After the rush of December releases, January of 1991 was a quiet month for Game Boy games. There were either two or three North American debuts and three more in Japan. All PAL releases continued to be existing games, although that would finally change in February.
The Chessmaster (Park Place Productions/Hi Tech Expressions)
This is a port of the NES edition of the Chess series that ran from 1986-2008 and saw releases almost annually from 1990 onwards. It features a voice clip on startup, which may make it the first Game Boy game to have a voiceover, although it makes up for that with incredibly basic sound everywhere else. It isn’t much to look at either, but has tons and tons of options hidden in the Select menu, and people who liked Chess back then seemed to adore it. Western reviews were good enough to make it MobyGame’s 34th highest scoring Game Boy game, but Famitsu only went for a 21/40.
Rating: 2. A 1 feels harsh for something this well-received, but there’s very little reason to play Chess on Game Boy today.
Dragon’s Lair: The Legend (MotiveTime/Ubisoft)
Eagled-eyed readers may notice that this looks absolutely nothing like the more famous Dragon’s Lair title that has inspired decades of debate about whether or not it’s a game. This one is unquestionably a game, but a really shit one. It’s apparently a port of a ZX Spectrum game called Rollercoaster that was fairly well received in 1985. It has been reskinned to look vaguely like Dragon’s Lair without any colors. The only thing it actually has in common with its namesake is that you will die frequently and unfairly thanks to absurdly wide hitboxes on spikes, slow movement, and jumping controls that make it feel like ol’ Dirk is impaled on a stick.
It received just about the full spectrum of review scores, ranging from 18% from a German outlet to 100% from a Spanish one. Wikipedia notes that American reviews were almost universally negative and that it was rated 1,052 of of 1,068 Game Boy games by GameFAQs users at the time of writing. Its GameFAQs score has gone up slightly since then, so maybe it’s only in the bottom 50 games now.
It did release in Japan, but I can’t find anything except resale sites. It does not help that it was just called Dragon’s Lair there, which means results for it are blended with the NES game, the arcade version, and the GBC port of the arcade version.
Rating: 0
Track Meet (Interplay)
This probably didn’t release in January, but no one seems to have recorded the North American release date any more precisely than “1991”, so there’s no way to know. It’s a very typical track and field game where you have to mash A and sometimes press B at the right time in order to perform the events. Very basic stuff, and a lot of the controls are incomprehensible without the manual, but it’s far from the worst game I’ve ever played. The graphics are reasonably nice and it did have multiplayer.
Reviews were solidly average and ranged from about 60% to 80%. It was apparently meant to coincide with the 1992 Olympics, but only the Japanese title (“Aim for Barcelona!”) makes that clear.
Rating: 2
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