never saw a Western release at the time although eventually was localised in 2019 for a re-release as part of the Castlevania Annivesrary Collection. In contrast, 1993's Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun for the Game Boy was brough to both NA and Europe as Kid Dracula. A sequel to the NES original, Kid Dracula must journey across 8 stages in order to defeat his demonic rival Galamoth - unfortunately except for Death, all of his monsters have abandoned him to join forces with Galamoth instead. With it's cutesy, SD style and Kid Dracula's ability to shoot fireballs (and other spells as you progress through the game), the gameplay is pretty reminiscent of the Mega Man series. A copy of the manual is available here: https://www.retrogames.cz/manualy/GameBoy/Kid_Dracula_-_GameBoy_-_Manual.pdf Game Boy Color - Shadowgate Classic   For anyone unfamiliar with the series, Shadowgate got it's start on the Macintosh as part of the MacVenture series consting of Deja Vu, Shadowgate, Uninvited and Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas. The original 1987 release was in black and white - though colour ports would appear on the Amiga and Atari ST that same year. Possibly the most important port of the game was 1983's NES version courtesy of Kemco which was likely a lot of folks' first exposure to the series. Shadowgate would go on to receive two sequels, Beyond Shadowgate for the Turbografx 16 and Shadowgate 64 for the Nintendo 64. In 2006, two of the original designers of Shadowgate - Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs - formed a new studio called Zojoi and were able to get the rights to the Shadowgate series. This has lead to somewhat of a resurgence, including a well received enhanced and expanded remake (Zojoi's site lists it as a 'reimagining') in 2014, a VR game called Shadowgate VR: The Mines of Mythrok in 2021, and there's currently a further sequel in development called Beyond Shadowgate (no relation to the previous TG16 game). At this point the original Shadowgate is one of those games that has been ported to everything under the sun, but we'll be looking at the 1999 port to the GBC from Infinite Ventures Inc. A first person adventure game, the player has to explore Shadowgate Castle, recover the mystical Staff of Ages, and defeat the evil Warlock Lord. This is somewhat more challenging than you might initially believe - Shadowgate is very much some 1987 adventure game design, with all the issues that come with that such as obtuse puzzles and many guess-right-or-die situations. I think this is one of those games that is really suited to playing it in a game club - if you get stuck, ask the thread for help! Share knowledge and try and help people make it to the end. If you do want some hints, I'd recommend UHS Hints' guide for Shadowgate: https://www.uhs-hints.com/uhsweb/shadowgt.php UHS Hints is great because rather than giving you a straight up walkthrough it'll give you a vague hint, gettting more and more specific until finally giving you the full solution. A copy of the manual is available here: https://www.thegameisafootarcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Shadowgate-Classic-Game-Manual.pdf Game Boy Advance - Creatures   I have a lot of nostalgia for the Creatures series, particularly the first game. The original game was released in 1996 for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. The brainchild of computer scientist Steve Grand, Creatures was a staggering technical achievement for 1996 - players would raise virtual er, creatures, called Norns that possessed a complex series of drives governed by a neural network, the capacity to learn both from their own experiences and from positive or negative reinforcement from the player, and also their own genomes that are passed on to their descendants as players breed successive generations but also possess the capacity for mutation. This would have made for a fantastic game in and of itself, but Creatures was also constructed in such a way that players were able to share their Norns with each other on this new fangled thing called the internet. A modding community very quickly spun up around the game, with players creating both all sorts of new objects for creatures to interact with and entirely new breeds of Norns with different characteristics and genomes. This was some of my earliest interactions with both online communities and modding content and I still remember vividly how mind blowing it was that not only did I have a game, but I could go online and get new things for it and talk to people about my experiences! The Creatures community still exists today, significantly diminished in numbers but still with a small but passionate fanbase. Most of the focus these days is on Creatures 3/Creatures Docking Station, the 2001 release that presents probably the most fertile ground for modding and tinkering and significantly more complex behaviours than the initial 1996 game, but something about the balanced of simplicity and emergent possibilities of the original game has stuck with me in a way that the sequels never quite managed. Creatures got a port to the Playstation in 2001 - apparently the AI code has to be completely reworked by Elo Interactive Media in order to get the game to run on a console. Instead of a disembodied hand, players interact with their Norns as a fairy called Scrubby (lol). By all accounts, the framerate is godawful and it's a pale imitation of the PC original. In 2002, Creatures was ported to the loving Game Boy Advance, apparently using the PS1 version as a starting point. I do not understand how this was at all possible, and I am very curious to find out. This might suck, and if it does, I'm sorry.  I've not been able to find a copy of the manual for Creatures, but from what I've seen from taking a look at the game so far, it does have a tutorial. Raise Norns, breed Norns, post yo Norns.
