Monday, July 29, 2024

Game Boy Player's Guide Game Wrap-Up Megapost

 

Now that I've played all of the games in here, 30 years later, I can compile my posts for everything related to this guide, while also covering the things I never gave a full post to. Microposts, if you will. Much like what the guide itself does towards the end.

I always liked the metal terminator-hands that are gripping the Game Boy here. Not sure why they had terminator-hands in this book, or what it's supposed to represent exactly, but it's a cool picture.

Time to get to it here. A lot of these games turned out to be terrible, shattering whatever childhood idealism I still had. Just kidding, all of that got shattered way before now. So here we go, the posts, with a few thoughts. Posts for the ones I did are linked in the titles of the games.

Super Mario Land - This is a good one to lead off the guide, and definitely one of the better things in it as it turns out. Surprisingly I didn't cover it on here until fairly recently, 2022.

The sphinx boss LOOKS really cool, but doesn't have much to him. His fireballs are in a very set pattern unlike Bowser's more randomized pattern, making him easy to defeat with superballs. OR you can just jump over him and hit the end goal without even fighting (unfortunately the bridge doesn't retract and drop him in the lava in this one).

Princess Daisy is rescued, but it's a true "princess in another castle" situation as this one's a monster wearing a princess skinsuit. Eww.

Side note: Daisy is way hotter than Toadstool. Look at that flowing hair! Mario was chasing the wrong woman all these years.

The game itself...isn't much to look at visually, that's for sure. It does have a distinctive theme and art design to it, though. 1-1 shows you pyramids in the background, pyramids that you infiltrate in 1-3. These worlds only have 3 stages a pop, though the stages can get pretty long.

Side note: It's great how Pause has hearts around it. Like "there's nothing wrong with taking a break, we love you anyway". That's Gunpei Yokoi for you.

TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan - An okay game here, and doesn't have weird, soulless characters like the two later TMNT games on the system. I was a massive TMNT fan as a kid to say the least. Who wasn't though. If you weren't there, it's hard to put it in perspective just how big TMNT was. It was HUGE.

Game Boy 1990: We don't need graphics for character selects!

I choose Mike, and he traverses what looks like a post-Judgment Day apocalyptic ruin. It might just be Detroit though.

Batman - Another decent game. Not great, not terrible, just...decent. It's functional. Like the previous game, it thrives off of its franchise more than anything else. A movie-based game being "decent" is probably as good as it gets in this era, in any case.

WHOA. The Axis??

...oh. He isn't Joker yet, remember. He's Jack Napier, small-time crook. Looks like his accomplice is Balrog, taking a whiff of Joker like he's Joe Biden.

The graphics...aren't much to write home about. This was 1989, and the Game Boy, and expectations need to be tempered. With such a tiny character you can be forgiven for thinking this is a Gnome Simulator, but at least they managed to make his sprite recognizable.

Operation C - The first game in the guide that I'd say is a ton of fun. It's a spinoff of the Contra series and doesn't get enough credit. I've only played this one a couple of times over the years but it's a very worthwhile addition to that franchise.

 The stage boss is an even bigger submarine, and again, it's all downward-firing. Again, it's odd to see a fight like this and I wonder why more games don't do it.

Gotta say, this game is already wildly enjoyable. It's a little bit easier than the NES games, and it's pure gameplay. No cutscenes, no interruptions, no TUTORIAL MESSAGES, none of the bullshit that constantly interrupts our modern games in an effort to be more movie-like or hold your hand. And for that, I salute this game.

Double Dragon - While Operation C is a great spinoff, this one falls more into that category of "semi-remake" and reuses a lot of stuff from the NES game it's based on. It's still a decent game and I like the large character sprites.

Atop the cliff, Billy finds himself at the evil lair. Time to save Marian, whose breasts are like two scoops of ice cream from atop Mount Olympus.

A bunch of skull doors unleash foes on our hero. Have I stepped into a Mega Man game? Is Dr. Wily behind this?

...wait a minute. The bad guy is named "Willy". COINCIDENCE? ...yes.

