The Official Game Boy Thread

[Hwlngmad]

On 1/12/2024 at 3:54 PM, Hakogame 箱亀 said:

Bomberman gb3 is the best of all the gameboy bomberman games. At first, I didn't like it as much as bomberman gb2, but after playing for a bit it clearly won me over.

 

On 1/19/2024 at 12:10 PM, electricmastro said:

I did quite like Bomberman Quest, which goes for an action RPG structure.

 

Will have to try and give both of these a go soon.  I just took a look at Wikipedia on the number of Bomberman titles.  Holy crap, there is a lot.  However, while I am not the biggest fan of the franchise, I will give some more titles a go just to say that I have.

[Ankos]

17 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

 

@Ankos Oh so if I follow right, what i'm seeing there shouldn't happen on a GBA right?  I think I may actually have a game that does this I'd have to check.

 

EDIT: Yes I do it's my rare to get Sachen multicart, the Mighty 31in1.  I am so behind right now and it's one of my 15hr days so I can't right now take the time to make a video then stuff it up on youtube.  I can do it though.

 

Which section of the bootleg games wiki discord linked this?  If I have the energy late tonight I might just make a clip of the cart booting up within my handheld showing it say Sachen instead of V-Fame there.

It was back in 2022 that this was posted, but it was in the hacking/emulation section

 

Update: I just re-read the part where it was claimed that regular GBAs aren't supposed to behave that way and I think that the person (different person from the one who posted the video I shared) testing their GBA just made a mistake by using a cart without a custom boot logo for their test. GBA SPs in my experience do not show these boot logos though, so I guess the change was made then

[Tanooki]

@Ankos  Confirmed, put it into my 101 style SP, didn't try the 001 shouldn't matter though, and ysah it says NINTENDO not Sachen.

 

I've yet to test my GB Operator, Super GB or an original 001 either but I would think much the same is likely on the appropriate hardware.  GBO should be a tossup but I think the SGB would default to Sachen.

[Tanooki]

Well I felt I should share this little bit of a story and result.

 

Last year if anyone vaguely remembers I got a bootleg on a modern board of the GBC port of arcade Metal Slug, it was very nice.  And the last couple times I tried Nintendo-bing!--dead.  I went to the bootleg games wiki discord and asked with an image I didn't catch it neither did they entirely but I had a lifted pin, maybe?  I found 2 others.  I reflowed them and...dead.  I also was questioning if the battery was dead too because then I found my GB Operator software liked the cart and would re-write it.  This was trying out uCity, amazingly it worked, un-amazingly it didn't save...ugh.  Then I had this idea I always hated my GB NP Memory card wouldn't work on that device, so I wanted Balloon Fight GB for years and gave it a shot, that worked.  Then i realized it supposedly saves, and yup...that checked out too!  So I found the original art of the cart in nice size, cropped, printed, self laminated with packing tape and glued this together.  The old game came in a legit repurposed GBC black shell so I'm liking this.

 

[Hakogame 箱亀]

I really want a copy of balloon fight gb.  I found a site selling high quality bootlegs if it in a proper gameboy color shell... But alas the site went down forever before I was ready to buy it.

[Tanooki]

Well that's a legit shell, and best my printer could pull off I believe.  I wasn't in the mood to try and find the way to boost the ink settings on this as stuff shuffled between going from Win10 to Win11 but likely wouldn't have made a huge difference.  I could have thrown the gray bars of Gameboy on it but I never did figure out how to load those templates in photoshop cs2.

[electricmastro]

On 1/22/2024 at 1:17 PM, Hwlngmad said:

 

Will have to try and give both of these a go soon.  I just took a look at Wikipedia on the number of Bomberman titles.  Holy crap, there is a lot.  However, while I am not the biggest fan of the franchise, I will give some more titles a go just to say that I have.

Of sure, Bomberman had quite a number of interesting titles that branched off from the traditional maze formula, handhelds included:

 

[SlidellMan]

Excellent news for Custom Robo fans:

Romhacking.net - Translations - Custom Robo GX

[newtmonkey]

I've been playing some GBA lately.  I have some fond memories of this portable, as I remember importing it when it first came out Japan from legendary importer National Console Service.  They required you to buy it with two games, and I remember ordering it along with Fire Pro Wrestling A and Akumajo Dracula: Circle of the Moon (both fine games).

