wack game boy zone. there's a small doodle of a game boy above zone

Tag: nintendo

  • Trax (1991)

    Trax (1991)

    You can always rely on ’90s HAL for a few things: adorable sprites, a fairly low difficulty curve, and a short runtime. Trax predates Kirby’s Dreamland by about a year, but you can see its roots here. Lots of lil round guys! A smooth onramp for new players into a genre that’s typically less forgiving! 4 entire levels! “Go! Turn! Shoot!” is a perfect introduction in the game’s opening cutscene, because yeah, that’s about all you’re gonna do!

    The core mechanic here lies within the tank’s controls. Your war rig is canonically a janky lil thing. Its treads have been replaced with tires, its rounds are fairly small caliber, and its turret can only turn clockwise. You can snag a range of powerups that’ll help with the second of these issues, but you’re going to be spinning in circles for the entirety of your playthrough. This wacky aiming scheme means that the game being a bit more forgiving doesn’t compromise its tension too much, it just transfers it from threading needles while trying to position yourself for a reprisal to threading needles while trying to line up your shot in the first place. Granted, the double turret power up ends up circumventing a lot of this as it lets you shoot forward and backward at the same time, thereby halving the amount of time it takes to line up said shot, but you don’t have to use that all the time, y’know?

    As is the case in a lot of bullet-dense action games, the slowdown is frequent when the action gets hot and heavy. There are plenty of shmups or shmup-adjacent games that are worsened for this, and maybe this is a preference thing, but I never found it worthy of complaint here. Trax’s funky turret controls mean that every additional bit of reaction time makes a difference, and nothing in this game feels better than perfectly rotating your turret while dodging bullets and popping the offending parties from left to right in slo-mo. Plus the game’s kind of intended to be easy, and the slowdown ends up being an asset there.

    Games like this are entirely made or broken by the quality of their levels, and by extension enemy wave placement. Trax’s levels are…fine. Placements are simple, always solvable with the unupgraded silly spinny shooter, and the game is so generous with lives that you probably won’t need too many attempts to roll credits. Instead of providing puzzly layouts to memorize or high-intensity gauntlets, Trax is more interested in memorable setpieces. My favorite joke is level 2’s midboss, which starts like the classic mirror match battle then takes a turn that got a legitimate laugh out of me.

    Trax is a bit of an odd duck to evaluate in the modern day. Its not especially well known as far as HAL games go, but those who are aware of it have a tendency to talk it up a bit more than I think it warrants. Don’t get me wrong – it’s cute! It’s fun! I’m glad I played it, and would recommend you spend the 20ish minutes it takes to beat “Funi Tank Game” if it sounds like it’d appeal or you’re just curious to dig into HAL’s history. Just don’t expect anything mindblowing here. There’s a reason we haven’t seen this concept revisited since its release: they used all the ideas they had in this single cart, and there were only so many to begin with.

    3/5

  • Super Mario Land (1989)

    Super Mario Land (1989)

    As I’ve been plugging away at the Game Boy’s launch titles I’ve been hemming and hawing on when to talk about Super Mario Land. It seems like one of those games that I should cover with intent, you know? It’s got The Guy on it! The funny Italian one! So I waited. Then I thought about it some more and like…I think there’s enough Mario to be had on this system? We can do this now. It’s fine.

    The Yokoi-led R&D1 division designed this game specifically for the system’s launch, opting to not simply port the NES games in favor of making something wholly new, and boy can you tell! The moment to moment feel of movement is pretty Mario-ish, but everything else is jarringly different. Fireballs? No, superballs that ricochet at angles that’d make your geometry teacher blush! Enemies aplenty that have barely returned beyond the backgrounds of games like Mario Kart World: Moai, Jiangshi, giant flies that turn into horrible skeletons on death that just…linger, and my new favorite: Pipe That Just Has A Fist In It. You get dropped off in later worlds by an unexplained UFO? Picking up a star plays the Can-Can for some reason? There are side scrolling shmup sections??? This Mario guy needs to calm the hell down, he’s gonna overstimulate the soon-to-be-90’s kids!

