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, unamimously 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.
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?
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!
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 name 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 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 2I 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 game 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.
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.
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.
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!
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