Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 3 – September, 1989

Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 2 – Summer 1989

The GameBoy finally arrived on American shores on August 1st, 1989, but it only brought along the existing Japanese library minus Yakuman and Shanghai. As a result, there was a monthlong gap in new games from Shanghai‘s Japanese release on July 28th until Soukuban/Boxxle launched in Japan on September 1st. The US would not see any further releases until December, and would not be the first to receive a game until January. PAL still had a whole year to go before receiving the GameBoy at all.

Soukoban/Boxxle (Atelier Double/Pony Canyon)

Sokoban (倉庫番, or “warehouse worker”) is actually a whole series of games that started in 1982 and received numerous editions with the same name in the 1980s. This was yet another new version, but for some reason it’s usually romanized with the long vowel written out instead of sharing the romanization of the puzzle genre or using ō. At any rate, this is a fully original game featuring 108 levels and an in-game editor. There’s no ability to share the levels you make other than handing your GameBoy to someone, as far as I can tell, but the controls are responsive, the levels are well-made, and it has pretty good music. You can’t really ask for much more from this kind of game.

Notably, this is the very first game released anywhere that did not involve Nintendo or a company strongly tied to them. Pony Canyon is primarily a music distributor, but published a number of famous games in Japan in the 80s and 90s. It was released in the West by FCI, a company that handled overseas distribution for a lot of Japanese media around that time and now seems to primarily handle Western marketing and promotion for Japanese brands and artists. I can’t find anything about Atelier Double.

Rating: 4. Yes, there are many newer Sokoban games, but it’s a simple enough idea that the GameBoy isn’t a meaningfully worse way to play. This is very much worth checking out if you like these puzzles.

Mickey Mouse / The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle (Kemco)

This is an impressively difficult game to name. It released in Japan on September 5th as Mickey Mouse, but became The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle on its American release in March, 1990. It’s actually a port of the Famicom Disk System exclusive Roger Rabbit, which, even more confusingly, actually arrived in the US as an NES title featuring Bugs Bunny just before the Japanese GameBoy release. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a very basic puzzle game where you move through levels and have to either avoid enemies or kill them by pushing heavy weights into them. Pretty dull.

Kemco will show up a few more times on this list. They started out as a developer who mostly made crummy licensed games but occasionally made something unique. The release of the iPhone in 2007 inspired them to instead become the world’s premier source of generic JRPG shovelware, although they do very occasionally put out something that at least has an interesting concept.

Rating: 1. There are loads of games like this and they basically all suck. There is no reason to play this one.

Motorcross Maniacs (Konami)

Motorcross Maniacs released on September 20th. It only has 8 levels, but does feature multiplayer and races against bots in addition to the standard time trial mode. Although you’d probably expect an Excitebike clone from the name, this is actually basically the same kind of bike platforming game later seen in Ubisoft’s Trials series. Seems quite well done for what it is. I can’t find any contemporary reviews, but it has featured on some best of GameBoy lists.

It was published in the US in 1990 by Ultra Games, who were actually just a subsidiary of Konami.

Rating: 3. I’m not a huge fan of this genre. It seems like a fun way to see an early version of it if you are.

Hyper Lode Runner (TOSE/Bandai)

An updated version of the original Lode Runner that released on September 21st. The controls make no sense to me, and it received generally poor reviews at launch due to its high difficulty. It does have the level editor from the original game, but no way of saving your levels, which seems to defeat the point.

Rating: 1. Just play the original if you really want this game.

Next time, October’s Japanese releases.