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Dec 2, 2023 06:30
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I'm definitely down to keep going in 2024, whether it's DS or General Handhelds. A wide variety might keep things fresh, but also might be too much to sift through, unless you have some in mind already. The DS is an amazing system and has a tremendous library, so I'm good to go either way. Excited about this month's crop; I love Shadowgate, and Creatures sounds like a nice change from what we've been playing for GBA. Kid Dracula is great but that goes without saying.
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Dec 2, 2023 06:41
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I've actually been idly thinking about how basically any retro game is a handheld game at this point depending on your device. So maybe a different sort of theming than just the three different kinds of Game Boys would be worthwhile. Like, I don't know, one entry is affordable on actual hardware, another is unaffordable games we probably can't (or shouldn't) play on actual hardware, and a third for hacks/translation/randomizers that can't be played legitimately. Full disclosure- when deciding which if any games I'm playing this month, "how affordable is this played via real software" has been a major consideration.
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Dec 2, 2023 07:19
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One of the advantages of the GB/GBC/GBA I think is that they're all easily emulated across a variety of devices up to and including your PC. If you want that handheld form factor, you've also got the wave of Android handhelds coming out of China, or the Analogue Pocket ( ) as well as the original hardware. I'm not much of a hardware purist guy usually, but in contrast, the DS is one of those systems that I think emulates fairly poorly. Not in the sense of 'does this game run', but the dual screen setup and touch-screen heavy controls are hard to replicate in an emulated format. DSes are still fairly readily available but both they and 3DSes are creeping up steadily in price. At least softmodding means that running anything under the sun once you've got the hardware is pretty painless, and I think DS flashcarts are still pretty inexpensive? Still seems like a harder pitch for participation than the GB line. There's not really a right answer I suppose, we'll see how things go, and even if I do hang up my hat literally anyone is completely free to keep this rolling. For the time being though, I'm happy to keep riding this Game Boy train for a little while longer! I still haven't played Mother 3, after all. 
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Dec 2, 2023 07:49
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DS flashcards could be between 15-30 bucks depending on your seller, whereas you would pay way more for a decent GBA flashcard (Everdrive/EZFlash). I don't know if the price has gone up because of the Analogue or if they were always a more premium product. There is a cheap, purple GBA flashcard all over Ali Express, but that seems a mediocre remnant from the past that was still taking up plenty of warehouse space (it apparently doesn't even work with SDHC, you need older microSD cards). Harder to recreate in emulated form is one reason why I bought a New 2DS XL a couple years ago, so I could play DS and 3DS titles without limitations or additional effort. Although in hindsight I regret not going for the New 3DS XL, so I could find out if the 3D is really that gimmicky for myself and have an easier to replace battery. I also still have a original, "phat" DS but the screens on that look pretty terrible these days, and not because of usage. For a brief moment I considered giving it away to a young person, but besides the screens it has a used battery (drains even faster while using a flashcard) and the hinges would probably break in no time. Better to get a second-hand "old" 2DS for a kid, I think they are in less demand than the "New" devices. There's plenty of Dutch language titles for the DS and so it's a sideproject of mine to separate the really terrible ones from the ones that don't annoy me within their first 15 minutes. To an extent: I'm not even going to bother with the sheer amount of titles dedicated to horses, pet-shops and match-3 games involving jewels! Edit: Note that buying a flashcard for the DS is still a minefield of cards with similar names (R4 means nothing!), sold by companies with similar URLs and with "timebombs" that might stop them from working when your device is set beyond a certain date. Even if they are cheap, do some research to find the card you want and then make sure you are actually purchasing that certain card. It's not as easy as you might think. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Dec 2, 2023 |
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Dec 2, 2023 11:05
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Heck ya, Kid Dracula.