Nemesis - This one is a Gradius spinoff, continuing the trend of most of these being spinoffs or weaker versions of existing NES games. As a kid I didn't know much about the NES and thought that the Game Boy was a truly standalone system with its own games. This is a fun shooter, too bad it's incredibly short. 20 minute runtime on this one if you keep deaths to a minimum, and unfortunately that ended up being the case with a bunch of games from this guide.

The famous Easter Island moai statues return for Stage 3. Don't get too close, though, because they fire laser-bubbles at you.

Castlevania Adventure - The first real bad game in the guide. This one's a big disappointment. I didn't know that as a kid, and I didn't even know that when I emulated this circa 2000. Now, being an experienced Castlevania fan, this is certainly one of the weakest points in the entire series and a pretty bad game even in a vacuum.

A giant eyeball rolls downhill! Main thing to note about this game so far is how incredibly slow it is. Everything you do feels like you're underwater, with big floaty jumps, slow attack swings, and a meager walking speed.

The game also loves these platforms that fall out of the sky the half-second you land on them. Given the slow movement and jump speed, it's pretty hard to get across these without plummeting to your death. Awesome!

Next we have these really annoying tiny blocks that you have to stand on with one foot to be able to leap onto the next one.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch - The latest thing I played. And boy is it bad. Just terrible. A game so insultingly-designed that it must have been done that way on purpose. Any inkling of fun that can be derived from this game gets sucked out of it with all of the terrible design choices at work here. I'm not mad that I spent some time on it so much as mad at the existence of the game itself, that people spent money on it, and that kids likely got nightmares trying to play it.

However, Gizmo's main attack is swinging a pencil like a sword, which has an incredibly short range. And this is the main weapon they give you for the entire game. A pencil. You have to defeat your foes...with a fucking pencil!

Suffice to say it barely extends outside the range of his body so good luck hitting anything without getting hit. Also, on every level you have to find the pencil before you can even attack anything. Why did they do it like this?? Why???

It's worth re-printing what I said at the end of this post:

And I've said it before about stuff like Mega Man III GB and Terminator 2 and other games, that if I'd played them as my first game I might not have gotten into the medium. Well that was totally hyperbolic. Those games are hard, yeah, and T2 is pretty unbalanced, yeah. However Gremlins 2 is on a whole other level. I think this game would have made me throw my Game Boy into the trash. Legitimately think I would have tossed it or given it away to somebody and never even touched a video game again if this had been the first game I ever owned. It's THAT off-putting.

30 years ago when I read this guide, all I really had to go off of were Metroid II, Kirby's Dream Land, and the Mario and Mega Man games. Basically I thought all video games, or at least the ones good enough to be featured in this guide, would be at that same level. Welp, in recent times I've discovered that what I lucked into playing wasn't the norm, it was the exception. Most of the other games from the NES and Game Boy eras that I missed...turned out to be pretty turd-like. So it turns out the entire game industry at the time was basically a sea of terrible games, with some huge standouts that luckily were carried by word of mouth. Those standouts are what we remember, but they certainly aren't representative of the whole era.

The Hunt for Red October - And another bad game. It's actually a decent shooter and a fairly unique concept, taken for what it is. The problem is that the developers decided to elevate the difficulty to astronomical levels for some reason. This is one of those "nearly impossible to finish unless you cheat" games. And I really don't know why, as nothing about this game needed to be artificially lengthened.

Here's the worst room in the entire journey, where you constantly get pushed up into spikes by these weird bubbles. Once one hits you, you're basically stunned and stuck to it while it pushes you all the way up. That's right, you can't even move off of them.

ASSSSS!

Here's something most players will see a lot. In level 1. For the hour or so that they play before they bring the game back to the store and try to get a refund.

AAASSSSS! That's what I think about this game!

"Do not give up Highlanda! Rememba your home! Rememba...Zeist!"

R-Type - A GOOD game...too bad it, like Nemesis, is so short. You can have a fun time with this one for that short duration, at least. Always liked it in the guide, and was probably the first game from the guide that I actually got around to playing. It was either this or Super Mario Land, not sure which one I got first but I'm leaning toward this one.

The third stage boss... is the entire level. That's right, this whole level is a fight with this massive battleship and the zillion guns it's got on it. This is where the Fire Chain really shines as a weapon.

The weak point to bring the ship down is way in the back, and the Force Pod strategy almost feels like cheating here. Managing the Force Pod really sets this series apart from other shooters and makes it much more fun to play than most.

