April 2024: We’re Back! (1993)

It’s April and while I wish this was a fool, it isn’t. We’re playing We’re Back! . I own it, but I have not played it. If I have, I don’t remember. It’s a special game to me, though, because it’s the game I bought that broke my modern rule for collecting: Only buy what I like or what appears interesting. I can’t fathom why I spent the 3-5 dollars on this that I did. I have never seen the movie so I have no attachment to the IP. I had no idea what the game was like. I saw a dumb label and said “sure, I need this!”. I did not need it. My reflection upon that stupid purchase led to a year of mostly not buying any Game Boy games.

ANYWAY, upon looking up some gameplay it looks like an extremely average platformer aping the Sonic the Hedgehog style. Not only did this not work out well for many games on consoles, it has worked out extra poorly on the Game Boy. See Speedy Gonzales, one of the first games we covered for some reason.

Here’s D’arcy to tell you more about it

“If you’re a fan of the Gameboy, chances are you’re also right around the age to fondly remember We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story, the 1993 animated movie, based on the 1987 book. I remember it being a movie I watched a lot as a kid, and never really clued into how weird a voice acting cast it included with the likes of John Goodman, Charles Fleischer, Walter Cronkite, Jay Leno, Julia Child, Yeardley Smith, and Martin Short. Yeah, from established voice actors to sitcom and late night stars, to news hosts and celebrity chefs.

As much as we could wax nostalgic on the film, which I would love to do, we’re here to talk about the Game Boy game. Now, you might think that this is simply a downgraded port of the SNES or Genesis game. Fair enough, a kid’s film would be ripe for the porting and shoveling, but this game might be even more egregious? Not because it’s worse than the SNES game, I think it’s actually a pretty strong platformer. No, this game is one of many skins – here in North America, it was a tie-in for the film, but literally every possible region has a different variant. From what I can tell, the original release of this game was developed by Beam Software and released in Europe as Baby T-Rex, Agro Soar in Australia, Bamse in Sweden.

The gameplay in all of these versions is identical, with only some sprite work and cutscenes being added or re-worked to fit each release. As such, while some of the surface level stuff works, the gameplay itself has little to do with the movie. The game is a one player adventure, with a two player mode being offered where players simply pass the system back and forth between deaths. It’s all pretty standard stuff: Collect items, move to the right a little too quickly, and feel like you would rather be playing Sonic. You can attack enemies with the brain-grain cereal pickups, but it’s generally easier to just avoid enemies where possible.

It’s a fun game to pop in and try out, maybe grab a copy if you find it on the cheap, but I can’t say it’s going to satisfy you if you’re wanting to bring back memories from the film. If you’re into generic mascot platformers, yeah, check it out.”

The fact that we got a version where the main character DOES NOT ALWAYS have a skateboard is a pretty big bummer.

I like investigating platformers from this era if only to see all of the churned-out crap I didn’t experience as a kid. I expect this to be an amusing one-off evening, but I’ve also been known to get hooked on janky games, so maybe I’ll try to see it through. There are cheat codes, at least! –IF

March 2024 – Final Fantasy Adventure (1991)

March 1st, baby! My Neo Geo Pocket Color horoscope for the day was ALL FIVE STARS so I’ve got a good feeling about this month and this month’s game! We’re doing Final Fantasy Adventure! A game I’ve actually played before… and beaten! All you folks love that Final-est of Fantasies so we’re beg- asking you kindly to please pick it up and play along with us this month! It’s a solid Zelda-like that is actually the first entry in the Seiken Densetsu or Secret of Mana series. If you’re familiar with that game, you’ll notice some small things that began right here. Here’s Rick stepping out of the back room to tell you a little more:
——————–
A couple of years ago I spent $30 on a copy of this game. I always thought it looked cool and I wanted to play it. I put it in my GBA SP, played it for a whopping five minutes and put it in a box with a bunch of other Game Boy games that have had less than ten minutes of game play. All you dorks know that situation!

