Five more Game Boy games arrived on December 14th, 1990. Only one ever left Japan.
Sa・Ga 2: Hihou Densetsu (Square)
This game, with a subtitle meaning “Secret Treasure Legend”, released in North America a year later as Final Fantasy Legend II. The gameplay is very recognizable from the first game, but much more effort has gone into the story and presentation to make it a full JRPG. Famitsu and Family Computer were blown away by it, awarding a 33/40 and 24.83/30 respectively, both significantly higher than any other GB game so far. It’s notable for having Uematsu as one of the composers and for having usage-based leveling, where your stats grow based on how you fight.
Oddly, there are almost no reviews listed from Western critics that are anywhere near contemporary to the release. MobyGames has a couple of German and French reviews from about a year after the American release and Wikipedia has a lone English review from 1992. Otherwise, everything I see is no closer than 1998. Strange as that is, nearly every review this received from anyone was at least an 80%, so it was undeniably a critical success. It later received a Japan-exclusive DS remake in 2009 and global releases on Switch, mobile, and PC as part of a collection of all three Final Fantasy Legend games.
Rating: 3
Ginga Card and Puzzle Collection (HotB)
This is a collection of public domain card games and puzzles. The graphics are a little nicer than normal and it has a full English translation even though it did not release in NA or PAL. Maybe it had an Asia release, but I wouldn’t know because there’s next to nothing about it anywhere. What I found from Japanese blogs amounted to “it’s another one of those puzzle games”, and it sure is.
Interestingly, the title is “Tornado Appetizer” if you set the language to English.
Rating: 1.
Klax (Hudson)
It’s the arcade game. This is a weird one to port to Game Boy since the funky colors and camera angles were part of the appeal, and you don’t get either here. Meh.
This Klax only released in Japan, but there is another Klax coming later from Mindsacpe that only released in North America.
Rating: 1.
Nekojara Monogatari (Kemco)
Kemco had enough success with Sword of Hope that they decided to make another dungeon crawler for Game Boy, I guess. You’re a boy who is turned into a cat and has to save the cat kingdom or something. It’s very verbose and translating Kemco dialogue was not how I wanted to spend my energy today.
Famitsu gave it a 25/40 and Family Computer went with 19.67/30. Both scores are mediocre, which may explain its obscurity in the West.
Rating: 1.
Pocket Stadium (Atlus)
A baseball simulator, but a very different one. Rather than controlling the players directly, you’re something akin to the manager. You direct your batter to swing at a particular cluster of spaces, and presumably the power of the hit is lessened by larger shapes. If the ball ends up in that space, you hit it and the rest of the game plays out by itself.
It’d kind of a neat idea, but it just feels like RNG. I have no further information about it because none is readily available and searching for it is a huge pain thanks to the existence of numerous Pokemon games and a more recent mobile game called Pocket Stadium Evolved that has nothing to do with this.
Rating: 1.
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