Solar Striker - While the above shooters were horizontal-scrollers, this one's a vertical-scroller, which I think I actually prefer as a format. It's more of an "arcade-style" deal. Worth noting is that this game was worked on by Gunpei Yokoi. It's basic but it does what it does well enough.

And here it is! Solar Striker! There's...not too much to it. You fire these piddly tic tac shaped bullets and fly around.

We get our first glimpse of the villains of the game: Flies. Yes, giant flies are invading.

...or maybe you're the aggressor and the stages are in reverse because you're attacking their planet? Well, the news says they're the bad guys, so I'm doing my part!

Gargoyle's Quest - Aside from them getting the color of Firebrand wrong and him looking more like a green imp, he looks WAY too happy in this shot. Kinda seems like he's doing a flying drive-by turd-bombing of his foes like a seagull, while said foes are basically just asking him to stop and please leave them alone. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but what exactly is going on with this box art? Talk about bizarre.

Not according to the box art.

Firebrand wanders in the desert for a while at one point. For some reason the dunes have faces. Here in the Ghoul Realm, your rules do not apply. Question is, is "Ghoul Realm" a censored way of saying "Hell"?

Cosmo Tank - Another game with a spider final boss, like Gremlins 2, that inspired me to draw one in my notebook for "Metroid 4". Kind of an interesting game here that combines both 2D and "first person" 3D as you pilot a space tank. No other game like this on the system that I know of, and it's pretty solid. Unfortunately it's one of the many from this book that cranks up the difficulty with a super-hard final boss outta nowhere that can frustrate you right before the finish line.

The second boss is the most annoying fight in the game. This thing fires sparks that stun you, and hides for a portion of the fight.

"Millions of species lived there! I think a commendation is in order for THIS young pilot!"

Fortified Zone - A top-down "action Metal Gear" type game with two playable characters and some decent gameplay. It's a little bit underrated, probably because it only has four stages in it and there just isn't much to this one once you've played through it once. It's most notable for the fact that the female lead is basically just a Roc's Feather. Switch to her and you can jump! Then switch back as quick as possible.

The two characters play very differently. Only Masato can use all the special weapons and weapon powerups, so his attacks do way more damage. There's almost no reason to ever use Mizuki, except that she moves a little faster and can jump. So you can break her out every time you find a room with pits that need to be jumped over. That's right. Mizuki is basically the Roc's Feather.

Back of the box. Mizuki has the defense, eh? That's one way to say that she's a Roc's Feather.

"If only I could JUMP" says Masato while ineffectually hopping an inch into the air. "So...HEAVY"

The game begins! ...I don't know what to do. Immediately, this game feels very similar to a Zelda dungeon. You go from square room to square room and defeat all the enemies to unlock the doors. Combine this with Mizuki being a Roc's Feather and...yeah.
 
Though this game also came out more than a year before Link's Awakening did, so the jumping is coincidence. That or...Fortified Zone did it first? My God! Shigeru Miyamoto is a thief!

Duck Tales - A decent Metroidvania that I was enthused to check out for a long time...until I finally did and realized it's just a straight port of the NES game with worse music. So kind of a pointless thing to play/cover, but hey. The game is still good and certainly one of the better things from this guide.

I wonder if this is the mine in Niger that the people coup'd from the French government a few months ago. "Zis is OUR uranium!" said the French government when reached for comment.

The African Mines requires a key from Transylvania to get into. Always found this a little odd. However, this isn't an open world Metroidvania, so it isn't like this is a big expedition to figure out.

For some reason the guide refers to the mines as "Underground". This is also the end of their coverage. Come on, they couldn't do two more pages to cover Himalayas and The Moon? Was it THAT important to cover Revenge of the Gator?


Now for everything else, most of which I didn't do a full post on. Going to take a bunch of quick looks here.

This is one of the several things that I attempted to do a real playthrough/post for recently, only to have it fall apart fairly quickly. Turns out it's pretty much just a basic pinball game with one main board to play on. You just kinda play on that one board (plus a bunch of minigame rooms you can warp to) and try to get higher and higher scores. Here's the board:

Fall through the bottom and you meet the Gator in question:

My GOD.

