What? Why? Why this? Why the Game Boy?

In short: because I’m a fan of taking an incredibly stupid endeavor extremely seriously.

In long: because I’m a fan of taking an incredibly stupid endeavor extremely seriously, and I think the Game Boy is a uniquely interesting platform for this kind of sort-of-impossible project.

Look, I am aware of how many games exist on the DMG, Game Boy Color, and so on. Loosely. It’s a whole heck of a lot, and funnily enough the number isn’t even entirely agreed upon*! Trying to play every Game Boy game – and I mean all of ’em! – just isn’t realistic. It’s arguably not even possible!

What I do intend to do is use this site as a place to put a whole lot of games writing focused on a single, central concept. I’ve been at this thing for a while, and am actively at it elsewhere for games that are typically a bit bigger than 160×144, but I keep finding myself overwhelmed with the state of the modern games industry and marketplace. My Kirby’s Block Ball piece kind of elaborates on that, among other things.

I like the Game Boy. I like that it’s wholly disconnected from the Internet Gamer Experience that makes my brain hurt. I like that indies are developing for it and that it’s easier than ever to get into the platform no matter what devices you have access to. Most of them are even backlit! Sick!

So what I’m gonna do is play as many of these things as I can, see, then I’m gonna rank ’em. With all due respect to Jeff Gerstmann’s established scientific convention, I don’t think the touch’n’rank methodology is gonna cut it. Unless stated otherwise every game featured on here is gonna be completed. We’re keeping it super lean too: title image, text, done. I am not going to pay WordPress extra money just to store all my screenshots when I can do that myself, for free.

This site will run as long as it stays fun to do so. Its entries will be on the short side, as the games tend to be. There will not be a schedule, because this is entirely based on my own personal interests, whims, and free time. If you have a Game Boy game you want me to play, you are more than welcome to tell me so in the comments or via wackgameboyzone at gmail! I promise nothing!**

With apologies to Gunpei Yokoi, welcome to the Wack Game Boy Zone.

*Backloggd is not a real source of anything beyond fun writing, but I wanted a third link for the bit.

**Unless you send me a review copy of something new and I accept it, of course. This may not be a professional website, but I am still unfortunately a professional.