The Official Game Boy Thread

[+atari2600land]

I saw a copy of True Lies on eBay and it got me wondering: What other games on Game Boy aren't rated K-A (or E)? Any? (not counting GBC or GBA games.)

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

anyone got the camera and printer? i have one i found a long time ago and it worked okay. but now the thermal paper is shot.

 

here it is. did the clear gameboy come with the printer set? i got this all in the set.

Edited January 24, 2023 by NeonSpaceBeagle

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

its funny i just recently organized my gameboy stuff . i charged my gameboy sp's all up as makeshift emergency flashlights. someone i amassed a bunch of sps.. my first one was the silver one which got me to just back into handhelds after the gameboy as a kid (damn got so much use, especially at funerals and hospital waiting rooms). im not much into handheld these days but these have a big space in my heart.

[Video]

9 hours ago, NeonSpaceBeagle said:

anyone got the camera and printer? i have one i found a long time ago and it worked okay. but now the thermal paper is shot.

 

here it is. did the clear gameboy come with the printer set? i got this all in the set.

The printer, camera, and game boy are all sold separate. Cool you got a clear gameboy, of the second series of play it loud systems, apparently white is the rarest, but while I've seen the white one, I've never seen the clear one in person. Black was the other color, I picked one up back in the day and loved it.

 

The thermal paper is a common size, I want to say 1.8 inch. You can pick it up in most any office supply store, in both "paper" and "sticker" variety. The original GB printer paper is the sticker kind, peel it and stick tiny ugly pics on all your stuff, I know I did.

 

I'm sure the sticky stuff goes bad with age, but I'm not sure on the paper, its just thermal paper, unless it got to hot (or wet) at some point, I see little reason for it to go bad.

[Tanooki]

I still wish I had picked up the GB camera and printer, more so, the camera as it has a few unique mini games and other uses to it, especially with that 3D printed telephoto type lens thing I've seen produced for fun images, and another project to somehow colorize such things despite the camera not having any.

 

Printer paper is all but dead from the old reams, and if it's not, be surprised.  But because hey it's Nintendo, people make the stuff for the thing so you can get replacement paper if you want to do funny images or print up those stamps in Zelda and SMB1 DX among others.

 

 

 

I posted this on lame facebook in a gameboy collectors post, I got this gem of a game from Australia in the mail last week and wow...of all the luck glad I got it.  This is the aussie version HES put out of the Super 31-in-1 from Sachen out of Taiwan, called here in english only on the sticker, the Mighty Mix.

Mighty Mix here has 31 games (29 colorized monochrome games), almost all the Sachen releases for Gameboy from their 4 or 8in1 muitlcarts, it also has a couple of their very few later in life GBC releases, in this case Thunder Blast Man (aka Rocman X for Taiwan) and Jurassic Boy 2 (a strange Sonic style title loops and all.)  This is what it has: Thunder Blast Man, Jurassic Boy 2, Street Rider, Bomb Disposer, Dan Laser, Vex Block, Explosive Brick, Small Gorilla, Trap & Turn, Pile Wonder, Arctic Zone, Zoo Block, Magical Tower, Virus Attack, Electron World, Trouble Zone, Dice Square, Railway, Worm Visitor, 2nd Space, Black Forest Tale, Armor Force, Sky Ace, Flea War, Crazy Burger, Deep, Zip Ball, Puppet Knight, Captain Knick-Knack, Ant Soldier, Duck Adventures

 

[newtmonkey]

SaGa 2 Hiho Densetsu

I completed the Giant World, though that's not much of an accomplishment due to how small (lol) it is.

I do like the variety in this game.  Some worlds end in a boss fight, others just have you find some item you need.  Definitely a nice change of pace from the typical rigamarole of town - cave - boss, then next town you get in most console RPGs of the era.

 

Having said that, I find character/party development to be somewhat underwhelming.  I find that human and esper characters only rarely gain stats after combat, while mechs and monsters don't develop through combat at all, so battles often just feel like a waste of resources most of the time.  Random combat is also extremely frequent... you often cannot even walk 1-2 spaces after a combat, without another battle occurring.

Edited January 28, 2023 by newtmonkey

[Pixelboy]

2 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

Random combat is also extremely frequent... you often cannot even walk 1-2 spaces after a combat, without another battle occurring.

