Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 4 – October, 1989

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

Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 1

Today we continue with the three games that debuted in Japan in October. Although that’s not many games, there’s another big hitter here.

Revenge of the Gator (HAL Labs)

It’s pinball and released on October 18th. There’s nothing really interesting to say about what you can see of this game with only one cart. It’s a pretty standard pinball video game table and has a pass-n-play mode. If you do have multiple carts, there’s apparently a Link Cable multiplayer that sounds like it’s simultaneous and you can interfere with the other player. That sounds cool, but I wasn’t able to try it.

Contemporary reviews were broadly positive, with MobyGames giving it an average in the mid-70s once you remove a score from 2012. It was also ported to the 3DS Virtual Console, were reception was more tepid, and at least one person still cared enough about it in 2023 to make a ROM hack with significant improvements. That’s more than you can say for most games from 1989.

Rating: 3. I don’t really care for pinball, but it seems like there’s something here if you do.

Castlevania: The Adventure

Castlevania made its handheld debut on October 27th, although this is really the standard character platforming game that the console is known for rather than a Metroidvania. It’s four stages that each have a time limit and a boss at the end rather than a connected map. It was actually received pretty well at the time, with a couple of Western reviewers even giving perfect scores, but retrospective reviews and ports have been going lower and lower as it gets older.

Per Wikipedia, this is probably most notable for being the first game made by Masato Maegawa, who quickly got sick of Konami’s insistence on only making sequels and left to found Treasure. Something good came out of this.

Rating: 2. It gets a point for being from a famous series, but it doesn’t have much going for it on its own terms.

Malibu Beach Volleyball (TOSE)

Released on Halloween, Malibu Beach Volleyball is the first GameBoy game that Wikipedia did not deem worthy of an article. It’s exactly what you would expect from the name, and allows playing as men’s or women’s teams from four countries against either the CPU or another player via link cable. It controls a lot like Tennis, but I didn’t feel like I had much control over where the ball went and the animations have absolutely nothing to do with the contact you end up making.

MobyGames has 6 contemporary reviews for it that range from 58% to 79%. Only one of them is in English, and it’s useless, so I’m not sure if the complaints from back then match mine. Either way, I wouldn’t bother with it.

Rating: 1