Gameboy Rocks!
The Gameboy is awesome and I am tired of not talking about it. The Gameboy is special to me because it was the first video game platform that was firmly, unquestionably, unambiguously MINE. I had been playing my older brothers Gameboy and enjoying Mario Land and Paper Boy (which he gained through dubious means from a rental store). And I guess this bothered my brother enough to pull whatever strings that needed to be pulled for me to get a Gameboy for Christmas around 1991 or maybe 1992. I'm not exactly sure how old I was but man was I glad to get this Gameboy! Finally I could sit in the backseat of the family truckster and play games, I could hide at holiday family get togethers and play games and basically never had to talk to my extended family (old gross weirdos) ever again. It was great.
Yes, I am that kid that still has the link cable port cover 35 years later.
So what games did I get with this bad boy initially? Tetris, Yoshi, Metroid II and a fourth game that I don't remember. I just know in my heart that I had four games when I first got my Gameboy. When the Gameboy was the new hotness I remember going to my neighbors house for a birthday party or something and every kid had a gameboy and this is the first place I used a link cable to play the multiplayer mode of Double Dragon which was like a fighting game or something lame. It was actually my brothers copy of Double Dragon I was playing with but that DORK doesn't need to know that now does he?
A few years ago I built these shelves out of some pallets. It's janky but my handheld games call it home.
Here's another one of my earliest Gameboy memories. My brother who was 10 year older than me was a Pizza Hut delivery Driver at the time and always had a messy room with a TON of change all over the floor. He made a deal with me if I cleaned up his room I could have all the change on the floor. To everyones shock I walked away with like $25 which was enough to head down to the K-Mart and buy a NEW GAMEBOY GAME. I walked out the proud owner of TOP GUN for the gameboy, it was awful. Turns out picking a game because you've heard of the IP is not usually the smartest move. I would save up some more money and march back into that same K-Mart with a copy of Spiderman 3 thinking a game where you play as Spiderman would have to be AMAZING. It wasn't. Man if only I knew video game magazines existed back then! There aren't too many more games like that stinking up my collection but man those two titles sting. Especially after I secured all that change to go pick ANY GAME. Maybe I will sit down and try to beat these games out of spite now that I am an adult!
This is what it's like to play this game, the horizon line at different angles as enemy jets fire on you.
Speaking of K-Mart and Gameboy memories I do have at least one good one. I was with my Mom at a different K-Mart and I was looking at a little display of resealed used games. I guess they were returned but in good condition or something I don't know I was like 10. Anyway I was looking at these games with my Mom and saw the game Spanky's Quest with a monkey named Spanky on the cover. I laughed and showed it to my Mom. She took it as me wanting the game I just thought a monkey named Spanky was hilarious and she surprised me with it soon after that. Turns out the game is AWESOME! Thanks Mom! Another random game my Mom brought home was Operation C. She was the electronics manager at that K-Mart in town and I guess when kids tried to steal games they couldn't sell them anymore and sometimes that stuff got brought home. It's not one of my all time favotires but it's a solid title and and it was definiely appreciated!
One time I brought home Donkey Kong Land 2 home and tried to fire it up but the batteries in the Gameboy had exploded. My awesome Mom bought me a Play it Loud clear gameboy which I eventually sold and I regret every time I remember doing that. What a boneheaded move that was! I never actually liked it that much because the plastic was smooth and it felt greasy and gross in the hands. Eventually I would learn how easy it was to clean the corrosion on the Gameboy battery contacts and would bring it back from the dead. I also started carrying that Gameboy around and played the hell out of it at a job. I beat Dragon Warrior I and II at work on that original Gameboy. I actualy might have beat Dragon Warrior II on the Gameboy Color IDK man my middle aged brain can't keep track of all this crap anymore so that's why I need to get it all out in HTML!.
Speaking of Donkey Kong Land 2 I would frequently get Gameboy versions of cool SNES and GENESIS games because they were cheaper and I didn't have to worry about getting in TV time which came at a premium. So thats why I have thinks like DKLand 2, Mortal Kombat II and Earthworm Jim. Man those are all terrible versions of those games but it didn't matter I was playing video games and not engaging with my gross extended family full of weirdos or having to talk to anyone when I was in the backseat going here and there. Do you guys remember riding home from the store with a new game, cracking it open and pouring through the manual and admiring the art? Man that was the BEST!
Now let's talk about some of my childhood favorites! Kirby's Dream Land 2! What a masterpiece of platforming actiong. I loved the commercials and I loved playing the games even more with Kirby's animal buddies especially the fish with the electric power up! The Game and Watch games were amazing! I had no idea what a Game and Watch was at that time but I did know that I loved those simple games that ramped up in speed and difficulty! The one where Mario deep sea dives and steals treasure from an octopus stole a lot of time from my youth. Metroid II felt like such an accomplishment when I finally beat it in like the fourth grade years after I started it. Super Mario Land 2 Legend of the 6 Golden Coins was a masterpiece. I remember in like second grade talking to some kid at school about this game and I was WAY too excited and WAY too into the LORE of the game. I bet that kid thought I was retarded, thats right in 1992 you called kids retarded and not neurodivergent deal with it retard. The Wario Land games that would follow this masterpiece were themselves also masterpiece platforming games.