I finally splurged and bought a Game Boy-like device for my gigantic 41 year old hands. It was decided that it was finally time to give Final Fantasy Adventure a proper whirl. I’ve been playing it for a couple of weeks and wished I had other people to discuss it with. That’s when I remembered I co-ran a Game Boy game-of-the-month collective (We just hate the exclusivity of the word “club”)! I can basically push the initiative for other people to talk about the game I’m playing. Hell, that’s why we started it!

Originally I thought it just had the Final Fantasy brand slapped onto it. Which is a series of games I am guilty of never playing. But while playing FFA I noticed they mentioned Chocobos and that little white winged fellow shows up at some point.

The games fun but a bit clunky. You can die pretty quick if you get hit just the right way by a boss. And you can be absolutely eff’d if you enter a cave or dungeon without any mattocks. And you will scream at the screen when an NPC is blocking doorway and will continue saying the same sentence over and over again. Hot tip, just walk out of the screen and come back and that character will have spawned in another spot. Some highlights are that you can also save anywhere (And you should do that often) and all the enemies are adorable.

So yeah, do your old buddy Rick a favor and talk to me in our discord about this game. And hey, I’m currently listening to Minutemen’s – Double Nickels on the Dime for the first time. If anybody wants to talk about that with me as well, that would be cool.
——————–
This is a fun one, buckeroos! We hope you enjoy it.

-IF

Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest Review – Josh Download

Hey! My name is Josh Download!
This is the first video review I’ve done in about a decade but I’m getting back into it. I’ve been sending a lot of my time making music, instead some of which features during the credits, at the end of the video. It was a lot of fun, I hope you enjoy it to!

Josh is no long a dickhead sixteen year old. But he is a music producer and vocalist from Australia. You can find him on Youtube or on Bluesky.

Castlevania Legends: Better Lost To Time – D’Arcy Briggs

Castlevania Legends for the Game Boy is the third portable entry on the console, yet it falls short in nearly every way compared to the last entry from seven years prior. Released in 1998, it arrived later in the Game Boy’s lifespan, a time when gamers had grown accustomed to more polished experiences on the handheld console.

Castlevania games are known for a few key features. Even before the ‘Metroid’ aspects entered the vocabulary of the games, the heart of each release really needs to feature challenging gameplay, some banging music, and an awesome atmosphere. However, Legends feels like a relic of an earlier era. Its simplistic design and sluggish pace really feel like something that would have been fitting for the Game Boy’s earliest works, which might have been forgivable in earlier releases but feels out of place given the advancements in handheld gaming technology by 1998. Consider that by this time we already had the likes of Donkey Kong Land 2 and 3, Kirby’s Dream Land 2, the entire Mario Land trilogy, and so many other amazing platformers.

One of the most frustrating aspects of Castlevania Legends is its jumping mechanics and the punitive death from falls. These elements feel cheap and almost deliberately inserted to artificially extend the game’s length. Combined with the overall slow pace, they contribute to a sense of tedium rather than challenge. It’s as if the developers attempted to compensate for the simplicity of the gameplay by introducing frustrating mechanics, resulting in a disjointed and unsatisfying experience. I know we know this was a fairly normal practice, but considering that this was a handheld game and not for a home console, I feel like we don’t expect that as much. Playing this using Switch Online made this a much easier experience, one that I didn’t feel the need to continue using the actual cartridge. While the music in Castlevania Legends serves its purpose adequately, it lacks the standout compositions that defined previous installments in the series. Just like the artwork, there’s nothing incredibly terrible or off putting about it, but nothing really stands out either.

Despite its flaws, Castlevania Legends isn’t entirely devoid of merit. The core mechanics remain true to the series’ formula, offering familiar whip-based combat and monster-slaying action. It’s still recognizably a Castlevania entry, I wouldn’t say it would please all fans, but there’s still that core loop to be played with.