    All of these choices coalesce into a play experience that feels…weird. You ever play a bootleg that was simultaneously flagrantly incorrect but well made on a technical level? I have, and this would certainly qualify for the list if it was lacking the Nintendo seal. The differences chafed at first. My muscle memory betrayed me semi-regularly, I couldn’t hit a rubber ball shot to save my life, all the sound effects being off kept throwing me for a loop, and…it’s really small? Like everything is tiny. I remember playing this as a kid on a friend’s GB, and even then I remember thinking “oof, ow, my eyes” before handing it back. It doesn’t help that I’d already played the sequel by that point, but that’s a comparison for another day!

    Eventually I acclimated, played the game on its own terms, and took some time to think after beating it a couple times, which is less impressive than it sounds considering this consists of a whole 4 levels. A lot of thought has gone into the following opinion, so I’d appreciate if you treat it with the respect it deserves, OK? Here goes:

    Mario Land is…good.

    Good! Not great, but good. Weird, but I’d argue not weird enough, especially given the reputation it’s built over the years as “the odd one”. Plenty enjoyable in the moment, but so bite sized that it feels more like a tech demo than a full first-party release, which is honestly apt given the circumstances of its development. There’s also a little bit of discomfort in the last world, which opens with the auditory equivalent of Wonton font before transitioning into my favorite track of what ends up being a fairly punchy OST overall. It’s solid enough head to tail, but nothing about it really stands out beyond the areas where it most significantly diverges from established series convention. The whole thing is just a bit wonky.

    Yet, this wonkiness is core to what makes Super Mario Land such an ideal launch title for the handheld. Sure it’s not a better game than home console Marios, and frankly I don’t think anyone reasonable would’ve expected it to be, but it was built from top to bottom to provide the exact experience Yokoi and team intended for the Game Boy on launch: short play sessions of games designed specifically for its play conditions. How long did you really want to stare at the DMG’s pea soup screen? Just long enough to beat SML again, probably! Playing this on better hardware almost betrays the game design a bit, highlighting seams that were less apparent at the time. I don’t love SML, but I do respect the design chops on display greatly. You’re not my favorite launch title, Mr. Land, but you’ve left me with even more respect for Nintendo’s funny little brick as well as the minds behind it, and I appreciate that!

    3/5

  • Tennis (1989)

    Tennis (1989)

    “Mario” Tennis? We’ve already got that game at home! See, there’s Mario! He’s the one who keeps telling you how bad you are at serving!

    Consider that this was a Game Boy launch title, on a system that was a lot of people’s first exposure to Nintendo and its roster of marketable mascots. I would love to meet the person whose response to “Hey, do you like Mario?” would be “Who, the Tennis judge?”. He’s so out of place too, just sittin’ there watching completely normal dudes whack the ball around, surrounded by an audience of more normal dudes. If it wasn’t for the cutaways to his smiling face every time you foul, I’d have thought it was just an overt easter egg or something, but no! They want you to know that Mario is Here. Watching. Waiting.

    Beyond the ever present plumber, yeah this sure is a Tennis game. A hits fast but risks clipping the net, B lobs and travels slower. Your dpad input influences your shots and gives you a surprising amount of control, and it doesn’t do you the kindness of Mario Tennis when it comes to hitting the ball well outside of the lines. I initially chafed at Mario constantly telling me that the very-obviously-on-the-line balls weren’t, but grew to appreciate the amount of finesse this game’s hitting has. Makes for good multiplayer too!

    Where I have some gripes is the character movement. It, uh, sucks. You’re slow as hell, there’s no lunges or dives or anything, only waddle around and smack. It makes playing the net feel incredibly risky as you can position the ball better, but any wide lob will kill you dead without recourse. The game has 4 levels of difficulty as well, each making your opponent faster and boosting the ball speed, meaning the game becomes entirely about positioning.