Get to the top and you have a boss fight with the Gator, and it's basically a Breakout game where you attempt to end his reign of terror. ...or whatever it is that's happening here. Why does the Gator want revenge? And is this not a super weird name for a pinball game? I'd expect an action game or something (Action is the section it's under, when it should have been in Puzzle). While I can't imagine buying an entire Game Boy game that's this short, I also feel like this is somebody's favorite game.

Tetris - Probably the best game on the system if we're being objective, and a game that single-handedly ended the Cold War. Well, it might have had a hand in that, I'm not sure. Always enjoyed playing other people's copies of this but I never actually had it any version of it myself until I got Tetris Effect just a few years ago. You'll never see this on my "1000 beaten games" list either because beating this game isn't really a thing for normal mortals. In other news, my post on this game was a bizarre set of ruminations.

 Moving onto another book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the novel that provided the basis for Blade Runner, one of the more influential movies of the past few decades. It certainly wasn't that influential when it came out in the early 80's; it can best be described as a box office bomb. However, as time went on, more people warmed up to the movie and the brilliance that could be found within its story; it developed a cult following that blossomed into a large fanbase in the modern era. Few movies have followed this kind of trajectory in their popularity. Blade Runner has achieved such fame that a Blade Runner II is currently in development by Ridley Scott. It helps that Harrison Ford can easily slide into reprising his role as Rick Deckard. And perhaps we'll finally find out if he's an android or not.

In the book, Rick seems to be stuck in a relatively bland marriage; he is quick to cheat on his wife with an android at one point. The lack of intimacy seems to be the norm; nearly everyone we meet in the story is practically an island unto themselves, a smartphone-driven loner world turned up to 11.

Their world is a world without color, where living things have largely died off and the land outside of the cities is covered in dust. The cities themselves are neon metropolises filled with bright imagery; perhaps this is designed to distract the residents from how empty and loveless their lives are.

The people of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep live in towering apartment buildings, glued to fake media and saving all of their meager salaries with the hope of buying a living pet – something that is increasingly rare. These people are without hope, without any real dreams for the future. Their sterile, anemic lives plod along until their unceremonious, sometimes merciful ends; to them, the only real dreams are dreams of the past: Green fields where sheep graze, nuclear fallout isn't a threat, and people are healthy and happy. These things no longer exist in this potential vision of our future, and with everything worth dreaming about in the rear-view mirror, hopelessness abounds.

This civilization is easily controlled and manipulated by the powers that be in their world. The government, fully intertwined with corporate entities, focuses on extraneous projects such as the colonization of Mars and the terraforming of distant worlds. Earth is, in and of itself, a lost cause and neglected; this in spite of it being the planetary crown jewel of the human race, and the single solitary world we don't need to terraform. The thick layer of dust that seems so prevalent in the story is a good allegory for the world itself: no one cares enough to keep it tidy any longer.

Never is it particularly questioned why the world is the way it is, how it got that way, or if it's possible to reverse course. On the contrary, acceptance is the order of the day. “This is how things are, and there's nothing we can do about it.” It isn't even worth so much as thought as to what we could be doing differently, ways we could buck the trends and change our lives for the better. The people have, effectively, become sheep: devoid of thought, devoid of aspirations.

All three of these stories, and their settings, pose front and center the inability of a group to see past their established paradigms; to them, no outside world, or higher planes, or better ways to live exist. This two-dimensional thinking prevents them from seeing what is plainly obvious to us: There is a third dimension, life isn't supposed to be sterile, the world is round, and there are far more islands in the world than one. If this is obvious to us, what isn't? And do we have any concrete way to find out?


Interesting game here from Tecmo. You play as this little elf guy (guy?) named Dana, as he battles various mythological monsters while solving room-sized puzzles. It's a little bit like that Godzilla game I played a while back. It's an okay game that I've never heard of outside of reading about it in the guide, and definitely never saw it in stores. It's yet another one I wanted to play when I was a kid, so it was on the list to cover. However, much like Revenge of the Gator, after playing it for a bit, I had gotten the idea.