One of the homies gifted me this Gameboy mug, hot liquids change the color of the screen and reveal Mario Land.
Now it's time to talk about some real heavy hitters for the gameboy some stuff I really sunk some time into. The Gameboy Camera and Gameboy Printer! That's right I was SUPER excited to buy one of these and ended up making AMAZING stop motion movies that I would kill to find. I would take 30 pics on the GB Camera, toss it into the Supergameboy and record the animation. Delete them all and do another 30 pics and edit it all together. I used clay models and GI Joes and it was awesome. I recently threw away all the clay models, they were pretty messed up to be honest. If pressed I may be able to find them and will post them if I find them. Maybe I will dust off the Gameboy Camera and try to make small animation with my kids and then make it a .gif for this website! There were also all kinds of Gameboy Color games that would print out little doodads too. I'm pretty sure Gameboy Yellow let you print out the pokedex and for like 20 years in my Mom's kitchen there was a Pikachu Pokedex print out.
This took about 20 mins of effort and it turned out amazing!
My Gameboy Camera and Printer.
The last big back in the day Gameboy memory is of course POKEMON! I received a VHS tape in the mail advertising Pokemon so I had the inside scoop a little bit before the show and games landed in America and it was awesome. This was like during the time when I kind of cared what other people thought about me in High School but ultimately EVERYONE loved Pokemon, my boy Anthony the coolest dude ever, could do the entire Pokemon rap. It was a phenomenon. I got that Red Pokemon because of the cool DRAGON on the cover Charizard. Eventually the Pokemon Fever took me so hard I bought a copy of Pokemon Blue so I could trade with myself and fill out that Pokedex. This is when I would really discover video game magazines when I took advantage of Nintendo's offer to subscribe to Nintendo Power for a year along with a copy of the Pokemon Red and Blue strategy guide for the LOW price of $20! OF course I didn't have an N64 so like only the Gameboy and Gameboy Color content was relevant to me in Nintendo Power and I have no idea where that years worth of magazines got to. I think I may have honestly thrown them away becasue this was JUST a few years before I really started collecting HARDCORE. But honestly N64 stuff is still weak and I really don't care that much about it.
This thing is a hoot to watch.
No these are not for sale.
I just liked how well this pic turned out.
This guide book helped me to catch 149 Pokemons, the game shark helped me catch Mew though.
Lastly lets talk about the more current era of my Gameboy appreciating. As an adult, collector, youtube watcher I've also added some of the more top flight pieces of software to my collection. When I was working my most prestigious and well paying job I was basically sitting at a desk for 16 hours a day and started buying up some of my cooler Gameboy items. First up was the Gameboy Light! That thing sounded so cool when I first learned about it but it was pretty dang expensive for a Gameboy but I ended up buying one and starting a new save of Pokemon Blue which I spent a little time with last night. I forgot that right out of the gate I was going to level up a Magikarp into a Gyrados before even finishing the second gym. I also picked up some really cool games like Rolan's Curse so I could play two player on my AWESOME dual Super Gameboy 2 set up! Thats right I set up my twin Trinitron's, Twin SNES and Twin Super Gameboys for what's basically a LAN party! That set up was especially amazing for Fortified Zone and it's Japanese exclusive sequel Ikari no Yousai 2! Those games play like a mix of Metal Gear, Zelda and Operation C.
This is super cool in practice even if my game zone is messy.
Later in life when I fell in love with Dragon Quest I started working on the earlier entries of the series on the clock at a job I was working. You were allowed to have older electronics with no cameras or internet connections for CUSTOMER DATA SAFETY. So I sat myself down and played the heck out Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior II. This was an awesome experience because I couldn't use the internet to look anything up and had to play it blind. So I used my work notebook to write down the NPC clues and realized people that thought old RPGs were hard just weren't taking notes! I also started Dragon Warrior III on the GBC there but I'm keeping this page focused on the ORIGINAL Gameboy, the King of Kings. I also plaed a fair bit of Dragon Warrior Monsters there as well! I still haven't finished the GBC version of DWIII or Dragon Warrior Monsters. Gargoyle's Quest was another game I played and beat on that job. At the time I was working HARDCORe on Mondo Cool TV. I would play the games, make notes and work on scripting stuff and Gargoyle's Quest was one of those titles. I also worked on the Fortified Zone series of games and made a full on map of the four levels of the first game which almost turned into a mini strategy guide. Man I wish I could find those maps and notes I would scan and upload them! Here's a list of Gameboy games I've bought that awesome but I don't have any strong memories with.