Yep, most RPGs of that time were grind fests, making leveling up mandatory to go from point A to point B, just so you wouldn't breeze through the game too quickly. You really have to be ready in invest a lot of time into those old RPGs, even on carts with battery save capabilities.

[Video]

Funny enough, that's exactly why I don't like old-school rpg s. I was also unimpressed with the fact you'd often have to spend hours grinding a tiny part of the world to level up to fight a ridiculous level boss you'd often even after ten hours of grinding, still only barely scrape by.

 

Its why of rpg games I much prefer adventure types. May be some of the same flaws, but your often not restricted as heavily about where you can go, so at least you can explore the world and even find higher level enemies so your not just grinding out 1000 level one bad guys to fight a level 15 boss.

 

A few years back, I bought Mario land dx, and Mario land 2 dx. Nothing special if you already have the originals, they don't outside of color, add anything. The copies I got are clearly bootleg, but did Nintendo actually make these bitd?

[newtmonkey]

That hasn't been my experience playing many old RPGs.  Over the last 5 years or so, I've probably completed something like 30-40 rpgs, console and PC, and the only one that actually required grinding was the first Dragon Warrior.

 

My complaint with SaGa 2 is that you'll often encounter multiple battles within 1-2 steps of each other.  Having said that, I haven't had to grind at all, and haven't had any trouble making progress so far.

[electricmastro]

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a 9 year old credited as field tester before.

 

[Tanooki]

18 hours ago, Video said:

Funny enough, that's exactly why I don't like old-school rpg s. I was also unimpressed with the fact you'd often have to spend hours grinding a tiny part of the world to level up to fight a ridiculous level boss you'd often even after ten hours of grinding, still only barely scrape by.

 

Its why of rpg games I much prefer adventure types. May be some of the same flaws, but your often not restricted as heavily about where you can go, so at least you can explore the world and even find higher level enemies so your not just grinding out 1000 level one bad guys to fight a level 15 boss.

 

A few years back, I bought Mario land dx, and Mario land 2 dx. Nothing special if you already have the originals, they don't outside of color, add anything. The copies I got are clearly bootleg, but did Nintendo actually make these bitd?

I feel you on RPGs, but depending which they still do it, Dragon Quest(Warrior) being the most obvious, but also Pokemon if you don't use the more modern releases XP share tools.  Ginding out each pokemon or in others each party member to get the necessary gear and spells to survive takes hours and hours, it's tedious.  At least in an adventure RPG (Diablo, Minecraft Dungeons, Torchlight) you can keep going back in and out, slowly chip and back away with finesse to avoid hits RPGs which JRPGs won't do.

 

Super Mario Land 1 & 2 DX are *NOT* NOA/NCL product, they're 100% amazing hacks.

 

They're the firsts in a series of them done by a few class acts with some serious time on their hands.  Those two came first, then Kirby's Dreamland 1, Dr Mario, and Metroid 2 got the treatment.  There was a gap in time, but since some more have jumped in to freshen up Gameboy games.  Since then Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2, DK land 3, Snoopy Magic Show, Galaga&Galaxian, Kirby's Pinball Land, Faceball 2000, and more.  Mega Man 5 was done on Christmas 2022 and it's on the high end like SML DX1 and 2 are with major color work, some are fairly lazier/simple but work.   Pokemon Yellow got a color/sprite swap that matches GEN2 which is a nicer perk too.

 

Mega Man 5 looks like this now: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7413/ matches the NES games quite nicely as far as color choices go.

[Video]

Wow cool. Ill have to see about more dx games. Always thought bitd that Mario land should have had a dx version. Ill definitely get Dr Mario if I find it.

 

Faceball? Really? I mean that's cool, but having had several of the console versions, I can say I don't see much color being added, maybe they fixed the music so it plays proper bass on other handhelds instead of the weird high pitched music you get playing on newer GB hardware.

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, Video said:

Wow cool. Ill have to see about more dx games. Always thought bitd that Mario land should have had a dx version. Ill definitely get Dr Mario if I find it.

 

Faceball? Really? I mean that's cool, but having had several of the console versions, I can say I don't see much color being added, maybe they fixed the music so it plays proper bass on other handhelds instead of the weird high pitched music you get playing on newer GB hardware.