 

Akumajo Dracula: Circle of the Moon

I actually got to the last boss back in the day, but never completed the game, so maybe this is the year I finally finish this.  Of course, I don't have my cart from 20+ years ago, so I had to start over the from the beginning.

     My opinion on the game is mixed.  It's cool that the game has a bit of the classic lethality of the series (completely missing from SOTN), and the music is quite decent for the humble GBA.  On the other hand, the castle is extremely boring with most areas looking identical.  It also seems like the castle was designed with all your final abilities in mind, because exploring it early on is a massive chore.  You have to choose between either walking REAL SLOW or dashing TOO FAST, so it never really feels comfortable to play.  The card system is bizarre, because it seems very random... if you're unlucky (like me, now), you hardly ever find anything and are stuck with just your basic abilities.  Kinda boring but not bad, and the boss fights are pretty cool so far.

 

Metroid Fusion

What a difference one year makes!  Circle of the Moon was released in 2001 and looks somewhere in between a NES and SNES game... and then Fusion, released in 2002, looks like a late SNES release or even better in some ways.  It also plays great, and I don't even mind how linear it is, though the text in the navigation rooms is truly awful.  So far, I'm having a blast with this one.

[Tanooki]

One thing I wish I knew back in the era I found out too too many years later, with Bomberman Tournament, it's not just that, it's equally kind of a spiritual sequel of sorts of Bomberman Quest as it has a mode in the GBA game that does that too.  I've yet to find it locally, I'm stubborn, don't want to run to ebay for it.

 

 

I remember NCS doing that.  I went through a friends online gaming company but because of how his orders went I had to get a couple games with mine as well due to the source his imports were coming from so I ended up in March of that year 3mo before the US got it in June having Mario Advance and F-Zero, then I snapped up Chu Chu Rocket as well.

 

The real kicker I enjoyed most of all having income from Midway and from before my college job ended so for some weird reason third parties started shipping to retail GBA games roughly starting about two weeks before launch, and the stores would (or at least Software Etc would) let people come in and buy the games in advance.  So as they rolled out I'd keep walking right back in and grabbed Castlevania, Tony Hawk 2, Super Dodgeball, Iridion 3D.  Shortly after I got Konami Krazy Racers and Namco Museum too.  It was amusing seeing various others or employees when I'd pop in with my Glacier GBA to get a game, same as it was taking the thing on the train up to LA for the E3 in 01.  That caught a lot of attention both ways for the obviousness of it.  That same year was the best E3 ever period for give aways, Nintendo with their all 3 days long running stand in line for hours wheel of presents where one lucky person got a GBA with either Mario or F-Zero inside it inside the nylon zipper case, others got the stress ball foam form of the unit in the case, or a gamecube foam block mini console, or just the empty zipper case.  I got the GC foam and the case which worked out for me.  All the while they had Charles talking out of an animatronic Mario to keep people from being bored in line and he went into a range of nice to dirty old man jokes.

[SlidellMan]

Bomberman Tournament was also a spiritual successor to Neutopia. Of all the Kyarabons/Charaboms, Siballoon was the one I used the most.

[Tanooki]

Hmmm wow, that's a new one on me and I liked that other game on TG16.

[newtmonkey]

Akumajo Dracula: Circle of the Moon

It's hard to rate this one.  I like that you're pretty weak throughout the game, and that you really can't grind, so you have to learn how to fight the bosses like in the traditional games in the series.  However, the boss battles are really bullshit.  They simply were not designed for the screen, or at least how the screen moves with respect to your character.  The screen basically follows you at all times, with you in the middle... which is fine when you are exploring.  But the boss battles take place in arenas that often have a vertical element, and they are designed with that in mind.  Meanwhile, as you jump all over the place to avoid the boss and his bullets, the camera follows you, and the boss is no longer on the screen!  You can figure it out, but it ultimately feels like you are just playing blind, relying on its pattern, which you've learned through trial and error.

