Previous: Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 4 – October, 1989
First: Let’s Play Every GameBoy Game: Part 1
November of 1989 was a fairly quiet month for the GameBoy. December was about to smash April’s record for most games in a single month, but until then players had to make do with only two new releases in November.
Kwirk (Atlus)
Although it may not look like much, this block-pushing puzzle game from November 24th is actually immensely significant to the industry. This was the very first game Atlus ever made full under their own name, and was important enough to them to still be one of about a dozen events listed on their corporate about page decades later. The game itself has a surprising amount of variety, with none of the six levels I played fully repeating their mechanics, and it had a reputation for being quite difficult. There are three modes, including a versus, the option to select a birds-eye camera instead of the one in my screenshot, and apparently even multi-character puzzles later in the game.
Contemporary reception seems to have been highly positive except for a 50% review from EGM.
Rating: 3. If you want a block-pushing game, this seems like it’s about as good as it gets.
Golf (HAL Labs/Nintendo)
Golf continued Nintendo’s practice of porting all their NES sports games when it released on November 28th. As with the others, it had been tremendously successful on its original hardware and in arcades, but NES Golf also had significance as one of Satoru Iwata’s first projects. The GameBoy version added multiplayer by Link Cable, although it weirdly seems to have dropped local hot seat. Otherwise, it’s only really notable for having Mario on the Western cover and for being the first GameBoy game to let you name your profile.
Rating: 1. Although impressive for what it is, the Iwata connection is better experienced on NES and golf really benefits from the improved visuals on GameBoy Color.
Next time: At least some of the 9 games released in December.
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