I'm sure you can find the old Dr Mario rom, then an IPS patcher, and use this -- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5281/

 

Damn good color selection, very close to the NES original.

Here's faceball -- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6107/ and this same person also did Kirby's Pinball Land too  https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6079/

 

While I'm at is since you started by asking about SML DX here's 1 and 2.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4477/

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3784/

[electricmastro]

For anyone's birthday it is out there today, here's Pip and Pop from Jim Henson's Bear in the Big Blue House.

 

[newtmonkey]

SaGa 2: Hiho Densetsu

(aka Final Fantasy Legend II)

I have putting a but of time into this whenever I get a chance.  Today, I finished the bit where you have to go into a minor character's body to kill some evil bacteria or whatever.  It was actually a pretty cool area, with some a nice visual effect on the tiles to make them seem like fleshy walls, and a fun layout that resembles a human body.  There was a lot of combat, but at this point my mech, esper, and monster all have some really powerful attacks/magic, so I'm never really in any danger.  I have been fighting most enemies I encounter so that I can level up the stats of my human and esper, but I'll run from particularly annoying battles (for example, if there are three separate groups of monsters).  One thing that's pretty interesting about this game is that you can always run from any battle... or at least, I've never seen an attempt at running fail.

 

My only worry right now is that my human character is really getting left behind compared with the other characters.  I'm actually thinking that the mech is basically better in every way; a mech-mech-esper-monster party would be pretty fun, I think.

[newtmonkey]

SaGa 2: Hiho Densetsu

(aka Final Fantasy Legend II)

I ended up injuring my hamstring while jogging yesterday, so had nothing to do but lie in bed and play Game Boy and ended up making a lot of progress in this.  I actually ended up clearing several worlds in one go, and am at Venus' World now.

 

It's a good game, even if the combat is very frequent.  Sometimes you'll finish a battle, only to encounter another after taking a single step.  I decided to run from battle whenever this occurs, and that's really helped to make exploration smoother.  

 

The game is very stingy with money so I can barely afford anything, but the game doesn't really require you to keep buying new equipment.  I'm not seeing much of a difficulty spike from one world to the next, for instance, and you can rely on esper/monster abilities to reduce the need to buy weapons.  You also find a lot of equipment in dungeons or dropped by monsters after battle, so that helps also.  I haven't had to buy a single weapon yet for my human or esper, and most of the equipment on my mech is from chests or enemy drops.

 

I don't think this game is very long, so I'll probably be able to finish this up this month.

[+atari2600land]

I bought Madden NFL '97 because it was cheap and I like late releases of consoles. I know the rules of football, but I don't think I would do very good with it. It has good graphics, though they seem a lot better on a real Game Boy...

[newtmonkey]

SaGa 2: Hiho Densetsu

My continuing adventures... continue.

 

The next world was tiny, just a single town and a dragon race to win.  One thing I really like about this game (and also the first game in the series) is how episodic and memorable it is.  I beat the first game 33 years ago, but still remember a lot of the individual worlds from it.  A nice change of pace from the typical town>cave>boss>repeat cycle of the 16-bit console RPGs.

 

Anyway, the dragon race was pretty fun.  It's the kind of quirky scenario that I'm sure I'll remember 20 years from now.  I saved beforehand and tried the cheapest and most expensive dragons, and somewhat hilariously, if you choose to ride the most expensive one, the game punishes you by making you fight more bosses (if you ride the slowest dragon, the other riders kill most of the bosses before you reach them).  I really liked this!  It makes sense in hindsight, and it's also not unfair, because the game actually gives you a hint in the local pub ("Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare?")

 

I briefly explored the next world, but it's pretty big so I'll need to set aside some time to devote to it.  I am guessing I am slightly past the halfway point, based on my HP totals.  Fun game so far.

[SlidellMan]

Perfect for capturing from real hardware.

[Tanooki]

I saw that, it's largely good, with some caveats though in the description.  I can't say I'm a fan of the price, rather use whatever else I have to capture if I had the need and for less but it is an unique straight feed.  Shame it won't do color or advance.

[+atari2600land]

I got out my Super Game Boy and played a few games.