    Actually, let’s talk about that speed for a second. Tennis goes fast as hell by levels 3 and 4. Where was this in Baseball? That game felt like you were playing in the vacuum of space, meanwhile Tennis had me gripping my GB a little too tightly as I rocked the pad back and forth rapidly, scrambling to keep the ball in play against a much stronger opponent. On level 4 it was almost more Ping Pong than Tennis and I consider that a feature. When you take the game on its terms and allow yourself to just play, Tennis manages to capture all of the intensity of actual matches surprisingly well despite, or in part because of, its simplicity. It’s just you, your opponent, and the ball. Oh, and Mario. Mario is there. Mario is always there.

    So is this as good as Mario Tennis, a game that came out over a decade later? Hahahaha, no! God no! That said, the more I played Tennis the more I came to enjoy it. Sure the movement is stiff, but the ball control and sheer speed is enough to make me appreciate it on its own merits. Turns out this “Nintendo” company actually can make a sports game! You love to see it, and I don’t mean the tennis score definition.

    3/5

  • Catrap (1990)

    Catrap (1990)

    Let’s start with the obvious – why the Japanese cover this time? Because for whatever reason that’s the version of the cart that I own! Near as I can tell they’re identical beyond the title – the game is as language independent as it gets. Truly box pushing has no borders.

    Anyway, Catrap! The history of this one is similar to several other GB puzzle games, which is to say it’s a Game Boy port of a preexisting computer game made by another studio. The premise is, uh, weird! Our heroes (named Catboy and Catgirl) are minding their own business when they’re suddenly turned into cat people. Which means their names were just…that? Already? Regardless, our heroes are so motivated to de-cat themselves that they beat the everloving shit out of several Spirit Halloweens’ worth of spookingtons to do it. Somehow that solves the problem! Fuck yeah! Violence wins!

    The Sokoban comparison is obvious and certainly not invalid, but Catrap feels meaningfully distinct for several reasons. It’s got gravity, for one! You still move and push on a grid but its levels resemble a platformer, only you can’t jump. The vast majority of the puzzles involve finding ways to push and drop boxes into the right spots so you can bump into an enemy, at which point you’ll sock their lights out with an animation I never got tired of. Beat down all the baddies in the level and you win! Simple as.

    By far this game’s most standout design feature is its phenomenal undo/redo function. Since all you need to play is a dpad, A and B are committed to undoing as many steps as you’d like and redoing just as many if you rewound too far. I cannot adequately emphasize how much better the experience of solving these puzzles is made for this inclusion. I’m very much an experimenter, someone who likes to visualize by touching the thing, which older Sokoban games typically punish by forcing a full restart. You may recall that Boxxle, cursed be its name, only allowed you to take a whole 1 step back! Catrap is almost shockingly generous for a game of its era, providing considerable quality of life without compromising its challenge in any way. It predates a lot of other time-rewind-type games, yet I’d argue Catrap handles it better than several far newer titles!

    I haven’t even gotten to some of the game’s more ambitious qualities! A bunch of levels feature both characters and have you switch which one you’re controlling, effectively turning the other one into a block (and also swapping between their two different music tracks, which is a nice touch). There are a lot of creative uses for this freeze’n’swap and I found those puzzles to be by far the trickiest to get my head around. It also has an entire level editor, and the manual goes so far as to include codes for even more than the base 100 if you just can’t get enough ghostbusting. That’s a lot of game for your 90’s dollar, especially this early in the console’s life!

    Turns out I am absolutely down to shove boxes for 100 levels if my time is respected and I get to concuss a mummy. I cannot adequately explain nor justify why the objective being “I want to punch that ghost in its stupid face” motivated me so much more strongly than box reorganization. Maybe that’s explanation enough? Regardless, this is a welcome deviation from traditional Sokoban while still offering the same level of satisfaction you’d expect from its crunchy 100-step puzzles, and it’s aged like a fine catwine. If this never came out back in the day and dropped on Itch.io tomorrow the puzzle sickos would still be feasting.

    4/5

  • Heiankyo Alien (1990)

    Heiankyo Alien (1990)

    It takes an enviable amount of confidence to call a game “THE JAPANESE MASTERPIECE” on your print ads, but Meldac had it like that back in the 90s. You don’t localize a game like Zombie Nation without being totally convinced it’s a good idea, and they were absolutely right to do so. Everyone say “Thank you, Meldac”.