Edited February 4 by newtmonkey

[SlidellMan]

Star Ocean: Blue Sphere:

 

[Tanooki]

Always was curious how good that one might be, but language barrier, then time.  It's quite a lot for what handheld they put it on but it seemed in scores it got to thrive.

[+jgkspsx]

On 2/4/2024 at 2:05 PM, newtmonkey said:

You can figure it out, but it ultimately feels like you are just playing blind, relying on its pattern, which you've learned through trial and error.

That's fair, but the game is meant to be replayable with all of the different classes so by the time you're working on the third it's all second nature.

[SlidellMan]

By the way, I'd like to share Pixelation Forums' commercial critique of SO: Blue Sphere:

Commercial Critique - Star Ocean: Blue Sphere (pixelation.org)

The challenge that was inspired from that:

Commercial Critique Challenge - Mock the Ocean's Sphere (pixelation.org)

[electricmastro]

My picks for underappreciated GBA games.

 

[Tanooki]

I can't speak to half of those, but the ones I can I think I'd agree, tastes depending though.

Tang Tang = Classic arcade bubble pop action title and therefore fun

MOHI = Awesome overhead ww2 combat game, have to be smart or it'll eat you alive

TR = Just a solid Lara game that was well designed on the system

MP = RTS game, few and too far between and it works fairly well

DB = Solid puzzle, has some unique mechanics worth trying if you like puzzles of the sort

 

I could guess at the boulderdash update and gem I have no idea.  Rebelstar I'd hate but if you like XCOM stuff go for it.  And the racing game it's a solid overhead style racer with some quality visuals and mechanics I've read, not tried it either.

 

The thing is all of them are all non-wallet busters so they're worth taking a peek at if you buy carts, and if you just don't tolerate the abuse and go with roms, go for it, nothing there should disappoint tastes aside.

 

 

I for one have only got one new GB family game lately after making that Balloon Fight GB cart for fun, I got a complete in box copy of GBA FC Mini - Nazo no Murasamue Jou (Murasame's Mysterious Castle) which is a yellow cart FDS emulated port on GBA that we got cut out of.  I lucked out, paid the loose price for a pristine complete one and it's hard, fair hard, but hard...thankfully fun.  Think zelda 1 mechanics cranked up 4x in difficulty with an old samurai era style of flair to it.

[+atari2600land]

It took me an hour of trying but I beat level 50 of Lazlo's Leap.

• the bad news: there's 50 more to go
• the good news: you can choose level 100 right off the bat. I think all puzzle games should have this.

Then I played DKL. I somehow managed to beat level 1. And then I somehow managed to find the KONG letters to save in level 2-1. Somehow I got back to level 1 but I didn't know how. After beating the level 1 boss a second time I discovered that I can go back to level 1 anytime I want. And I can go back to level 2 anytime I want. So that's good in case I beat a level and need to save or need more lives. I'll bet I'll make that trek a loooot since the game is hard.

[roots.genoa]

8 hours ago, electricmastro said:

My picks for underappreciated GBA games.

I only played Rebelstar I got for my Pocket since I'm a huge fan of Julian Gollop's games, but I stopped playing after a while because some missions are really hard. 😩

[Hwlngmad]

15 hours ago, electricmastro said:

My picks for underappreciated GBA games.

 

Will have to give a few of these a go.  Thanks for sharing.  I always appreciate recommendations for new games to try out.

[electricmastro]

On 2/22/2024 at 9:52 AM, Hwlngmad said:

Will have to give a few of these a go.  Thanks for sharing.  I always appreciate recommendations for new games to try out.

Yeah, I was surprised in particular that Medal of Honor: Infiltrator isn’t brought up more. I think fans of games like Guerrilla War, Mercs, and Cannon Fodder would get a kick out of it.

 

[electricmastro]

I like to call Tomb Raider: The Prophecy an “overhead Tomb Raider on SNES”.
 

 

[electricmastro]

And lastly, I felt to mention that Denki Blocks! might be a classic example of of a game whose cover deceptively hides a game’s difficulty. Although the cover makes it look like it’s for preschoolers, it actually might be the most difficult puzzle game on the system.