September 21 1990 has the best music of any batch of Game Boy games so far, which is entirely thanks to one game.
Boulder Dash (Beam Software/Victor)
A port of a game originally released for Atari computers in 1984. It was ported to basically everything except toasters in the 1980s and kept going strong for a while in the 90s, seeing critical success on most platforms. The Game Boy was no exception. Although some critics cited problems with blurring most scores were still 80% and above.
The game is a sort of action-puzzle hybrid where you’re trying to dig through a level in order to collect diamonds and not be blown up by monsters or killed by rocks you dislodged. I’m sick to death of maze games already, but clearly it was fun then.
Rating: 1. If you want to play this, the monochrome and blurry GB version is pretty clearly one of the worst ways to do it today.
DuckTales (Capcom)
My reference to the best music so far was, of course, to this game’s Moon theme. That masterpiece translated than the one Youtube upload of it would have you believe, but only if you stand still. Any other sound effect playing will make the BGM cut out in the worst way possible. Despite that, the Game Boy version’s average score was only a little lower than NES, so it was an overall highly successful port.
Oddly, the game was released as DuckTales in Japan despite the NES original using a different name to match the cartoon. The Game Boy version seems almost entirely forgotten there, with what little coverage exists on the game at all focusing on the NES version and GB coverage limited to a couple of brief atwiki posts.
Rating: 2. It gets a point for the music, but you should probably not play this version.
Lunar Lander (Pack-In Video)
This is listed as a port of the Atari arcade classic in a lot of places, but it’s more than that. In addition to the familiar mode about actually landing the lunar module, it also features a new launch sequence and a surface exploration mini game. The launch sequence is basically just about pressing A pretty often to keep your compressor bar high and then quickly pressing whatever D-pad direction flashes, but it at least looks cool for a Game Boy game. The core mode is as fun as ever. Alas, the surface gameplay is trash. You’re meant to find a few pieces of metal on the moon before a ridiculously long timer runs out, but you have the worst metal detector ever and it goes off if you’re within about seven lightyears of your target. Any holes you dig can block your way unless you undig them, and you can also find flowers that give you more air but permanently block your way. It becomes a nightmare of just digging randomly everywhere in the huge areas the detector beeps in until you get lucky or die. There are also robots who can bump into you, for some reason, but they are generally not a threat.
I did find a complete atwiki playthrough, but it’s focused on translating the game rather than reviewing it. And yes, this game needed translation despite being a Japanese exclusive – it’s entirely in English, including some long blocks of advanced text that go by very quickly. Despite that, everyone credited on it is Japanese.
Rating: 1. The first two modes would have been mind-blowing as a kid, but the surface gameplay is so bad that it’s impossible to recommend this.
Side Pocket (Data East)
There’s not much to say about this one that you can’t tell from one screenshot. It’s kind of clever that it turns the balls into numbers when you’re taking your shot, and it’s nice that it had Link Cable multiplayer. It also has extremely repetitive music. I find pool very boring and only played it for about thirty seconds.
Reviews were notably lower on the Game Boy than on consoles, but still weren’t terrible.
Rating: 1.
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