There were only three Game Boy games released in Japan from January 8-25, 1990, but they all came from famous developers.
Contra (Konami) (January 8th)
This released as Operation C in North America and Probotector in PAL. It’s a sequel to Super Contra and does a genuinely remarkable job of porting the gameplay of the classic series to Game Boy. The backrgrounds suffer a bit and there are obviously no colors, but the music, action, and animations have all come through flawlessly. It’s no surprise that this received wide acclaim and is currently the 9th best Game Boy game according to MobyGames. It fared a little worse in Japan, but a 25/40 from Famitsu and 20.76/30 from Family Computer were decent for the scores those magazines tended to give.
Interestingly, this is another game that is different depending on where you played. The North American version drops the level select screen unless you input the Konami Code. The European version replaces the protagonist and most enemies with robots.
Rating: 5
Totsugeki! Ponkotsu Tank (HAL) (January 8th)
This is an odd shmup that released as Trax outside of Japan. You play as a tank that can move and fire in any direction, but you have to rotate your turret clockwise using the B button in order to aim. It’s usually more efficient to move the tank rather than try to line the turret up, but the game does occasionally spawn enemies behind you to make you use the rotation feature. I saw a good amount of enemy variety in the time I played.
Reviews were mixed everywhere. Almost everyone criticized the heavy slowdown, which seems like it could be an intentional feature, but it’s so dramatic that it really gets in the way of the action. The low difficulty, short campaign, and repetitive music were all also criticized, but it did get credit for being one of only a handful of Game Boy games with four player multiplayer.
It’s pretty obscure in the West now, with hardly any user reviews on either MobyGames or GameFAQs. It seems to have had a decent afterlife in Japan, though, at least going by the number of blog reviews and Let’s Plays I can find. They all make the same criticisms that critics made back in 1990, but being played at all is more than most Game Boy games get now. The Let’s Plays also suggest that this got a color update for GBC, so that’s cool.
Rating: 3
Totsugeki Variations (Atlus) (January 25th)
This was Spud’s Adventure outside Japan and is kinda similar to Tower of Druaga from two posts ago. Like that game, you’re climbing a tower full of mazes and puzzles in order to save a princess at the top. This adds level ups (adding more health) and extra characters with unique abilities that you can find along the way.
The game received few reviews from what I can find. It has an average of 66% from three Western reviews on MobyGames, along with a 2/5 from users there and a 2.5/5 from users on GameFAQs. Famitsu gave it a dire 19/40 back in the day, but the Japanese blogs posting about it now are all reasonably positive. That said, it received a limited production run and physical copies go for hundreds of dollars in both the US and Japan, so there’s less about it out there than there might otherwise have been. Wikipedia claims that it is part of a series called “Puzzle Boy” for some reason, but I can’t find any reason to think that’s true.
Rating: 2
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