Castlevania Legends feels like a missed opportunity for the series to evolve. The first GB entry felt like a proof of concept, with the follow-up really getting it down for the handheld. This could have been such a great way to end a trilogy. While it may hold nostalgic value for some fans, its shortcomings prevent it from standing alongside the classic entries in the Castlevania franchise.

D’Arcy is an educator and gamer from BC, Canada. He’s been gaming his entire life and enjoys both new and retro games. His consoles of choice are Game Boy, PS3, and Switch.You can follow his gaming online @darcyska_gaming

February 2024 – Castlevania Legends (1998)

It’s February and there are new GB games on the Switch! One of them is well known for being pricey, Castlevania: Legends. It has a bit of reputation attached to it and I’m not sure if it’s because of the price or because it’s not as good as Castlevania Adventure II: Belmont’s Revenge.

I didn’t care for it much upon my first try, but it has grown on me over the years as a solid if not slightly odd entry into the Castlevania series. I”m looking forward to everyone revisiting it without a crazy price tag associated. 

Backroom Boys Rick and Nolen have things to say!
——-

We did the sloggy Castlevania Adventure for Yokoi Kids in the past and for some reason we haven’t done Belmont’s Revenge. We’ve played the worst and we’re going to skip the best and go right to the rest.

Castlevania Legends is notorious because it’s somewhat rare and can be pricey. And not only is it on the Switch, it’s so easy to emulate anything on everything these days and it shouldn’t be hard to play.
I’ve personally only played a little bit of it but so far it’s fun and kinda breezy. Word on the street is it’s by no means hard. I did fall into a couple of pits of zombies and that was not very easy. Regardless, I’m looking forward to playing the rest of it. Maybe you should too? –Rick

I fell in love with Castlevania in the late 90s. My stepbrother brought home a copy of Symphony of the Night one day and that’s all it took. 

I discovered emulation around the time I left for college and that’s where I started exploring the back catalogue of Castlevania games. After slogging through all the NES entries (3 is the best), I cracked open the the Game Boy ‘vanias to see how they compared. More slogfests, slow characters, and brutal punishments but somehow…it works? 

Of the three Game Boy entries, Castlevania Legends is far from the worst. I’m actually sad that it has been retconned and ignored through the years. A female Belmont is still something we haven’t seen since this game was released and the whole (spoilers) Alucard storyline could make sense if some of the later Castlevanias didn’t exist. 

Overall, with big bosses, sprawling stages, and cheesy anime cutscenes, Castlevania Legends is a solid entry for its time. It feels like a Castlevania game, which is good enough for me. –NT

—–

So let’s give this a fair shake. It’s definitely better than the first Castlevania Adventure, yeah? –IF

Fowl Playthrough – Rick V.

I was pretty skeptical about Daffy Duck: Fowl Play when Ian picked it for January 2024’s Yokoi Kids game. Sure the animation was nice, but since it was a Looney Tunes related game I didn’t expect much. I didn’t even really start playing it until late January. And for several days I was surprised to find it so captivating. It’s a truly unique experience. A somewhat sucky, but unique experience.

The game is a basic walk left to right side scroller with the boss being Bugs Bunny thwarting your efforts to get a treasure chest at the end of each level. He drops bombs, safes, and icicles on Daffy. The plot involves Bugs and Daffy going on a treasure hunt together. I’m not quite sure why Bugs Bunny is trying to brutally keep Daffy from getting a some treasure. That dude is such a stinker.

To defend yourself through the six levels, you have an unlimited amount of dynamite that you can aim at or drop on enemies. Once it’s lit you have three seconds to throw it or it blows you up. It’s tricky to master, but you’ll get used to it. It’s satisfying to just drop dynamite right on an enemies head.

Instead of a timer you have Daffy’s hunger meter. When you kill an enemy you get to eat it’s remains. And by remains, I mean they turn into a gumball, ice cream, or a hunk of meat. I’m going to assume the hunk of meat is their dynamite charred carcass. If the hunger meter gets below 30%, Daffy does some animation where his poor little tummy is empty and you need to hunt down some prey to fill it back up again before you starve to death.