    The history of Heiankyo Alien is as interesting as it is lengthy, a consequence of its original design emerging in the late 70s from a team at the University of Tokyo’s Theoretical Science division. That version is included on this cart as a bonus for the ludologically curious! It’s…definitely a game from the 70s that isn’t Space Invaders, but it represents a niche within a niche and predates the likes of Pac-Man by a year, so that’s neat.

    What immediately struck me was the sheer amount of personality contained in the new game’s rendition. The sprites are goofy and expressive, the movement is snappy, and the music, my god. HA has some of the best jams found on the system, combining traditional Japanese instrumentation in bloop-heavy Game Boy form with a modern edge that suits the retro-sci-fi-ness of the whole affair. Just phenomenal music to dig holes to.

    Oh yeah, that’s what this game is about! Aliens have descended in Heian era Japan and are scarfing down people in the streets. For whatever reason our little Kebiishi is only armed with a shovel, but he’s about to make it every alien’s problem. Gameplay sees you running through various mazes, digging holes, then burying aliens alive when they stumble into them. Any contact with them will see you devoured whole! The sprites for this are kinda fucked for the Game Boy, honestly! I guarantee at least a couple children had Heiankyo Alien Nightmares. God that’d make a good album name.

    So you’re playing a game of territory control. Your first order of business on any given board is to establish a safe zone that’ll prevent an ambush, then gradually expand it by filling and digging new holes further out, shifting from defense to offense as you gradually thin the aliens’ numbers. Placement of holes is critical as aliens won’t stay in them forever, and if another alien runs into a partially-buried pal they’ll immediately free them, which can see you getting chomped from what appeared to be a position of strength. Combine this with the alien movement behaviors being kinda random until the last one, who will immediately speed up and chase you to the ends of the screen, and you’ve got a game state that’s always comprehensible but never solved.

    Outside of a few environmental quirks like walls that open and shut or a boat you can scoot across sections of the level with later on, that really is all the rules to Heiankyo Alien. Yet from this simple foundation is built a game that I find fiendishly moreish. Approachable, moderately challenging, a bit lucky but always achievable, just perfectly calibrated arcade action. I’ve cleared this thing several times now – not an extraordinary feat, it’s pretty short – and my best run thus far saw me only losing 1 life. I want, no, need to perfect this thing eventually. I’ve got the alien brainworms and they can have all the gray matter they want.

    Transparently, Heiankyo Alien was going to top the current list no matter what. I’ve got a backlog of completed games to write about and keep trying to plug away at more, but unlike literally every other game I’ve played for this project I keep going back for more rounds of this instead, and that’s the strongest endorsement I could give. I’m not always gripped by arcade style games on console as they often lose something for the lack of quarters, joysticks, and secondhand smoke, but Heiankyo Alien fully transcends all of my preexisting hangups. It grips me in the kind of way only the best arcade games can, perfectly aligned with my brain chemistry, and I couldn’t be happier to give it its flowers 25 years later.

    That’s essentially the complete writeup. My original intent was to give this just shy of a perfect score given how slight its scope and completion time is, even though what’s on offer is excellent. Can I tell you what bumped this up to full marks, though?

    I traveled across the country to visit family recently, and was fortunate to get to spend a few days with my nephews and niece that are really little and love video games. If they aren’t playing some sort of big Nintendo release in the living room, they’re on their tablets playing games that even their parents have described as brain rot. At one point, after they expressed interest in the funny brick I was traveling with, I handed them my Game Boy with Heiankyo Alien ready to go and let them take turns figuring it out with minimal guidance.

    They were fascinated. It gripped them like most games don’t. They were actively experimenting, giving each other pointers on where to dig, how to dodge aliens, trying to predict their behaviors, and getting eaten over and over until bedtime. No ad break interruptions to earn resources, no connectivity issues, no distractions, only pure unleaded video game. They were so engaged that they even managed to share without fighting the entire time! That’s a small miracle!

    There’s just something about Heiankyo Alien that works on a level most games don’t, a true It factor, and for me that overcomes any complaint I could level at it. Heiankyo Alien forever.

    5/5