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5 Game Boy Games You Don't Need to Play

A Retro Review

By Aaron DennisPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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The Game Boy was Nintendo's first handheld game console to hit the stores. Released in 1989, it boasted a rather strange library. Many games were remakes of games available on the NES, but some were games created exclusively for the Game Boy. None of the remakes for the original Game Boy were as good as their NES counterparts, but many of the other games were fun…in small spurts.

Considering the fact that this bulky, tiny-screened, hand held, battery eating device was created so that gamers could play video games away from home, one might assume that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the Game Boy had quite a few draw backs. As was just stated, it ate batteries like a ravenous lion, had a tiny screen causing your eyes to blur out of focus, and it couldn’t be played in the dark, yet there were numerous accoutrements released later that solved these issues.

Rather than discussing the console itself, I’m going to focus on some of the games that I absolutely hated. See, just because the Game Boy was small and the games were small and short, didn’t mean that they were cheap. A lot of ‘em still cost fifty bucks or more, so here are five Game Boy games you don’t need to play!

'Castle Quest'

I never found a lot of information on this one, but it was released in 1993, three years after the Super Nintendo. It's made by Hudson Soft; I think they also made Milon's Secret Castle.

On first inspection, this looks like a cute version of chess…but it isn’t…at all. While the pieces are organized in similar fashion, and look like animals or monsters, the pieces don’t capture each other as they do in chess; they actually do battle…well, not really.

For those of you who are expecting something like Archon—a NES game that resembles chess and allows you and a friend to actually run around an arena and fight each other—you are to be sorely disappointed. The “battle” in question, which can occur after two enemy pieces come into contact, is a friggin’ randomized card game but, like, not even. You just hit the button, your card is generated, and then your enemy’s card is generated, and the higher valued card deals more damage.

Since each piece has a set number of hit points, this can go on for a while, and the goal is to defeat all the opponent’s pieces. It’s ugly, it’s silly, it’s boring, it’s randomly based on luck, and the music is just atrocious. Don’t waste your time or money, just grab a deck of cards, shuffle it, draw two cards, and keep going until you’re out of cards!

'Crystal Quest'

This one was released in 1991 by Data East. You gotta’ love all the “quest” games. What’s so “quest” about them? You’re definitely not on some quest in Castle Quest, and Crystal Quest is even less of a quest!

You’re a flying doughnut. Unless you’re moving in the direction you want to shoot, nothing happens. The enemies from Galaga swarm you, and you die.

The controls are sticky or, like, underwater, like there’s some unseen resistance against you. Maybe you’re not in space, so there’s the fight against inertia? I don’t know, but after five minutes of shooting at enemies, and without music, it’s just boring.

During the stages, you can pick up asterisks for points, I guess…or you could just pick up another game

'Gauntlet 2'

We’re all familiar with Midway’s Gauntlet games. They were great at the arcade, and less great on the NES, and just awful on the Game Boy. I don’t even know if there’s a Gauntlet 1 on Game Boy, and frankly, I don’t care.

So, here’s the deal—if you’re player one, you’re the warrior. If you’re player two, you’re the valkyrie. What’s the difference? A few pixels. Like all the Gauntlet games, you plod around a dungeon shooting baddies. Unfortunately, in this version, the sprites are practically indistinguishable, and the terrible music box style tunes cause brain hemorrhaging. Then you die.

I mean, these games were fun in an arcade, and they’ve made some great advances on newer consoles like the PS2, but on the Game Boy, in black and green poo-colored graphics, forget about it.


'Sword of Hope'

Well, this game starts off promising. The music is rather epic, so ya’ hit the start and learn all about the prevailing darkness. Considering its early release, I have to admit this was a rather valiant attempt at a first person dungeon crawler. It’s your duty as Prince Theo, Son of King Hennessy, the Cognac mogul, to save the world, so this old fart sends you on your way.

Sword of Hope reminds me of Shadowgate on the NES, a game I thoroughly enjoyed, but all you get is that tiny rectangle to look at while you choose where to go and what to do.

On the NES, since a TV screen is obviously much bigger, the small rectangle is accountable for a great many objects to scrutinize, and it’s in color, but on the Game Boy, it’s impossible to tell things apart; you’ll go crosseyed before accomplishing your first goal, whatever it may be.

Basically, this game is all trial and error; you go one way, you try to interact with an object, and all without much of anything to keep anyone interested. Again, an admirable try by this company, but the game itself falls way short of the mark. It’s not fun and kind of poorly defined.

'Black Bass Lure Fishing'

Ugh…it’s a fishing game, right? You move your boat, I guess. Does it matter where you go? Are there more fish in one spot versus another? You choose a certain lure to try to catch the black bass—that’s the goal, evidently.

Does it matter which fish you catch? Maybe it’s because I think fishing is boring as fuck already, but as a game, and on the Game Boy, Hot B might’ve done a bit more to keep things interesting, but no.

The music sucks, the controls suck, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what I’m doing, and do I care that I caught a 1.2 lb catfish? No…no I don’t.

I’d rather go fishing nude, swing my rod around, and hook my own scrotum! Reel that in—the white bass!

Well, I hope you all don’t misunderstand; while the Game Boy had some shitty games, it had some great games, too. I’ll never know how it beat out the Sega Game Gear or the Atari Lynx, but perhaps its vast library of good games carried it through to its successor, the Game Boy Color.

I’ll tell you, though, what always cracked me up about the Game Boy’s journey was that it was a console released by a company that released a home-based console, which allowed gamers to play video games from home. Nintendo then released a console, which allowed gamers to play games away from home, but then released an attachment, the Super Game Boy, which allowed gamers to play Game Boy games on the SNES, at home….

Is that irony or satire? Anyway, why Nintendo didn’t then create an attachment to allow gamers to play GBA games on the Game Cube or Wii will always remain a mystery to me.

Thanks for reading. If you’re an asshole and you want to play these five games, go for it, but you won’t last more than a few minutes before busting out the stained and grimy Monopoly box.

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About the Creator

Aaron Dennis

Creator of the Lokians SciFi series, The Adventures of Larson and Garrett, The Dragon of Time series, and more.

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