- Penguin Wars
- Ninja Gaiden Shadow
- Mole Mania
- Quarth
- Radar Mission
- Rolan's Curse
- Balloon Kid
- Wario Blast
- Donkey Kong 94
- Heiankyo Alien
Wow! I could probably keep going if I started searching the memory banks for games that I played through on my Everdrive but I'm just looking over my collection and writing about what stands out. Man those are some top shelf portable games. In that list I mentioned Donkey Kong 94 which made me think about the Super Gameboy again so lets tear into that topic! I LOVED my Super Gameboy and one of the games I spent a ton of time with on there was Pokemon Red! It felt right playing RPGs up on the big screen but I played a lot of my games that way and always thought that was the coolest. I probably would have liked the N64 more if that transfer pak let you play Gameboy Color games, what a missed oppurtunity. But Donkey Kong 94 had EXTRA features on the Super Gameboy! It had a special background image around the edge of the screen, enhanced color and better sound! Another game that took advantage of the Super Gameboy in a BIG WAY is Space Invaders. It has the ENTIRE Super Nintendo version of the game on the cart and you can play the GB version OR the SNES version! How awesome is that! Most games would just give some enhanced color pallettes and special borders. Another missed oppurtunity! Japan would get the Super Gameboy 2 that had a Power LED, Link Cable port and fixed a glitch where the games ran at a slightly off speed. I forget if they were slighty faster or slower but I never noticed it. I would have loved having one of these back in the day so that when I was trading Pokemon with myself I could have done it on the TV instead of with my old Gameboy and Gameboy color. I don't know that just feels like it would have been cooler to see the trading action on the big screen!
Man now that I am totally PUMPED UP about the Gameboy I'm going to toss out a list of games that I want to add to the collection! There is just something about collecting for the NES and the Gameboy that feels AWESOME. I can't tell you why I like these carts so much but looking through them on my shelf just feels right brother! Here's the list of games I got my peepers peeled for!
- Mercenary Force
- Kid Icarus of Myths and Monsters
- Final Fantasy Adventure
- Final Fantasy Legend
- Kirby's Dreamland
- Double Dragon
- Double Dragon 2
- Avenging Spirit
- Castlevania The Adventure
- Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge
- Survival Kids
- TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan
Whoa! Look at that list! I've played a lot of these on my Gameboy everdrive but would like to have them on my shelf. I really can't explain the desire to collect this crap but it does something for me. Now let's see what some of my pals on the internet have to say about the Gameboy. First up is my dude Death Adder!
I was asked about my memories of the Game Boy by a Mr. Terrifying, so here it goes. The Game Boy was a system that I didn’t acquire until pretty late in its life cycle in 1995. We all know how Nintendo likes to sell people the same handheld 5 or 6 times per generation, and this was the first time I remember them doing something like that with the new Play It Loud series. This was the origin of the giant Game Boy guts with the green screen, but this time you got to choose from several different color shells, a black, red, yellow, green, or clear shell were your options.
I vividly remember riding in the backseat headed to the local Toys R Us with my Dad and sister to pick up my Game Boy. I had my heart set on a red one, but all they had was a green and possibly a black Game Boy. I was a little bummed out, but learned to love my green Game Boy, and looking back all of the colors were f’n awesome, I miss colorful electronics like you wouldn’t believe. My portly best friend, a kid named Randy, got a clear Game Boy around the exact same time. And Play It Loud we indeed did.
The game I got with it was Captain America and the Avengers, a game I’d played at the arcade, and the Game Boy game was about as good as you’d expect it to be on a handheld. I remember choosing Iron Man from the line up the most, this was before I knew Iron Man was just some borderline zesty drunk guy.
I also remember getting Kirby’s Dream Course as one of my first games, it was a really fun game but had the skill difficulty set so low that a toddler could beat it in 30 minutes, so I’d often take that game to the dumper with me, and I’m pretty sure I beat it start to finish on the throne at least once. Fighting games, which were my favorite genre in the mid 90's, played great on the Game Boy. I had Mortal Kombat II which I remember playing on a long car ride down to Disney World. It felt easier than the Genesis port. I also had Killer Instinct, which again…played excellent using only a d-pad and 2 buttons, wizardry. My Dad randomly brought me back a Terminator 2 game from a flea market as well. That game sucked, that’s all I got on that one. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, I had that one as well, and was probably the best game I owned. It felt like a true NES or SNES platformer.
Finally, I remember my friend Randy talking me into getting Pokemon, he got Pokemon Blue, and I got Pokemon Red. This might ruffle some features in the community, but I could never get into Pokemon, and I’ve tried several times in my adult life as well. I let some kid who sat in front of me in a class borrow it, and a couple of weeks later he returned the game with all of the Pokemon on the cart, so I figured…hey I got all of the Pokemon, game over.
Sadly, I ended up selling my Game Boy and all of its games back in 2007. I probably made like 3 bucks from it off of eBay, as this was a time before people realized old video games were made out of diamonds. Captain America and the Avengers goes for $150 on eBay right now. *massive anime eyes* BOOZGONGAZA! *falls backwards in chair* But yeah, I had a few good times with the Game Boy. Right now I have a Anbernic RG35XXSP, in a clear red by the way (take that 1995 Toys R Us shelve stocking team!) and it has all of my old Game Boy games on it. I plan on taking it with me the next time I go on a big trip.
-Death Adder
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