This is all we get for coverage on this game. As a kid, I remember the most interesting part being the monster list on the right. This was also the only game in the "puzzle section" (yellow) that I was really interested in as a kid, besides maybe Tetris. Even Dr. Mario didn't pique my interest because I'd played (and loved) the NES version and it was just a step down to see it in B&W.

There are 5 levels, each with 10 one-room stages, and you can jump to whichever one you want. The objective seems to be to clear all 50 stages, and they disappear as you finish them. It might be the biggest stage select in history. You could start with the endgame and work backwards in a trial by fire if you wanted to.

The game's side-view, not top-down like I thought it'd be. Each stage is one room where you have to get a key and then get to the exit. The hero uses the Cane of Somaria from A Link to the Past in that he can both poof blocks and create blocks. He can also jump, so that's your game right there. Jump around creating and destroying blocks. Foes can be defeated by trapping them or by causing them to fall any distance.

Sometimes you have to build your own stairways to get through a level.

Like so. Man, this Dana guy is pretty talented.

"THERE IS NO DANA, ONLY TOOD."

We just gonna keep burying the lede as a society and pretending Toad isn't flipping the player off?

There's also a shop where you can buy one-use items that are kinda like quick cheat codes for the level you're on.

Here's a cool level, build a stairway while avoiding fireball-spitting lizards on the sides.

Some of the stages get really wacky. All in all, I liked this game enough to play around 45% of the stages, and stopped when the game slowed down.

This was a cool stage, with fireballs moving around the walls. You can box these in or get them stuck orbiting one lone block if there's room. Interesting game, no issues here.

Dr. Mario here is an okay time no matter what, but what we have here is one of those "much better on NES" type games.

Objective here is to wipe out the viruses with same-color capsule lineups. It works fine even without color.

And uh...yeah, that's it, Dr. Mario everybody.

Next up is Kwirk. What in the hell is a Kwirk? Nobody knows.

Acclaim? And Atlus? Whoa.

This rad to the max dude in sunglasses is our character. Is he The Kwirk? In any case, we get to choose a level, just like Solomon's Quest. And flip through lots and lots of menus.

I don't know! Enough questions!

The game is basically a huge IQ test, putting you in rooms where you have to manipulate objects to get to the other side. Usually just pushable blocks, sometimes rotating blocks.

No idea what to do here, so I'm perplexed. There are some mechanics at work here that I don't get yet, and frankly, won't be playing long enough to get it figured out. That said...Kwirk is alright, it really is a brain-twisting IQ test that gets your problem solving ability going. Drop into a room, figure out how to get through it. It's basic and a good mental exercise.

Next up is Quarth. What's a Quarth? Are you Quarth?

This one's Konami. Whoa! Some unexpected developers showing up here. ...kind of explains why these obscure games made it into the rarified pages of the guide though. Nintendo was already cozy with these companies.

Another game where you choose your stage...and also get to choose a "ship" from the row at the bottom.

And it's...a shooter? Not quite, but kinda. You fire shots that turn into small blocks, and the objective is to turn all of the falling shapes into solid blocks.

Once this is accomplished they get tiled and disintegrate, getting you a bunch of points.

I think you can artificially built a tower even if it's unnecessary, and get more points, but it's dangerous.

Get enough points and you go on to a different stage, with the shapes getting slightly more numerous/complex.

And that's it for Quarth. Well, it's no Kwirk, that's for sure.

Next up is what might be the very first occurrence of the Mario Golf series. Well, Mario is on the box there, but it's only called "Golf" without the Mario, so...I don't know. Also Mario doesn't really appear in the game. So he's basically just on the box to sell units. Mario is a sellout!

"Hey, I gotta gets-a paid!"

Yep, here it is. Golf for the Game Boy. It's your dad's favorite game.

The character you play as looks a lot like Mario, and is probably supposed to be Mario. Except the mustache looks like a mouth from most angles.

A lot of the maps are like weird rorschach tests. This one looks like a monster that's really pissed-off!

This is actually a pretty fun game, but it gets old fast. Press the button to swing your arm back and another button to swing it forward, trying to hit the target area on the meter to get the most range and accuracy.

There are all kinds of traps, AND a bunch of clubs I barely know the difference betwee. Like this shot-putter I use for close-up taps.

Eventually the ball gets stuck in a tree. Well, I'm not going to climb up there and fish around. Next game.

