Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 1

I’ve previously run series where I played through every GameBoy Color and GameCube game, which you can find here: Let’s Play . Those series went through every game in alphabetical order with a set number of games per day. This time, I want to do it a bit differently and cover every game in order of release, with each post representing one day of GameBoy releases. This will not have a strict release schedule and, rather than pretending that I’m going to come back and finish dozens of games from this project, I’ll give each game a rating from 1-5 based on how promising it seems from a modern perspective. A 1 is a game I think everyone can safely skip, and a 5 is a game that appears to hold up excellently.

Preamble out of the way, let’s time travel back to the four games that awaited Japanese buyers on April 21st, 1989, the GameBoy’s launch day.

Alleyway (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)

Alleyway is a clone of Breakout/Arkanoid that was seen as derivative even almost 40 years ago. It does have a few gimmicks, like the second stage scrolling endlessly to the right and apparently introducing hazards in later levels, but neither that nor the novelty of being portable were enough to convince reviewers in 1989. It’s unlikely this would be remembered at all if it hadn’t been a launch title.

Rating: 1

Baseball (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)

Sports fans who bought a day 1 Gameboy would have gone for Baseball, a port of the 1983 NES game. It had already seen massive success on its original release and as an arcade cabinet in Japan, and I assume it did well as a Gameboy title, but I couldn’t find much about how this specific version was received. It seems like a faithful, if green, recreation. The biggest drawbacks today are the terrible pathfinding for fielders, which makes them play like a bad Little League team, and the bizarre baserunning controls.

Rating: 2. There’s a bit of inherent fun to baseball, but there are also dozens of better baseball games by now.

Super Mario Land (Nintendo)

There’s no doubt that this is the best, and best-remembered, of the GameBoy’s launch titles. It’s a reimagining of classic SMB-style gameplay that still feels remarkably good to play considering the limitations the dev team had to work with and that modern players have had decades to get familiar with handheld platforming. It’s notable for being the origin of Daisy, having some wild departures from normal Mario aesthetics, and for selling better than any Gameboy game that wasn’t Pokemon or Tetris. Contemporary reviews were exceptionally high, only really complaining about it being an hour long, and even modern critics have generally been positive. It’s also one of the most accessible GB games. It’s been included basically wherever Nintendo has offered GB ports, and physical copies can be had for a reasonable price if you don’t mind a loose cart.

Rating: 5. I don’t think this is the greatest game ever made, but with how short and unique it is, there’s really no reason not to play through it if you enjoy 2D Mario at all.

Yakuman (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)

Yakuman is notable as the first game with Link Cable multiplayer and as the only launch title that never made it to the West. It’s the first in what would become a long series of first party Nintendo mahjong games, but it was received relatively poorly at the time. I’d guess the criticisms were down to it only supporting two players instead of the usual 4 and being a fairly barebones implementation. That said, it does deserve praise for having more legible Japanese text than even a lot of GBC games managed. It also has the best soundtrack of any of the launch day games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1lalZ_ylk0). All two minutes of the soundtrack, anyway.

Rating: 1. As much as I like the music, there are probably hundreds of better portable mahjong games today.

It looks like there weren’t many simultaneous releases in 1989, so I may change the next couple of posts to use a bit wider of a window for capturing games. Regardless, we’ll pick back up next time with the release of Tennis on May 29th.