Two new Game Boy games released on September 14th, 1990, but I’m also bundling them with the two North American debut games from this month. As always with NA releases, the exact launch day is seemingly lost to history.
Skate or Die: Bad ‘n Rad (Konami) (Unknown date)
Oddly for a game made by Konami, this released everywhere except Japan. Oddly for a Skate or Die game, it’s actually just the usual Game Boy platformer where you move right and try not to get hit by things. The only thing linking this to Skate or Die at all is that you’re on a skateboard, which was a really bad idea for a screen this small. You have no hope of reacting to hazards if you’re moving at a reasonable speed, so you either have to memorize the game or play it at a snail’s pace.
There are apparently top down levels and even boss fights later, which may be why its critic scores were largely 75% and higher. I couldn’t be bothered to play that far.
Rating: 2. The boss fights do sound interesting, but it mostly just makes me want to go play arcade Skate or Die.
Wheel of Fortune (GameTek) (Unknown)
It’s Wheel of Fortune. You can play solo, hotseat multiplayer with one friend, or against the CPU. The startup sounds are classified as a deadly weapon in 47 states. There’s no other music, and the graphics are about as basic as in the screenshot throughout. I guess you could probably have done worse than this if you were a big fan of the show in 1990, but there’s no reason to play today.
Rating: 1.
Famista (Namco) (September 14th)
Released as Extra Bases in the US, this is the first of three Famista games to release on Game Boy. It looks very similar to the other baseball games we’ve seen so far, but plays a lot better. I like that you can see the baserunners in real time. You can check your swing at any point by releasing A early, and it also fully animates the ball/bat collision at the appropriate time instead of just cutting away like in some other games. The controls will otherwise be familiar to anyone who played Mario Baseball, although there are no pitch windups. My only complaint is that it’s still really hard to tell where fly balls will land.
There’s next to nothing out there about it in English, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten much contemporary coverage in Japan. I did find reviews on atwiki and a personal blog that dinged it for not having much content and being generally inferior to the console versions available at the time. I’m sure that’s all true, but it’s still clearly the best baseball game so far.
Rating: 3
HAL Wrestling (Human Entertainment) (September 14th)
This was just Pro Wrestling in Japan because HAL was only involved as the US publisher. I have no interest whatsoever in wrestling and so am definitely biased against this, but it seems to be a fighting game that just devolves into both players grabbing each other and one of them doing a suplex. If you like watching suplexes over and over again until the match ends, it’s probably great.
MobyGames gives it a 38% average from 3 reviews, but that masks that two of those reviews are a 17% and a 25%. It’s bad.
Rating: 1.
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