This one's a first-person style racing game, which I didn't even know was possible on the Game Boy.

You get a choice between Type A car and Type B car. One of them has a higher top speed and a little less acceleration. Also one of them has boobs and the other has a dong.

And here's the game. It's got a pretty bad framerate and can barely hold it together, but it works. I'm impressed.

The main challenge is staying on the track and easing up on acceleration to stay balanced and level with the road. At times it almost looks like a Tiger electronic game with the lack of animation and how choppy the graphics get (your car blinks a lot when there's another car onscreen). Still impressive that they were able to pull this off.

I get 4th place, and find out that you have to get first place on any given track to move on to the next one. Which is kinda brutal. Most racing games don't require you to get 1st on everything. Next game!

This one's an even more basic racing game with one real track. However it goes full 3D with the effects, not just an over the shoulder car race but a full-on vector graphics type first-person race.

This is a "movie-based game" title screen if I've ever seen one.

Before you can even race in the game itself, you have to qualify by finishing a track in a certain amount of time. Never heard of a racing game making you qualify just to play it!

Another game that's incredibly rudimentary and bordering on Tiger electronic levels, but also impressive that they were able to actually pull this off.

There's very little to show off from this one though. The visuals have no detail or anything interesting about them, they're just vector wire-frame racetracks that you have to zip through without crashing. Easier said than done with how visually bare-minimum everything is. Sometimes I go off the road and don't even realize it.

Well, so much for qualifying to play the game, 'cause my racer just DIED.
Holy shit!

I saved the best for last, the RPG section. Here's my favorite two page excerpt from the book: Final Fantasy Legend's weapons, items, and spells. As a kid, I loved lists like this and they got all kinds of creative motors running.

Final Fantasy Legend - Probably single-handedly my favorite thing from this guide, when it's all said and done. Or at least the thing I've gotten the most mileage out of over my multiple extended playthroughs over the years.

...the fourth world, which is some sort of modern world, we hear about the boss terrorizing this one. Su-Zaku is much stronger than the other fiends up to this point, AND he shows up as an unbeatable overworld enemy constantly.

Alot of this world seems to be in ruins, and there are subway tunnel dungeons that lead around the overw-

OH MY GOD. Help!

Anyway, subway tunnels that get you around the overworld. These are pretty much the only way to get around without constant harassment from Su-Zaku.

This world looks like it's mostly in ruins, except when it isn't. Did Judgment Day happen here or something? DID SKYNET DO THIS?

The downside to the subway tunnels is that you have to face the scourge that is...Gunfish. These things must be why Su-Zaku doesn't dare come down here.

Next up is a game with a really cool sword on the box. Looks like some sort of paladin weapon. And the coverage in the book makes it look great.

This one's first-person and has you moving through a bunch of rooms (each is one screen and you can move in any direction from it, rather than a "full 3D" situation where you can turn around).

Not sure if the rooms covered in this guide are the entire game, or what. If so it's a pretty short game. I remember reading this and it piquing my interest circa 1995 or so because I'd just started to like games where you could raise your character level and get stronger, etc.

The game seems to end with you BATTLING YOUR EVIL DAD. All in all, it looks like a decent game on paper.

The enemy sprites are good too, at least in the case of the boss here. Alright, enough la dee da, let's try this out.

We get what might be the longest text prologue I've ever seen in a game. I mean it goes on and on. Also, it doesn't say anything at all that you aren't expecting. It's super generic to say the least.

::Dark Helmet turns towards the camera:: Everyone get all of that??

Next we appear in a room with TV's Gary Oldman.

Not sure what to do, so I go grind some levels. There are only a few rooms to go through at the beginning and they all go to dead ends (dungeon entrances that aren't accessible yet). Definitely need the guide for something like this because it doesn't make much sense otherwise.

We get random fights, ala Dragon Quest. Hell this is a lot like that game, except...

...multiple foes can attack at once, and if you get a trio of moths at level 1 it's probably game over. They like status effects a lot in this game so I'm pretty much always poisoned.

Also sometimes they lower your stats, which is kinda weird. Hopefully said stats go back to normal after the fights.

This is like getting the Hurt spell at the beginning of DQ. Does a lot of damage, n'stuff. No animations though.

