There were three new Game Boy games from November 22-29, 1991.
Hiden Inyou Kikouhou: Ca Da (Yonezawa PR21) (November 22)
The English title of this game doesn’t look that bad, but the full Japanese version is probably the most intimidating title on Game Boy: 秘伝陰陽気功法図式謎遊戯 followed by two Chinese characters they helpfully labeled “Ca da”. As the name implied to anyone it didn’t scare away, it’s a puzzle game that works by shifting between yin and yang states. There are black and white balls scattered around the map and each turns your character that color. If you jump on an arrow that matches your color, you can get high enough to clear obstacles. The goal is to pick up all the balls without softlocking yourself with a jump you can’t make. Fortunately, the game resets pretty quickly if you press B.
There is almost nothing about this game anywhere except on resale sites. I found one walkthrough that didn’t offer an opinion and the usual short writeup from Gamesoft. The latter described the game as ‘mysterious’ owning to its grandiose title making you expect more than just a basic puzzle game.
Rating: 1.
Popeye 2 (Copya Systems/Sigma) (November 22)
The first Popeye was a weird puzzle game, but the second one is the standard Game Boy platformer. It has extremely basic graphics, but the music is okay and it differentiates itself a little with jumps that require punching some blocks away first. Your attack is an uppercut that begs for enemies to go flying off screen when they die. Unfortunately, they just disappear. More unfortunately, this is one of those platformers that relies on cheap ambushes to create difficulty.
Wikipedia reports a 59% average on GameRankings, but it turns out that ‘average’ is based entirely on Nintendo Power’s review. MobyGames has a 70% but does not have the Nintendo Power review, so we can combine them and get a 68% average. That seems very generous either way. The game released in Japan two years before any other region, but seems to have attracted almost no attention there.
Rating: 1.
Ninja Boy 2 (Culture Brain) (November 29)
The first Ninja Boy was memorable for being a shallow Chinese stereotype in Japan and a shallow Japanese stereotype in the West. This one retains the Ninja Boy name, but makes it clear that it’s a kung fu game with the standard Chinese music tracks and references to “Chinaland.” That said, the plot involves the brothers being immediately kidnapped by aliens and was hard to follow, so I think it actually takes place somewhere else. That would explain the pyramid.
You do at least have to give the game credit for an original battle system. You move around the overworld and level up like a JRPG, but selecting ‘fight’ in a battle leads to fighting the enemies in a beat ’em up stage. That said, there is seemingly only one stage for each area and you’ll have to go back there every time you need to do another fight or play a minigame. The controls are also very stiff and your punch range is about two pixels, so combat is a lot of flailing around until someone gets stunlocked.
MobyGames only has an 82% review from GamePro, who seem to be taking Games-X’s banner for giving games absurdly high scores. Wikipedia has a pathetic 17/40 from Famitsu and a marginally better 55% from GB Action. There’s not much about it in Japanese, but GameFAQs users seem to like it. They give it a 3.44/5, have written quite a few different guides and maps between four different users, and even filled out a cheats section.
Rating: 2. It’s not good, but the battle system is unique enough to try once.
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