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I haven't played this yet, but I've been listening to a lot of GB soundtracks and this banger popped up.
Gameboy or GBC "hidden gems"?
- Thread starter pixeljunkie
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I haven't played this yet, but I've been listening to a lot of GB soundtracks and this banger popped up.
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Anyone ever play this one?
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Just got in my cart for Ghoul Thrasher
At first, I was like "this sucks". It feels kinda' like Traumatarium to me which is just a slideshow basically. However, after beating this a couple times, I find myself picking it up quite a bit. Your character starts the game with random stats and gear, which heavily influence how it will go. The path through the dungeon is random and the battles are very dice-feeling. Meaning, they also feel like 50% chance, 50% your stats/gear.
If you can survive for a little while and level up, you are almost home-free to beat the game on normal difficulty. There's an addictive quality to not knowing how you will do in each game and some random enemies or situations arise I hadn't seen in other playthroughs. Don't get me wrong, its highly simplistic, but kinda' fun in its own way. It has a nice pick up and play a quick round sort of appeal.
Its still a "slideshow" but a pretty fun one.
At first, I was like "this sucks". It feels kinda' like Traumatarium to me which is just a slideshow basically. However, after beating this a couple times, I find myself picking it up quite a bit. Your character starts the game with random stats and gear, which heavily influence how it will go. The path through the dungeon is random and the battles are very dice-feeling. Meaning, they also feel like 50% chance, 50% your stats/gear.
If you can survive for a little while and level up, you are almost home-free to beat the game on normal difficulty. There's an addictive quality to not knowing how you will do in each game and some random enemies or situations arise I hadn't seen in other playthroughs. Don't get me wrong, its highly simplistic, but kinda' fun in its own way. It has a nice pick up and play a quick round sort of appeal.
Its still a "slideshow" but a pretty fun one.
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It looks really interesting
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Nice to see re-issues of these games, even more so when they localize them - but jeebus these prices are retarded
www.homebrew-factory.com
You can get a legit Ikari No Yasai 2 for less.
Fortified Zone 2 (GB)
This fantastic Game Boy game, released exclusively in Japan in 1992 by Jaleco, is finally available outside of Japan! Thanks to the joint effort of City Connection, Omaké Games and Broke Studio, an official localized version is now available.
www.homebrew-factory.com
You can get a legit Ikari No Yasai 2 for less.
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Played through Mega Man IV and V a month ago.
IV was better than I remember it being, but adding the recoil after shooting the mega buster was still a stupid idea on such a small screen for the Game Boy. I think it was the first game in the series to introduce the idea of getting chips to buy items and upgrades, which adds replay value for most people, but I feel like some kind of elitist when I think it's just bullshit for people not good enough to get by.
The last Wily boss was a callback to the Wily boss from the first game, this time with a body. Fun boss fight. Otherwise it's difficult for me to remember much else about the game despite beating it a month ago.
Mega Man V, on the other hand, blew me away. I played through it once 20 years ago but don't recall anything about it, but this time it really made an impression on me.
This game is like Capcom saying thank you to the group who made the Game Boy Mega Man I, III, and IV games and giving them carte blanche to do whatever for a Mega Man game. Lots of things unique to this game not found in other titles, from the enemies to bosses to no Mega Buster. Bosses in the NES and Game Boy Mega Man games were basically spazzes who you just rushed to kill with whatever weapon they were weak to, but in this game the bosses behave more like normal bosses in other games, with distinct patterns and not just running all over the screen trying to kill you, as well as being weak to the charged up Mega Arm.
Yeah, the Mega Buster is gone and replaced with...the Mega Arm. Which does sound really, really lame at first. But it's actually a lot of fun to play with and changes the strategy - whereas before the charged Mega Buster shot would go to the end of the screen, this time it's not the case. With upgrades it can also grab and return HP points or life ups and whatever.
The theme of the game are all robots from space, which leads to my only problem with the game that all the levels look alike and kind of blend in together. Each level has its own gimmicks, like low gravity sections for example, and they're all fun to play through, so the problem of them all blending together is a real miniscule one.
Highlights of the game for me are easily the Yellow Devil boss fight and another boss fight in space where the game zooms out and your sprite gets smaller as you start a boss fight against the Wily Fortress entrance. The only other game I can think of off the top of my head that zoomed out like that was in the Sega arcade Spider-Man game.