When you die, you just reappear and I don't think you lose anything. Also pressing A over and over will move you back around and outside, so... you can just keep pressing A and eventually gain a bunch of levels. Put on some kind of autofire and speed the game up and you could probably get to max level right at the beginning. Other than that, there isn't much interesting to note here. The game is WAY too slow to be enjoyable, and while emulator speed helps with that, I can't imagine playing this on a Game Boy without any speed-up options.

This one's actually good, and something I'd like to do a full playthrough of eventually. By the 90's I think the Ultima series had largely been eclipsed by things like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, plus the console Ultimas were bad more often than they were good. The Runes of Virtue duo are actually solid games though, up there with Ultima: Quest of the Avatar for the NES as far as decent console Ultimas go. There was a Runes game on SNES as well that wasn't as good as the Game Boy variation, weirdly enough.


This game centers around the dungeons and their layouts, and the guide is very helpful in that regard, keeping you from getting too lost.

The monster list would usually be the most interesting part of a game's coverage, but this time I was most piqued by...

...this very cool world map that has all of the noteworthy dungeons on it. Your goal here is to find the seven Runes of Virtue, kinda like the goal in 7th Saga.

Not really a traditional RPG at all. Where are all the boss fights? The dungeons are mostly just a matter of finding your way to the rune. Some of them are short/simple, some aren't.

The guide has five of the seven (eight if there's a final one) main dungeons, which is pretty extensive.

They leave with this last bit just to give you a hint of what lies beyond. I remember hoping the Black Knight was a rad final boss fight, but not really, you just have to get him out of the way. Time to give this one a whirl, though again it's something I'd like to actually spend more time on at some later point.

Rather than being a PC game that they tried to console-ize, this particular Ultima game was made specifically for consoles, and it shows. It's a cool game that didn't get much attention outside of this guide, as far as I know.

You choose from four characters right off the bat, and each one has their own strengths/weaknesses. Mariah starts weak and gets strong (maybe the most powerful) by the end, having access to potent spells.

In the regular Ultima series your character is the Avatar, who is basically you and can do everything, while these four are the Avatar's allies / party members. In the Runes games, there's no Avatar and no party, so you pick one of these fine folks.

Shamino is basically Richard Garriott's stand-in, the character based on him. He's the balanced, neutral-stat type character who can do everything while not excelling at anything.

Dupre is the fighter/tank character, with no spells. Starting with armor is a huge benefit though, and probably makes him the best for a new player.

Finally there's Iolo the Bard, who has a bow. While he may not be able to cast spells, wear heavy armor, fight effectively at melee, have a lot of health, have a lot of mana, or be able to survive well... he IS the dandiest lad in all of the land, and gaily prances to and fro while singing a ballad of the handsome princes of olde.

So in short:
Dupre: Physical
Mariah: Magical
Iolo: Speed
Shamino: Evenly distributed skills

I go with Dupre, and right away we can see that this world has a LOT of water in it. It's basically a bunch of islands that you can travel between from the start with a boat. Very small overworld and the impression I'm getting is that the game itself is on the short side for an RPG.

Combat is done by hacking away with your sword, which you need to do from one square away so you'll get hit back a lot. Holding down the attack button results in rapid swings.

I head into the castle, and...behold! It's Lord British!

But first, I have to deal with his court jester, Chuckles.

"I'm Chuckles the Clown! My favorite game is Gremlins 2!"

Pretty sure Lord British would have this guy beheaded if Chuckles didn't have so much dirt on him.

Chuckles is right though, you can do the game's rune dungeons in any order. The first one is a couple steps north of the castle on the overworld map. This game feels like an RPG that someone designed in fast-forward, where everything is readily available from the start.

There's a pretty sweet cutscene when you walk into a rune dungeon for the first time.

The dungeons themselves don't look like what you'd expect. They could almost be towns in a regular RPG. The rooms have a "living space" look to them, except for the crawling with monsters part.

Well, this is a pretty cool game and it's good to end the post on something that isn't abysmal. Would definitely like to check this one out eventually. Other than that, I checked out everything from this guide that I wanted to, even if a bunch of them took me 30 years to get to.

My Top Ten Game Boy Games

The Game Boy Player's Guide Review





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