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Dec 3, 2023 05:14
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kid dracula!! shadowgate!! some weird poo poo I've never heard of!!
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Dec 4, 2023 20:22
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mode 7 if you wanted to combine game boy and game boy color to add ds, or heck just add ds, i think that would be perfectly fine
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Dec 4, 2023 20:23
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Add in Lynx Let’s all play APB and S.T.U.N. runner
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Dec 4, 2023 20:37
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gently caress it, NGage had some good games
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Dec 4, 2023 20:42
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If I knew how to reasonably play n-gage games I would probably explore them, but that's a pretty niche platform. I definitely came here for the gameboy games, mainly DMG and GBC, but I do still have my DS lite with ezflash carts handy. I'd be about as interested in looking back at the DS library as I would the GBA library, probably because I associate them both with the same device really. My only concern is that gameboy games tend to be pretty short, so the current format is a good way to fill the month with different games. My memory of DS games is that they're larger and tend to take longer. Could just be lingering trauma from Phantom Hourglass. Could also just be a non-issue as people come back from playing past longer games in this thread anyways. I'm not familiar with Kid Dracula but I am already not a fan of this trial and error type gameplay. Feels like mega man with less control, and I'm not a fan of mega man. The animations and silly plot are nice though, especially the way some of those animations just scream gameboy game. We'll see how far I get, but I may take a break from it to give the other games more time this month.
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Dec 4, 2023 22:06
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Mierenneuker posted:DS flashcards could be between 15-30 bucks depending on your seller, whereas you would pay way more for a decent GBA flashcard (Everdrive/EZFlash). I don't know if the price has gone up because of the Analogue or if they were always a more premium product. There is a cheap, purple GBA flashcard all over Ali Express, but that seems a mediocre remnant from the past that was still taking up plenty of warehouse space (it apparently doesn't even work with SDHC, you need older microSD cards). The 3D rules
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Dec 4, 2023 23:09
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^^^ I feel like people were mainly regarding it as a gimmick that a lot of third party games didn't even support, back when I was shopping for one. === Let's broaden the horizon to every handheld from before the turn of the millenium. Lynx, Game Gear, Neo-Geo Pocket (Color), WonderSwan, Supervision, Mega Duck/Cougar Boy, Gamate and game.com  Outside of those last two I would be ready for it too! (Hurry up, RetroArch and Onion OS, so I can play them on single device as well!) Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 4, 2023 23:23
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I'd be down. Alright so Creatures is conceptually very interesting, but I won't lie it's putting me to sleep. I've played Black & White and other games of this variety, and they're always a very intriguing pitch for a game you can get lost in. Problem, is, playing the game is a different matter entirely. It's not so much that the different actions don't work, because they do work just fine, but triggering them and fiddling with the controls tends to be a bit frustrating. Like you're trying to praise a Norn for eating food and not playing with it, and you might accidentally instead issue a 'Come Here' command or a 'Pick This Up' command because your fairy is sitting one pixel away from where they should be, or other Norns are walking through at the same time. I won't lie, though: This is very impressive for a GBA game, which seems to be the running theme for the GBA picks. Honestly I'd be okay with branching off into more GBA stuff if the GB/GBC well runs dry. I'd also still be good with DS, or DS/GBA.