Clearly typing all this out show I really enjoyed Mega Man V. It is a real pity going back and reading reviews for this back in the day, the game didn't deserve the middling scores but the reviewers all just seemed Mega Man'd out despite the game having such a high quality presentation and being fun as hell. Great game, and even if you don't like Mega Man games you can just go through the game using just the Mega Arm as the bosses take high damage from it as well.
IV was better than I remember it being, but adding the recoil after shooting the mega buster was still a stupid idea on such a small screen for the Game Boy. I think it was the first game in the series to introduce the idea of getting chips to buy items and upgrades, which adds replay value for most people, but I feel like some kind of elitist when I think it's just bullshit for people not good enough to get by.
The last Wily boss was a callback to the Wily boss from the first game, this time with a body. Fun boss fight. Otherwise it's difficult for me to remember much else about the game despite beating it a month ago.
Mega Man V, on the other hand, blew me away. I played through it once 20 years ago but don't recall anything about it, but this time it really made an impression on me.
This game is like Capcom saying thank you to the group who made the Game Boy Mega Man I, III, and IV games and giving them carte blanche to do whatever for a Mega Man game. Lots of things unique to this game not found in other titles, from the enemies to bosses to no Mega Buster. Bosses in the NES and Game Boy Mega Man games were basically spazzes who you just rushed to kill with whatever weapon they were weak to, but in this game the bosses behave more like normal bosses in other games, with distinct patterns and not just running all over the screen trying to kill you, as well as being weak to the charged up Mega Arm.
Yeah, the Mega Buster is gone and replaced with...the Mega Arm. Which does sound really, really lame at first. But it's actually a lot of fun to play with and changes the strategy - whereas before the charged Mega Buster shot would go to the end of the screen, this time it's not the case. With upgrades it can also grab and return HP points or life ups and whatever.
The theme of the game are all robots from space, which leads to my only problem with the game that all the levels look alike and kind of blend in together. Each level has its own gimmicks, like low gravity sections for example, and they're all fun to play through, so the problem of them all blending together is a real miniscule one.
Highlights of the game for me are easily the Yellow Devil boss fight and another boss fight in space where the game zooms out and your sprite gets smaller as you start a boss fight against the Wily Fortress entrance. The only other game I can think of off the top of my head that zoomed out like that was in the Sega arcade Spider-Man game.
Clearly typing all this out show I really enjoyed Mega Man V. It is a real pity going back and reading reviews for this back in the day, the game didn't deserve the middling scores but the reviewers all just seemed Mega Man'd out despite the game having such a high quality presentation and being fun as hell. Great game, and even if you don't like Mega Man games you can just go through the game using just the Mega Arm as the bosses take high damage from it as well.
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Loading up Mega Man V in between meetings today after reading this 
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This looks pretty solid
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Or should I say, this looks better than any new Neo Geo homebrew or port
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Was on the train yesterday and decided to try out Zen: The Intergalactic Ninja for the hell of it.
It's middling licensed slop, but you know what, it's Konami middling licensed slop. So it's not terrible. Notable Konami alum like Toru Hagihara (Castlevania SOTN director) and Hideo Ueda (Castlevania 68000 director) worked on it. Hidehiro Funauchi, who did the music for the GB Castlevania games and Operation C, is back and his music is the highlight of the game imo (specifically the Area Select music).
What to say about the game itself? Not much! It's a very standard platformer, and Zen has a charge shot. There are five stages, the first four are Mega Man-styled choose whichever you want. Every stage follows the same style layout, but some hazards like waterfalls making it hard to jump across gaps and flames coming out of the ground keep it from being completely stale. The most interesting thing about the game are the four bonus stages after beating one of the first four levels, with some being hilariously nondescript on how to play - one of them drops you on some kind of automatic scrolling windsailing stage, and if you don't react quick you hit the rock and the bonus game is over within like 3 seconds.
If any other developer handled Zen - which, by the way, as far as 90s comic characters with tude this guy is waaaaaayyy at the bottom of the list - it would've turned like trash. Konami did a respectable job and the little effort they put in was just enough, so good on them.
If you've got time to kill, go ahead. It's a 5 or 6 out of 10 from me, but because it's Konami and you know the skill is there it's worth wasting time on if you've got nothing else to do.
Decent spritework, and the last boss getting melted alive is a nice contrast from the Saturday morning cartoon Captain Planeteers vibe.
