October 12th, 1990, delivered three new Game Boy games in Japan.
Astro Rabby (IGS)
A bizarre game that is usually described as a platformer, but which defies any expectation you’d have for what that means. It’s a vertically scrolling game where you control weird sprite that’s supposed to be a rabbit and try to avoid falling into holes or touching enemies along the way. You can hold down A to jump onto the ? blocks along the way in order to get more time or power ups, and bigger blocks require holding A longer since they’re higher up. The music is as bad as the graphics. It received a 20/40 from Famitsu, a 15.76/30 from Family Computer, and averaged a 42% from two European outlets.
Despite never releasing outside Japan, it is entirely in English. There is a lot more about this game than you’d probably expect on the Japanese internet, including an atwiki post with custom maps of every level that someone made. The writeups I found on it didn’t seem especially positive, but it must have at least a few fans. As an aside, Wikipedia lists a ‘Cyclone System’ as the developer, but I can’t find any evidence of that. I assume the English page was made by copying the Japanese page that makes the same claim, but no other site mentions this developer at all and they’re not credited anywhere in the game or manual.
Rating: 1.
Palamedes (Taito/Hot-B)
A port of a puzzle game that Taito made for arcades and released at almost exactly the same time as this version. It’s just a dice matching game, but you can apparently get bonuses if you make a big match or a straight. The die you’re holding can be changed by pressing A, and shooting a die that doesn’t match causes it to disappear and reappear in your hand in a way that looks like a bug.
I found some Japanese videos covering either the console versions or the sequel, but only a lone 3/5 review for the specific Game Boy game. Even the ever-dependable atwiki seems to draw a blank and turned up with a page on Dionysus on my search, although they do have a page for the sequel. Western critics gave it scores from 35% to 81%, but I think it’s pretty bad.
Rating: 1
TwinBee da!! (Konami)
Konami guaranteed this would cause confusion in the future by releasing it as Pop ‘n Twinbee in PAL in 1994 despite that being the name of a difference game they released by that name in Japan and PAL in 1993. Wikipedia has unhelpfully linked this game to the 1993 one even though it came out three years earlier.
This game is actually the fourth entry in the TwinBee series, whereas the better known game is the sixth. It received a 25/40 from Famitsu, a 21.38/30 from Family Computer, and scores from 59% to 88% from European outlets. What I played had significant blurring on the bullets, but was otherwise far better than the contemporary competition as a shmup. It really captures the feel of TwinBee despite all the hardware limitations. It was later included in Konami collections for the GB (GBC in PAL) and PSP, as well as ported to the 3DS Virtual Console in Japan. As expected for a game from a well-known series and publisher, there’s still plenty out there about it in both English and Japanese. Wikipedia should really link to the right game.
Rating: 2. I’d go to a 3, but if you wanted to play this, the PAL GBC version is almost certainly much better for having color.
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