April 17-24, 1992, only saw three new releases, but I’ve once again missed a game from earlier, so we have four for today.
Batman: Return of the Joker (Sunsoft) (March 28th)
The game I missed from last month was Sunsoft’s second Batman game for Game Boy. This one features a much more recognizable Batman sprite and has him use punches instead of a gun. Platforming is based on doing wall jumps like in Ninja Gaiden rather than just jumping on top of things like the first game. The background graphics are largely the same as they were before, but there’s some fun new music.
Critics averaged 75%. Most were pretty close to that, but Germany’s ASM came in with a 33% score that’s nearly 40 points below anyone else tracked on MobyGames. Per Google Translate, they apparently felt it was too similar to the last game to be worth playing. That’s a bit of an odd take when it’s changed to be a melee game.
Return of the Joker would be reused as a subtitle for Batman Beyond eight years later in a game that some consider one of the worst ever made.
Rating: 2. A point for the graphics.
DX Bakenou Z (Graphic Research/Asmik) (April 17th)
It’s another horse racing predictor. As much as it seems like something this obviously useless could not have sold any copies, it must have, because this isn’t the last one. There’s really nothing to say about a horse racing predictor that is 34 years out of date, though.
Rating: Not a game
Hono no Tokyuji: Dodge Danpei (Hudson) (April 24th)
A manga license, although this was presumably tied to the anime adaptation that was airing concurrently. Like the Captain Tsubasa game we saw recently, it’s too interested in showing you its great character art to be very playable. You’re treated to a fancy animation every time the ball gets near anyone, and while those do look amazing considering this is a Game Boy game, they happen so often that it’s almost impossible to actually do anything. It’s also very unintuitive to play, so you’d have needed the manual to get anywhere if you were determined to play for some reason.
Western sources largely ignore this version among the many ports it received. It doesn’t seem like they missed much if the awful 17/40 score from Famitsu is anything to go by. Atwiki also has a post that doesn’t give the game any classification, but it’s clearly not a positive review. It only gets credit for the atmosphere and music against a slew of complaints about game feel and balance.
Rating: 1
Kirby’s Dream Land (HAL/Nintendo) (April 24th)
The first “killer app” for the Game Boy in the West for quite some time. Kirby obviously needs no introduction and most of what people love about the series is here, although that does not include copy abilities. Still, it’s a contender for the best music on Game Boy, looks great, plays great, and managed a very impressive 5 million copies sold.
Critics were all over the place. I don’t consider the MobyGames average very meaningful on this one, because they’ve mixed in numerous modern reviews as well as sources like Famitsu that operate on a different scale, but they track a 74% average. Most complaints were down to the length and lack of challenge, which is hard to argue with for an easy game that’s under an hour long. In that sense, it’s aged fantastically, because neither is much of a point against when you can now play it for free from NSO. Japanese scores were also a bit divided, with Famitsu giving a 22/40, Family Computer a much better 23.3/30, and new challenger HiPPN Super! a 7/10. Atwiki gives it a good game rating despite noting some difficulties with the movement and a possible softlock.
Rating: 5. It’s perfectly fair that people didn’t like paying full price for this back in the day, but I played through it on Switch a few years ago and had a blast.
Leave a Reply