August of 1992 saw quite a few games willing to challenge Kirby‘s launch in North America. This is also a rare month where we have specific days for most PAL releases, but of course the only one that actually debuted in PAL is also the only one that does not have a release day.
The usual reminder: Scores are out of 5 and reflect only how worth playing a game is today. Most games get 1s. Exceptionally bad games get 0s.
Spider Man 2 (Bits Studio/LJN)
Sometimes called The Amazing Spider-Man 2, this is either way one of entirely too many games with exactly the same title. What it lacks in naming originality, it makes up for in background details, which are some of the best on Game Boy. Alas, the extremely detailed backgrounds come at the cost of sprite detail and make it nearly impossible to see where you’re shooting your web. It has great music, but it’s hard to get past how hard it is to see anything in motion.
Critic reviews were absolutely all over the place. MobyGames only tracks a 56% average from 7 reviews, but they’re missing quite a few reviews from Wikipedia. Combining both lists results in a range of scores from 44% by Germany’s Power Play to 98% from France’s Consoles+. That said, it seems like most scores were on the lower side and this game just had a couple of outlier scores. The MobyGames user score is actually a little higher than their critic average at 3.1/5, but GameFAQs users come in at 2.13/5 and the highest written review on that site is a 3/10.
Rating: 1.
Double Dragon 3: The Arcade Game (The Sales Curve/Acclaim)
This confusingly named game is actually a port of Double Dragon 3 as opposed to being a reskin like the last Game Boy entry. It presumably does not feature microtransactions like the arcade original apparently did. Unfortunately, it also suffers from similar issues to Spider Man. While the backgrounds look quite nice and the music is good, the sprites are far too basic to accomplish what they need to do. Enemies also all want to stand in the same place directly in front of you, resulting in a bunch of overlapping sprites that are impossible to distinguish.
Reviews were poor, with MobyGames tracking a 57% average. The GameFAQs user score is an impressive 1.6/5 and the only written review there for Game Boy is a 3/10. Pity anyone who bought this instead of Kirby.
Rating: 1
Out of Gas (Realtime Associates/FCI)
A top-down shooter where you drive an extremely bouncy ship in a maze-like environment. You are out of gas, which for some reason means you need to find and shoot a bunch of letter G’s before the timer runs out. It’s much better than the other games I’ve tried today, but still pretty boring. It’s the kind of thing that should have been a minigame in a bigger adventure rather than released on its own. Good music can’t save it.
The game is extremely obscure. MobyGames has one contemporary review: a 60% score from Com Club, a Finnish magazine. Google Translate tells me that they thought the game was fine. The limited number of user reviews available are quite a bit worse, with a 0.8/5 from 3 reviews on MG and a lone 4/10 written review on GameFAQs.
Rating: 1.
WWF Superstars 2 (Sculptured Software/LJN)
This one is pretty self-explanatory. It has really good animations, but everyone looks pretty much the same and there’s hardly any sound. I have negative interest in wrestling and couldn’t be bothered to play this for very long. It’s far too stiff to be a fighting game, but it could have been fun if you care about this stuff. Wikipedia says it sold 160,000 units in North America, so it was at least a financial success.
It doesn’t score well from anyone on MobyGames, with a 68% critic average and a 2.4/5 user average. That said, GameFAQs written reviews are considerably better with the three available scoring a 9, 8, and 6. The 9 review was posted in 1999 and is thus pretty close to being a contemporary score. It calls this the best wrestling game on the system. I could believe that.
Rating: 1. It doesn’t do anything for me.
Magnetic Soccer (Nintendo)
The rare PAL-only Nintendo game, this is a foosball game that is presumably called “magnetic” because the ball sticks to players if it hits them in the right way. You’re able to play it almost like a free kick when this happens, but the shot is more powerful if you take it more quickly. Other changes from real foosball include being able to play on different surfaces and the goal being absolutely massive. It’s the width of the entire last win of defenders and your keeper can only traverse about half of it. There is also a training mode with no AI and a ‘watch’ mode with no human player.
It didn’t get much attention. MobyGames has three German reviews that average to 60% and didn’t get far from that number. Their user score is an almost identical 2.9/5, and GameFAQs does not have a meaningful user score. They do have one written review, which awarded a 3/10 in 2011. The user seems to be offended that this game even exists and says Nintendo should have known that a foosball Game Boy game could never work. Ouch.
Rating: 1. I’m not bothered by its existence, but I also can’t say there’s much reason to play this.
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