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Dec 8, 2023 16:44
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Don't miss those incredible dad puns in the Kid Dracula manual. I think everyone should at least play the very first level of Kid Dracula. It is a wonderful cartoony take on the Castlevania series. I find it harder to recommend the game in its entirety tho. It is at its best when the player sets the pace and you can inch forward and switch your active power at a moment's notice. Unfortunately there are those segments where you've got a lot of trial and error, like Jehde mentioned earlier. Those moments may come in rapid succession and then you need to memorize what's coming up. I've would have hated the game as a kid myself, because a Game Genie or Action Replay device with codes for infinite lives and/or health would not have helped these segments where you can just fall to your death and have to restart. There's also something like the corridor before the final boss fight where I had to figure out I needed a running jump into the umbrella, otherwise I would always come short and die to the environment at the end. I also nearly gave up on the second phase of the final boss before I figured out the further away you are, the further the boss needs to jump and the longer he spends in the air. Don't stay in hugging range when he lands.  I have not tried Shadowgate yet, but I've given up on Creatures. Yeah, those controls are rough for what I repeatedly going to have to be doing. Pass! On to some older Game Club mentions: I've had enough daily sessions to finish Drill Dozer. It had tricky sections at some points, although what usually made things hard is that your health bars can get worn down by the "thousand cuts" of repeatedly taking damage throughout the level and then not having enough to deal with the boss. I needed every single energy tank I was able to buy. I really enjoyed this game, although you can tell it was produced at the end of the GBA's lifetime with some of these production values. I would want you to make more original IPs from you GameFreak, but it seems you are having problems having enough employees for your current games :(  I liked the difference between Sully and Mike in Monsters Inc., even though the controls were a bit sluggish sometimes (made worse with the occasional slowdown). The music in this is great. The composer (Matthias Hartung apparently) doesn't have a lot of credits on Moby Games, but I love how I could tell he had experience composing for home computers (the Commodore 64) before I even looked him up. There is something about the beeps and boops that instantly sets those folks apart when composing for an 8-bit Nintendo sound chip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0P0GdZddgE  I am amazed at how quickly I finished Ultraman Ball. I had to be careful during boss fights to not pinball all over the place right into holes/water/enemy projectiles, but otherwise I was just racing through those levels. I guess there is no incentive to keep looking around when you are doing fine? Feels like I missed something... I kept expecting some sort of Ghosts 'n' Goblins twist making me do everything a second time (well, the boss fights did repeat). 
Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Dec 9, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 21:07
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Mierenneuker posted:Don't miss those incredible dad puns in the Kid Dracula manual. Konami NES/GBA manuals were the fuckin best
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Dec 8, 2023 21:15
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Two levels in to Kid Dracula and god this game is just dripping with charm. Big, gorgeous, well animated sprites - I especially love Kid Drac's little cape swirl when finishing a stage segment. The game looks phenomenal on the Pocket screen. Liking the OST so far too, nothing jarring or grating. I do see where people are coming from with regards to some of the trial and error gameplay elements, but I think that's just game design of the time shining through. Given that I've found it trivial after each stage to play Bat Grab and get a 7up I haven't found anything too frustrating just yet, but we'll see what the later levels bring. Oh also both boss fights have been extremely cute.
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Dec 12, 2023 00:41
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the kid ghost in level one crying and calling for his dad when you beat him, and then the dad ghost crying and calling for his dad when you beat him, only for the grandpa ghost to be too old to do anything except be dragged away by the kid ghost after he gets tuckered, is a very good bit
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Dec 12, 2023 01:14
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"Ghosts" you say?   "The symbol on their foreheads in the Famicom and the Japanese Game Boy versions of the game is commonly misinterpreted to be a Nazi swastika, although it's actually a manji, a symbol that can either represent the whole creation or a family emblem. Likely to avoid any controversy, all three ghosts had their manji symbols removed in all international releases of both games." I'm not sure if the person who edited that picture from the Famicom manual actually flipped the picture tho! Edit: It's authentic, oopsie! 
Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Dec 12, 2023 |
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Dec 12, 2023 10:18
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  Going to echo the sentiments about Kid Dracula: It's a great game with terrific sprite work, expressive animations, and cute/fun boss fights. It's definitely a Mega Man game at heart, though. The different powers really only have one or two purposes, and most of those purposes were traversal for the level immediately proceeding the one where you obtained the power. Some of the bosses also require using a power to get past their gimmick. I kind of figured that given that this game is basically Konami's Mega Man I would be expected to trial-and-error my way through it, and luckily the levels aren't very long or arduous. Nothing, to me, overstayed its welcome, so all-in-all I really enjoyed my time with this. Shadowgate Classic is exactly what it says: Shadowgate Classic! I've played the OG point-n-click on Mac, as well as the redo on PC, and I've done speedrunning in the world of PC point-n-click adventure games, so I'm no stranger to funny deaths and moon logic. If you like those kinds of games and I definitely do then you're going to like this. It's a very impressive port, and I didn't really notice any issues or problems with it. Controlling the cursor with the Gameboy D-pad can take some getting used to, and you might find yourself fiddling around with verb commands, but there are no moments where you're on a short timer to act being getting bodied by something. None that I can recall, anyway. You can use the Select button to get hints in some of the rooms if you've stuck, which is a nice feature. I enjoyed this, and I'm glad the GBC has stuff like it in its library of titles. I get more and more impressed by the GBC as we continue this Macventure. Now, I won't lie: I probably won't finish Creatures, if that's even something you can do. As I said, I do think that conceptually it's very cool and I think it's great they were able to take a game with those systems and put it on GBA. However, playing it is a bit of a chore. I could see playing something like this on PC where I have a mouse and maybe some other QoL features, but on a GBA it's just not exciting enough to push through. I'm glad it was chosen because I like seeing this kind of stuff, but I don't think I'm going to finish it. TheHoosier fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 01:12
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the background art in kid dracula is so cute, they really leveraged that screen size for all its worth 
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Dec 20, 2023 20:57
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What LCD shader are you using there?
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Dec 21, 2023 20:33
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Ofecks posted:What LCD shader are you using there? that is "lcd3x.glsl"
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Dec 22, 2023 17:14
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Looks pretty good at that size. Did you adjust any parameters, or is that with default settings?
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Dec 22, 2023 19:28
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i think they're the defaults? i don't remember for sure lol but in retroarch the scanline brightness is 16 and the lcd brightness is 6
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Dec 22, 2023 23:50
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The world of Shadowgate has some cocky wizards. First there is the one whose castle/lair you're entering. They spot you the moment you enter the front door, say that you'll die in there and... just continue with their ritual. At no point later did they think "wait, didn't I leave items to deal with every threat conveniently around somewhere?". Like "surely they won't solve that one specific riddle from the sphinx.... oh nuts! I left a broom in the room with the mirrors, didn't I?" It's almost as bad as your boy Lakmir. Sure, mister wizard was able to track you down, the hero of legend, familiar with several weapons and skilled in the usage of magic. You could have given him more to work with tho. Now you just went "there is a door, here is a single torch, go save the world. Good luck, kid!"  And since I've been playing TurboGrafx-CD / PC Engine CD-ROM2 titles in these past weeks, I have also played a bit of sequel Beyond Shadowgate. It feels like a fairly standard graphic adventure game from the nineties, with the graphic deaths and comedy a bit more noticeable. Save the elderly lady? Yes, but just don't ask her about the family album next to her bed, or she'll literally bore you to death. Used some violence to deal with a bridge troll instead of distracting them a paddle ball toy? Good news, you can give it to the big bad for a comedy ending. The game would play better with a mouse or some on-screen commands methinks. Steps forward, yet one step backwards. Speaking of different platforms, I also played some of the Famicom version of Kid Dracula. Some parts are better than the Game Boy version, other parts are worse. It's interesting to see what the two had in common, and what didn't carry over. Final boss is an rear end in a top hat tho. Hard to hit, easy to get hit, takes way too many hits to die and if you lose a life you have to replay way too much. Yup, that's a classic 8-bit experience alright. Edit: If you play an untranslated Japanese version know you'll need a guide to win the quiz show segment hosted by the Statue of Liberty. I really enjoyed The Minish Cap. Good thing I didn't care about 100%, because I sure didn't want to spend hours just exchanging seashells for figurines. I never figured out what happens when you summon the final Goron tho. Does Biggoron show his head from behind the mountain? Maybe I should play it some more... 
Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Dec 23, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2023 22:15
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recruiting all of the goron miners gets you a bottle, and matching kinstones with one of them will rouse biggoron, who will give you the mirror shield but only after you've beaten the game lol
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Dec 23, 2023 22:44
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I've been playing a bunch of PS2 racing games because what else am I going to do. Crash Nitro Kart sure feels like a better looking CTR only without the nice overworld map in adventure mode. Also seemingly with fewer tracks but still pretty fun. Motorstorm Arctic Edge's PS2 port remains fascinating to me, its pushing the PS2 to its absolute limit but drat if it's not a Motorstorm game running on a PS2. Probably still better to play it on PSP though. I've owned a copy of V-Rally 3 for ages but never really played it because it takes a full 3mb of memory card space and I didn't have that space to spare until getting a MemCard Pro 2, I doubt I'll play it again because holy god is it bad. Horrible feeling inconsistent handling and it runs like poo poo as well. Playing it back to back with Colin McRae Rally 3 does it no favours since that game feels way better, looks way better and runs way better as well. It does continue to fit the V-Rally curse of getting a game out only to be humiliated by Codemasters the next year though, even if V-Rally 4 does feel good enough to be its own thing next to EA Sports WRC.
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Dec 23, 2023 22:54
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played about ten minutes of creatures this morning and while i respect the attempt i don't think this is for me
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Dec 28, 2023 22:21
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Welcome back to the Game Boy Game Club. It's 2024 and there's still more games to play! Game Boy: Trax   A 1991 top down shooter by HAL Laboratories, who output a number of fantastic Game Boy titles. Revenge of the Gator showed a phenomenal amount of care and polish for an early Game Boy title, so I'll be interested in seeing whether there are similar pay offs for a similarly fast paced genre. A copy of the manual can be found here: https://www.thegameisafootarcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Trax-Game-Manual.pdf Game Boy Color: Bomberman Quest   We've already covered one of Bomberman's spin-off outings on handheld systems with Bomberman Pocket! which saw the eponymous bomber star in a 2D platformer. Now comes Hudson's Bomberman Quest from 1998, a top-down Zeldaesque action adventure game. I'm not very familiar with the game, but I'm getting some Link's Awakening vibes from that grass and those trees, which is never a bad thing. A copy of the manual (and a bunch of shots of the game packaging!) can be found here: https://archive.org/details/bombermanquest Game Boy Advance: Double Dragon Advance   There are a lot of beat 'em ups out there. As much as I love them, it's a sad fact of life and probably a pretty uncontroversial statement to say that a large portion of the genre aren't particularly well designed and enjoyable to play, even for people with skills and experience in the genre. Formative genre lynchpins are no exception here - I'm generally of the mind at this point that more bad Double Dragon games exist than good ones and that in fact there are very few actually good games called Double Dragon. This is one of the great ones. A remake, or perhaps reimagining would be a better term, of the original arcade game but with the incorporation of extra techniques and mechanics that originated in the game's consoles sequels, backporting them to elevate the original material. I'd recommend a quick read through the manual for this one - you have a fair amount of techniques available to you. It's worth nothing as well that this game actually got a modern port to everything under the sun last November along with Super Double Dragon - plenty of ways to give this one a shot. A copy of the manual can be found here: https://archive.org/details/double-dragon-advance/mode/2up
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Jan 2, 2024 03:09
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paging justjeff88
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Jan 2, 2024 09:26
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kirbysuperstar posted:paging justjeff88 wonder if I can still get in on that group lending the game to each other Happy New Year, everyone! looking forward to trying Bomberman Quest; i've always wanted to, and now I have no excuse!