• Finally tried out Frank the Fruit Fly on the SNES. It works great, the Super Game Boy border pops up like it's supposed to.
• I suck at Race Drivin'. It's really hard to stay on the course and I didn't get very far.
• I put in Donkey Kong Land. I finally figured out how to get to level 1-8. I thought that rock in the path was because I hadn't beaten the levels, but when I beat two of them for what turned out to be no reason at all, I figured out how to get to the right side of the map. So I beat 1-8. The game should auto-save after you beat each previously unbeaten level. It sucks that you have to find all the KONG letters, so when I'm done beating something, I have to go back to level 1-1 and then save. Dumb.

[Tanooki]

I have something to share I discovered 2-3 days ago.  I found a the half price books a $5 game, it's a wrestling title from WWF, and that's King of the Ring.  I didn't go in thinking I'd get too lucky with it, but a fast look at the roster made me figure...eh $5, why not?  Coming off a few games with it so far, I have to admit that I feel bad never really giving it a chance before.  It's a strange one, and I mean it in a nice way.  It doesn't feel like your usual janky boring generic small bodied lame 8bit wrestling games you got on handheld and fairly well on consoles then too.  It has this weird valley that is almost a glimpse of the future, N64 future kind of.  You have these large wrestlers with good attention to detail to easily make out each individual within, and on top of that, a create/build a wrestler option too which is cool.  It's surface level with strength, stamina, speed, that's it, but it is something.  The game has a pretty considerable set of the usual wrestling moves you'd find the 80s/early 90s, nothing too insane and flashy now, just the standard beatings and tossings, and even flying off the turnbuckle too.  It takes a good bit of work to grind down the health bar, no fast and easy kills in this one.  Each wrestler has their own personal theme music as well from that time.  Beyond that, you also get into the setup of the game where there are quite a few different types of play, 1on1, tag team, tournament for the WWF championship, and king of the ring.  There are three difficulties, but the AI isn't really so much improved, but the ability to dish out and take pain increases meaning you need to be better to survive.

[SlidellMan]

I think 1995-1998 were overlooked years for the original Game Boy outside of Pokemon.

[+atari2600land]

Played a little of Wario Land today. This would have been a complete crap game (for its difficulty) if the programmers hadn't put in the 16 select button presses at the pause screen code. Which enables me to play it without a Game Genie on my Super Game Boy. If only every game had the foresight to put some code like that in. But I do need the Game Genie in order to beat the final boss at the end though. I don't know why game makers make games stupid difficult on purpose. It's like they don't want you to beat the game.

[Tanooki]

Sad thing for sure, but maybe the GB was kind of ignored in that 1995-1998(up to Pokemon) era, but it did help it get a real phoenix moment.

 

The interesting thing though is that snapshot of the time, if you view what did come out in those four years it had some stand out stuff.  Maybe it might be better to nitpick them from 1996-98 even because 1995 had Kirby's Dream Land 2, the start of the Donkey Kong Land trilogy too, the star of their love affair with Mario Picross, and more quality chibi Takara made fighting games with World Heroes Jet 2 and Capcoms SF2 port, even Killer Instinct too.  The 2in1 4 volume Arcade Classics series popped up which had some really well done early 80s gems.

 

1996 was the bad times with the downturn of releases in the US.  There was another DKLand, Kirbys Block Ball, and Tetris Attack but kind of slimmer for sure.  More Takara chibi/SNK fighters popped up yet in 96 and 97 and Game & Watch Gallery was finally here too.  That oddly nice unique James Bond title showed up, but it's slim, like the wiki game list 96 and 97 all fit within one un-scrolled browser screen (at 1080p) each, 97 actually a little less.  1998 was lighter like 97 but in turn pre-Pokemon what was there were largely bangers... Castlevania, Harvest Moon, Bomberman, Wario land, Mystical Ninja, Bust a Move 2, Legend of the River King, but that's basically it.  Pokemon was September of that year, and only 8 more would appear with Pokemon Yellow being the last in 1999 one of two games that year (other Mulan.)  GB was done as GBC was there, and given that, was it really?  Those black carts, the hypocrisy, the confusion of it all on those hybrid carts.  A cold DMG list almost looks like Pokemon kept it alive another year and from stifling popularity killed the old system, but the tale of the tape throwing in the black GBC carts it ushered in a whole extra generation of GB fans when it should have just likely died off otherwise.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Tanooki