It's middling licensed slop, but you know what, it's Konami middling licensed slop. So it's not terrible. Notable Konami alum like Toru Hagihara (Castlevania SOTN director) and Hideo Ueda (Castlevania 68000 director) worked on it. Hidehiro Funauchi, who did the music for the GB Castlevania games and Operation C, is back and his music is the highlight of the game imo (specifically the Area Select music).
What to say about the game itself? Not much! It's a very standard platformer, and Zen has a charge shot. There are five stages, the first four are Mega Man-styled choose whichever you want. Every stage follows the same style layout, but some hazards like waterfalls making it hard to jump across gaps and flames coming out of the ground keep it from being completely stale. The most interesting thing about the game are the four bonus stages after beating one of the first four levels, with some being hilariously nondescript on how to play - one of them drops you on some kind of automatic scrolling windsailing stage, and if you don't react quick you hit the rock and the bonus game is over within like 3 seconds.
If any other developer handled Zen - which, by the way, as far as 90s comic characters with tude this guy is waaaaaayyy at the bottom of the list - it would've turned like trash. Konami did a respectable job and the little effort they put in was just enough, so good on them.
If you've got time to kill, go ahead. It's a 5 or 6 out of 10 from me, but because it's Konami and you know the skill is there it's worth wasting time on if you've got nothing else to do.
Decent spritework, and the last boss getting melted alive is a nice contrast from the Saturday morning cartoon Captain Planeteers vibe.
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I don't really follow these indie handheld games or anything, but this popped up on my youtube feed and I kind of dig it.
I remember as a kid thinking how great the GB ones were but rarely were they ever brought when talking about Mega Man.
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Played the three TMNT Game Boy games for the first time. Surprisingly, not bad. Not great but not bad.
The first two give me heavy Kung Fu Master vibes, because enemies are destroyed in one hit and just continuously keep coming. The first game was really simple and easy and at a good difficulty for children to go through and beat. The second game tried to fix that complaint and made it quite a bit harder, frustratingly so at some parts where the enemies just do not give you space to breathe.
Although the graphics in the second game are more detailed, I prefer the style from the first game. Other than that, I really can't think of anything to say. Konami did a great job handling the TMNT property with the hardware they were given, as usual.
I made some comparison screenshots between the first two games:
Krang is absolutely massive in the second game.
Is it normal for the top of the Turtles' heads to resemble an uncircumcised dick from time to time or is this just Konami have a laugh?
TMNT III: Radical Rescue is a radical departure from the previous games. It's basically a Metroid clone, complete with a map when you pause the game to see where's your location. The game kind of fakes you out at the very beginning, where you think it's going to be more of the same...until you enter the cave and soon realize this is what the whole game is going to be.
I definitely admire Konami's bravery in going into something drastically different, and looking at the credits I see the director, Hiroyuki Fukui, was also a producer on another Metroid-esque Konami game that came out four years later - Castlevania: SOTN. That said, it's not for me. The biggest problem being the repeating backgrounds and enemies give me too much deja vu and with no idea and no patience on how to proceed, I gave up after the first boss. Oh well, good on Konami anyway.
The first two give me heavy Kung Fu Master vibes, because enemies are destroyed in one hit and just continuously keep coming. The first game was really simple and easy and at a good difficulty for children to go through and beat. The second game tried to fix that complaint and made it quite a bit harder, frustratingly so at some parts where the enemies just do not give you space to breathe.
Although the graphics in the second game are more detailed, I prefer the style from the first game. Other than that, I really can't think of anything to say. Konami did a great job handling the TMNT property with the hardware they were given, as usual.
I made some comparison screenshots between the first two games:
Krang is absolutely massive in the second game.
Is it normal for the top of the Turtles' heads to resemble an uncircumcised dick from time to time or is this just Konami have a laugh?
TMNT III: Radical Rescue is a radical departure from the previous games. It's basically a Metroid clone, complete with a map when you pause the game to see where's your location. The game kind of fakes you out at the very beginning, where you think it's going to be more of the same...until you enter the cave and soon realize this is what the whole game is going to be.
I definitely admire Konami's bravery in going into something drastically different, and looking at the credits I see the director, Hiroyuki Fukui, was also a producer on another Metroid-esque Konami game that came out four years later - Castlevania: SOTN. That said, it's not for me. The biggest problem being the repeating backgrounds and enemies give me too much deja vu and with no idea and no patience on how to proceed, I gave up after the first boss. Oh well, good on Konami anyway.