Back to that animation, it’s so good for this style of game. Daffy has so many different little animation, many from when he gets hurt, and you’ll be seeing that a lot. And when you beat a level, he does this little dance and it’s mighty rewarding.

So after the praise of the animation, I should now mention that the game kind of sucks. It’s broken. Well, it’s not really broken, it probably just didn’t go through too much testing. Or devs did test it and go, “Eh, the kids will figure it out”. There are all kinds of imperfections in the game.

Sometimes during the aforementioned “Daffy’s starving” animation, you might be mid-jump over a cliff. Once the animation is over, you’ll fall right down that hole. If you’re by an enemy and you’re at that 30% mark, you will be hurt. If you’re holding a stick of dynamite in your hand, you will blow up. It really could have been thought out better. And it’s not just the hungry ducky animations that can ruin the game play. If you are about to snag some of that life saving enemy meat, it starts a cute little animation of Daffy lifting said food to his mouth. If you get hit before that animation ends, it nulls that consumption. It can be very infuriating.

The items like coins and food don’t stay on the screen for very long. Sometimes you will kill an enemy with a long range dynamite throw, and by the time you get close to your much rewarded toasted flesh, it has disappeared.

Which brings us to another issue, the recovery time after you get hit is often non-existent. I didn’t mention this before, but when you get hit, you don’t completely lose your health. A heart will jump out of Daffy, and if you recover it quick enough before it disappears, you can regain it. No harm no fowl (see what I did there?). But sometimes you can get wrecked by an enemy twenty times in a second if you’re positioned too close. You will only lose one heart (most times) but it may be too late to recover it.

Now, I can’t tell if this is a broken mechanic or was planned, but sometimes if you’re getting wrecked by multiple enemies and being knocked back and forth, more than one heart will come out. And it’s not really reducing any from your stock hearts. You can gather up more hit points this way. You can go from four hearts to six just buy purposely putting yourself in between a couple of spiders and letting them fuck you up. But sometimes they will knock you right off a cliff if you’re not careful.

The enemies re-spawn randomly on each new screen. Let’s say you’re on the forest level and you’re dealing with those annoying porcupines and end up eating it off a cliff toward the end of the screen. On your next life, there will be no more porcupines, but a bunch of bats, a giant cat and some piranha plants. It’s very random. This works with the secret treasure holes as well. They just pop up randomly without warning. So it’s not all bad.

While I was playing I would get increasingly frustrated with the enemy layout on the last level. But every fifth playthrough or so, it would be really easy with barely any enemies dropped. I knew those types would give me a proper crack at the final boss, Bugs Bunny and his deadly UFO(?).

But here’s the thing, it’s quite broken but it’s still an enjoyable game. How rare is that? I’m not sure if there are different outcomes of the ending if you accumulate more money, but once you beat it you get a password that let’s you restart with 49 hearts. It’s def replay worthy and I plan on playing it again while trying to kill twenty minutes. It’s a weird-ass game that should be spoken more about.

My quickly scribbled passwords between levels.

Rick V helps organize Yokoi Kids and does punk things. Check him out. itsmerickv.com

Snow Brothers Jr Comic Translation by Eric Lappe & Rick V.

Inside the Japanese version of the Snow Brothers Jr. manual, there is an adorable comic strip. Purely for fun and practice, Eric translated it and I wrote in the proper text. Note that I had to adjust some of the text to make it fit in the word balloons. And we have no idea who Hot-Hot II is. I kind of just made up the name from the translation of Hot Hot 2nd Generation. Enjoy!

Read it from top-right to bottom-left.

Rick V helps maintain the Yokoi Kids, draws cartoons and does punk things. Check him out. itsmerickv.com

Eric Lappe is learning Japanese and is patiently waiting for someone to play Ghosts n’ Goblins with. Check him out on Youtube Land. youtube.com/@goemon047

January 2023: Daffy Duck: Fowl Play (1999)

New Year, Same Yokoi Kids! To bring us into 2020 we’ve got… wait, it’s me? I’m picking the game? 