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Jan 2, 2024 12:27
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Trying to ease my way back into a regular workday with some Trax. That game is charming and quite a bit of fun. The level 2 boss is pretty great.
givepatajob fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 13:50
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bomberman quest!!! it is definitely a bomberman take on 2d zelda and i love it, that vein of more adventurey bomberman games like 64 and tournament and generation is way more my speed than the classic bomberman gameplay of blowing up all the monsters in a grid maze, at least for single player. the premise of quest is that you're tracking down a bunch of monsters who broke loose so there are also a bunch of cute mini bosses to blow up
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Jan 2, 2024 22:01
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The Hammer/Power Glove combo in Bomberman Quest is fuckin broken, my dude. Smack, pick up, toss, repeat. Never lay a bomb again. Even works on flying enemies.
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Jan 3, 2024 16:44
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geez i forgot how slow you are at the beginning of bomberman lol. definitely go to the ancient ruins to get the dash boots asap!
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Jan 8, 2024 21:57
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All I needed from Double Dragon Advance was the music and some double Abobo action, and both were already checked off during the third level. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M7RMO39BTY I didn't know the (original) games took place in a post-apocalyptic setting, but in retrospect it sort of makes sense. I guess that Fist of the North Star influence was a way to set it apart from Kunio-kun/Renegade. Having a dedicated jump button this time is a blessing for those bridges in the forest level. The occasional friendly fire and knocking people into pits is hilarious, although that part on the truck where it's easy to fall off yourself kind of sucks.  Apparently the Japanese version was released after the North American one and has a "rebalanced difficulty". I don't think it matters much, because you get 3 difficulties and you can set how many lives you get for every credit/continue (5 max for both). Enough to customize it to your liking. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jan 9, 2024 |
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Jan 9, 2024 16:33
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quote:I didn't know the (original) games took place in a post-apocalyptic setting, That car is clearly a Porsche 911 (996) - which dates the game clearly in the early 2000's, post-apocalypse or otherwise.
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Jan 9, 2024 18:31
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I ended up getting super busy and didn't have much time to play gameboy games over the last month, but I wasn't really feeling the last batch of games anyways. Anytime I tried to continue Kid Dracula I just got frustrated with it. I could see loving the game if I had got it as a kid, when I had a very limited amount of games for my gameboy, and feeling more incentivized to push through to its completion. But it's a bit different playing it in a modern context, so I'm just going to give up on it. I didn't give either Shadowgate Classic or Creatures a fair chance, so I may go back to those at some point. However this month's set of games already sounds more engaging, so I'm just going to go ahead and play those for now. Trax has a super cute arcade-style attract mode which I appreciate. One attract screen has a little introduction of guerilla fighters commandeering a broken down tank that was left behind by an invading army, the origin of the rogue tank you play as. It's all nicely animated and works well with the graphical design of the game, it's fun and cute. The controls felt weird and clunky to me at first, but I got used to them quickly. Some of the bosses have their movements designed around your handicap of only being able to spin your turret clockwise, making it fun to dash and spin and shoot all around. Getting powerups feels good and it's easy to just start blowing up everything on the screen, which makes it feel like a great shooter game in of itself. Some of the enemy movements really remind me of classic shooter enemy patterns as well. But in more closed areas I found there was a lot of pinning an enemy and flanking around the environment to get the right angle for a safe shot on them, which I'm enjoying in a bit more of a tactics puzzle way. There's good thematic variety between the stages, with enough set dressing around each stage to sell each theme. A lot of the overall design ethos of the game reminds me of Ultraman Ball, down to needing to beat each of the previous stages' bosses again before facing the final boss. The final boss getting fed up and coming at you with a fan was adorable. But it is a gameboy game, so it was over pretty quick. Short but fun! Definitely the sort of gameboy gem I like discovering thanks to this thread.  I started up Bomberman Quest just to get a feel for what that game is like, and immediately bomberman feels super slow to walk around. Hopefully there's some sort of rollerskates/running shoes/skateboard upgrade at some point. Jehde fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Jan 9, 2024 21:46
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