May 1991 was a busy month for new North American Game Boy games. Normally I’d combine the NA and PAL debuts into one post, but PAL didn’t get any releases at all in this month. There’s also a stray April debut that I didn’t notice until now.
WWF Superstars (Rare/LJN) (April)
This is the one I missed from April. It’s a very basic fighting game with a bunch of different moves that happen automatically when you mash attack. It seems very easy to effectively stunlock your opponent. The graphics and music are alright, but that’s not enough to save it from dull gameplay.
Critics were surprisingly positive, which I have to imagine had more to do with being wrestling fans than the quality of the game itself. It has a 73% average and is #80 on Game Boy per MobyGames, but nearly every review admits it’s both too short and too easy and that it needed modes beyond the basic four match arcade structure. Players of this game would certainly have self-selected.
Rating: 1.
Hatris (Bullet-Proof Software)
This was one of Alexey Pajitnov’s follow-up’s to Tetris, and one of three that used the -tris suffix. This one has you making stacks of various kinds of hats. It’s basically the Puzzle Fighter system except that the hats can only be dropped horizontally and they have different heights, meaning that one sombrero takes up considerably more of the board than one beanie. It’s fun for a little bit, but it’s not hard to see why this didn’t have the same cultural impact as its predecessor. It does have nice music, at least.
The game apparently had some success in arcades, but critics were largely unimpressed. Game Boy scores were all over the place in the West and averaged out to 62%. Famitsu gave a 20/40, one of their lowest-ever GB scores, and Family Computer readers came in with a somewhat better 18.5/30. Interestingly, while Famitsu liked the Famicom version much better (25/40), Family Computer readers rated it half a point below GB.
Rating: 2
The Hunt for Red October (Beam Software/Hi-Tech Expressions)
This is likely the only Game Boy game that opens with the Soviet National Anthem. You play as the Red October and sail around under the sea trying not to hit rocks or get shot by Soviet submarines. The other submarines are very small, very fast, and shoot many torpedoes, so this is pretty difficult. They’re also able to turn around even though you can’t. Your only real advantage is a radar that lets you see where the submarines are before they come on screen, but even that doesn’t help much since torpedoes sink rapidly and your ability to hit anything drops off equally quickly.
Wikipedia claims that you were able to choose whether to play as the Red October or the Soviets, but this is false in single player. One player does get to do that in the two player mode, which seems to be the only thing anyone enjoyed this game for. Reviews were mostly negative and what positives there were tended to be about that mode. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a way to try it.
Rating: 2 for two players.
Marble Madness (Eastridge Technology/Mindscape)
A port of the 1984 arcade game. It’s essentially the original Super Monkey Ball, but has you playing from a top-down isometric perspective instead of using a normal third person camera. It also has fall damage. The Game Boy game is shockingly successful at converting the graphics and sound to this more limited hardware, and while it looks a bit rough in screenshots, it’s very playable in motion.
For the first level or two, anyway. After that, it tries to get too fancy with the level design and it’s almost impossible to tell how things are meant to line up in space, which is a problem when you’re supposed to make jumps. Reviewers were impressed by the graphics and sound, but often docked it heavily for only having five levels.
Rating: 2
Mickey’s Dangerous Chase (Now Production/Capcom)
This released in Japan as just Mickey’s Chase, apparently without danger. It’s a very standard character platformer. The graphics are actually much better than they look on the Wikipedia article because the screenshot there is at an absurd aspect ratio, but they’re still nothing special. The music is too ambitious for its own good and comes off as a cacophony.
Critics averaged a 65% and mostly came in close to that. Some said it was too hard for younger players while other said it only got interesting towards the end, but most seemed agreed that it wasn’t anything too special. Despite that, it sold well enough to get a Player’s Choice release in 1997.
The cover of the box had a huge corner banner declaring that you could get a huge Mickey Mouse hip pack and $10 off the Disney Channel, which would be a whopping $24.59 in 2026 dollars. Alas, the back of the box reveals that you only get the hip pack by purchasing two of Capcom’s Disney games and that the discount is only for new subscribers. Devious.
Rating: 1
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