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The map in the Japanese version of Radical Rescue actually shows you what's in each target room, which is much more helpful. It sounds like you didn't get very far, but after defeating a boss, you have to collect the key card for that area, and then locate the room where the imprisoned turtle is. The key unlocks his cell, and once free, you can use him.
The important thing about this is that each turtle has a different unique ability, and that ability is required to access certain parts of the map. Similar to SOTN which you mentioned.
Map in the NA release:
Map in the JP release:
The important thing about this is that each turtle has a different unique ability, and that ability is required to access certain parts of the map. Similar to SOTN which you mentioned.
Map in the NA release:
Map in the JP release:
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Man, now I gotta dust off the GB. Love these games. Pizza time!
S-level Konami era
S-level Konami era
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The first two of those are two of my biggest nostalgia bombs and I love them so much.
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As terrible as the 1st MK plays on GB with its wonky controls, this one is basically a masterpiece considering the hardware limitations.
For on the go fighters on GB, this one, Killer Instinct and any of the Takara games (samsho, battle toshinden) are all pretty dang solid.
For on the go fighters on GB, this one, Killer Instinct and any of the Takara games (samsho, battle toshinden) are all pretty dang solid.
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Woah this looks koll. Ill have to try it out
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Resident Evil (GameBoy Color) - Games That Weren't
How can you possibly squeeze a 32-bit PlayStation CD ROM game into a small Game Boy Color Cartridge? Well, HotGen would attempt to do just that with a conversion of Resident Evil in mid-1999 and to make it as close as possible with similar 3D perspectives using scaled sprites.
www.gamesthatwerent.com
Near complete one found
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Played through Pokemon Blue for the first time in over 25 years for about a month. I thought I'd just play for half an hour, for shits 'n gigs...until that turned into an hour, which turned into a couple hours, and next thing you know I'm on Mount Moon. Final playtime about 33 hours, which is the longest time I've spent playing a single game in years.
I played straight through the game, and I caught about 60 Pokemon, but I never switched any of them out, I kept the same team the whole game. I didn't want to drag out playing the game any longer than I'd have to. In fact I beat the Elite Four and Gary, and after that caught Mewtwo, and that's been that. No desire to catch 'em all.
What surprised me the most is how great the game has aged. I was completely and utterly obsessed with this game in fifth grade. That's like my strongest memory of fifth grade, waiting for school to finish so I could go home and play it. After Pokemon Blue, I never cared to play any other sequel. To me, everything after the first game was superfluous. And now when I first started playing it again, I thought maybe I'd see through it as just kid shit.
Except it isn't. The game is simply brilliant. I would play some part of it and feel jealous I'd never be able to make something like this. You can say not having every Pokemon on the game, which necessitated trading with friends, was typical Nintendo moneygrabbing bullshit (indeed, the idea of having two versions of the same game came from Miyamoto himself!) - but in the mid-90s, being able to do that kind of thing was akin to magic. Another thing that struck me as incredibly thoughtful was giving each Pokemon a unique sound - they could just as easily half-assed it and made most of them share generic growls, but that was a really great design point to truly make each of them special. In the end, that's really what elevates all kind of art - special attention to the little details.
It was nice to remember some forgotten memories - the S.S. Anne, fighting Snorlax, destroying Team Rocket, the ghost Pokemon in Lavender Town, getting the bike and speeding through the game, the sprites and music, etc. It took me over 30 hours to beat but I never felt like I had to spend a lot of time grinding to level up as well. The super simple story works in its favor - coming from nothing to top of the world with your rival (at the very end when you beat the Elite Four, Gary says something like, "I'm now the Pokemon League Champion！Do you know what that means? It means I'm the strongest trainer in the world!" and then cuts right to the battle with him, which was boss).
I was surprised to find out the concept was pitched to Nintendo in 1989, which shows what a long development period the game took with Game Freak considering it released in Japan in 1996. The vision was there to create something that would change gaming forever, and they must have known it.
Anyways, I know the top-selling media franchise in history isn't exactly a hidden gem, but when's the last time any one of us played the first games, Red or Blue? I am so completely out-of-the-loop with anything modern gaming or modern Pokemon, but the original game is still incredible. Seeing something as simple as a man guarding a cave across a river when you can't swim across it is so simple but elicits such a sense of wonder. I'm glad the creators of the game are as successful as they are, they deserve it.
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