Yes’m, I am! We’re playing: Daffy Duck in Fowl Play!

I was talking with a friend about a series of lesser-known fighting games in mid-December, the loosely connected games Galaxy Fight, Waku Waku 7, and Astra Superstars. He mentioned that he likes to play Astra every year around Christmas because it was developed by a small team named Santaclaus. Santaclaus was made up of developers that had worked on the prior two games. The developer sounded familiar to me, possibly because he had mentioned this prior. I looked them up and they are only credited with three actual games: the rest of what they did was ports. Beyond Astra Superstars they made… two Looney Tunes games for Game Boy? Of course, I got up to see if I had them and I did.

I popped in Fowl Play and was immediately impressed. The game has great animation and graphics for a Game Boy game. The gameplay is unique. Daffy’s only attack is dynamite which has a three-second fuse. You can hold your throw so you can time the toss just right. Daffy also has a stomach meter that is constantly draining. Some food just hangs out, but blowing up enemies can sometimes leave behind food as well. Food fills him back up to the top. The game kind of plays like an Adventure Island game in that you have to keep moving forward to eat food, but if you go too fast you’ll inevitably screw up. The difference here is the weapon and the slower pace.

This was released here in 1999, the Game Boy/Game Boy Color’s last gasp of relevance. It’s a black cartridge so it can be played on a standard Game Boy, which is interesting for a game released this late in the system’s life. The whole game is just odd. A weird thing by a weird developer released at a weird time. I hope everyone enjoys it!

Emulate away, but this is still in the 15 dollar range if you want a physical copy. Something tells me this won’t remain that price forever!

HAPS NEW YEAR!

-IF 

Yokoi Tama by Ross

I’m a software engineer living in NC, my favorite GB game is probably Kirby’s Pinball Land.  My twitter is @garlicjr2 and my Pricecharting is HERE. –Ross

December 2023: Tamagotchi (1997)

It’s December and it is still too hot for me to wear a hoodie all day in San Diego. It’s the pits, man. I just want to be snuggly everywhere I go and have the ability to hide my face and slip into the crowd if the Feds are hot on my tail.

Switching gears completely, let’s talk Tamagotchi! It’s December’s game of the month picked by our pal D’arcy Briggs. I love virtual pets! I’m a huge fan of the Tamagotchi Mini line and own a few of them. I also have a couple of Digimons. I was in high school when the first Tamagotchis came out in the US and I bought one the first day they were in stores. I owned both Pocket Pikiachus. I’m a fan of fake living things!

It was picked by D’arcy who had this to say about it!

“If you’re reading this, chances are you either owned a Tamagotchi, another electronic pet like a Nanopet or Nanofighter, or at least knew those who did. The hyper-simplistic animal could eat, poop, deep, and die. I know I had one for a period, but in choosing the December game, I wanted to think about games received as gifts. Honestly, aside from Pokemon Blue, I don’t exactly remember which of my childhood games were from holidays, gifts, or simply purchased from mowed lawns and washed cars. There is; however, one of my games that I fondly remember that hasn’t yet been given the Yokoi experience: Tamagotchi

Bandai took one look at the success of the craze, and made the connection to handheld gaming – what else could the little pets do if stuck on cartridge for more powerful hardware? It’s much more than a port. It takes the basics of the virtual pet and expands it with side-characters, mini-games, and even goals to reach. There’s a lot here to explore and it feels really fun and, if I can be allowed to use the term, cozy. It’s a perfect game to cuddle up with while watching a movie with a nice cuppa.“

OK! So I never played this when I was younger because I had a Tamagotchi and figured it would just be a lame version of the toy. I guess not! I’m excited to check it out and see what I missed.

Have fun! Not to sound too serious here, but the holidays can be hard for many people. I hope you are all taking care of yourself. -IF