Beat Every Game Boy Game - 2023

[koifish | 556]

1 hour ago, MegaMan52 said:

Beat The Jungle Book on normal difficulty. Played it on the Switch in Disney Classic Games Collection.

This was the first game that I ever owned for myself. It was a birthday gift along with a game boy pocket. Looking back, I wonder if this game was the beginning of my hatred of disney. It's either this or the movie Hercules. Who puts the "glad" in "gladiator"? Me when I got to leave the theatre.

[bronzeshield | 293]

What Game Boy manuals haven't been scanned? I have about 100, could see if I have any of the ones needed. They can indeed be quite tough to find, especially sports games.

Edited June 11, 2023 by bronzeshield

[Floating Platforms | 716]

I periodically try to find things on the internet that might have watermarks, but here is the project that I was talking about that's looking for clean first-hand sourced scans - https://www.sprintinglegs.com/gbdb/manuals/

Sadly there's no sorting of the columns, but there is a checkbox at the top to see all the ones that do have manuals. Otherwise, it's unfortunately a matter of searching each individually.

Not sure if this link will work, but here's a view-only look at my drive folder with all the manuals I've been able to find - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HMCJOrdL0-RmAbCLMaDpVFp3_eQkOGl2?usp=sharing

Edited June 11, 2023 by Floating Platforms

[koifish | 556]

On 6/11/2023 at 8:06 AM, bronzeshield said:

What Game Boy manuals haven't been scanned? I have about 100, could see if I have any of the ones needed. They can indeed be quite tough to find, especially sports games.

I don't think that I've seen a scan for Nobunaga's Ambition or for Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball. That's why I went and bought my own manuals for those two.

Incidentally, I never did make more progress in Big Hurt. I should go back to that.

[bronzeshield | 293]

29 minutes ago, koifish said:

I don't think that I've seen a scan for Nobunaga's Ambition or for Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball. That's why I went and bought my own manuals for those two.

Incidentally, I never did make more progress in Big Hurt. I should go back to that.

I've got Nobunaga -- I think it's the only monochrome GB game I own CIB, actually! -- but I see that Floating Platforms's archive also has it. That comes as a relief, since I keep forgetting that my scanner doesn't work with my new OS!

Edited June 12, 2023 by bronzeshield

[Floating Platforms | 716]

George Foreman's KO Boxing is done

Garbage. Imagine Mike Tyson's Punch-Out but with none of the elements that make that game good. No fun character design. Patterns that have no visual queues, thus requiring you to take a lot of damage and lose in order to start to figure them out. Also patterns that might change if you try to take advantage of openings you thought you saw but were wrong. Split second reactions with controls that are slow and clunky. Super punches that rarely do anything more than normal damage unless you find the magical sweet spot and sometimes you still need multiple in a row to make a difference. Opponents that will always get up on the same count every time you knock them down, no matter how they are hit.  This is forcing you to basically TKO (4 knock downs across all rounds) or last until a judges decision. Punches that will hit you if you are actively dodging because the game wants you to get hit sometimes. Blocking that does nothing to reduce or prevent damage. Passwords that don't work (as I found out yesterday since the pw they gave for my 2nd title win was evidently just wrong and I had to do it again). The positives: I miraculously won several judges decisions even though I was clearly losing overall (conversely, I lost a few decisions when I definitely did better, so who knows how that actually works). Only 9 fighters and none of them repeat? It's not the worst sports game I've had to play? Honestly there's not much good about this one.

Next up is what I hope is a good game, or at least a low-stress one - Wheel of Fortune

[Splain | 2,569]

At one point I considered Wheel of Fortune to be The Worst Game on GB. The text entry system, which is the same as on Jeopardy, (the 2nd-5th Worst Games) is really bad when you're on a short timer. I love word games, but WoF is so clunky, outdated, and phoned-in that I rank it below Pit Fighter. But it sounds like I need to play George Foreman!

[Floating Platforms | 716]

5 hours ago, Splain said:

At one point I considered Wheel of Fortune to be The Worst Game on GB.

well that bodes well for me. I'm still hoping for a relatively stress free playthrough of it. I'm going for all 5 prizes because here's what I have waiting for me right now:

159    Wheel of Fortune
160    Simpsons: Bart vs. The Juggernauts, The
161    Joshua: The Battle of Jericho (Doesn't count for this thread and will likely take me 50+ hours)
162    Battletoads
163    Little Mermaid, The - finally starting to break away from troll picks
164    Primal Rage
165    Home Alone

I do own Pit-Fighter now but Primal Rage won the vote, so I don't have to worry about it for a bit longer. I ended up giving George Foreman a 2/10. Out of 158 games, 8 of them have that ranking now. My worst of the worst are the 3 that have earned a 1 for being completely broken messes: NBA Live 96, WWF War Zone, FIFA International Soccer.

[bronzeshield | 293]

8 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

160    Simpsons: Bart vs. The Juggernauts, The

Fortunately, Bart vs. the Juggernauts isn't that bad. Once you figure out how the game works, it's not difficult to beat --I think both times I cleared it, it took one day of practice and then I beat it the next time I picked it up.

(Don't get me wrong, it's not a great game, but it's not unplayable jank either.)

Edited June 14, 2023 by bronzeshield

[Matt 4120 | 240]

I have been lurking for a while, but I have been able to finish these 2 off:

Arcade Classic No. 3: Galaga / Galaxian. Played pretty poor games for both, but I am lazy and don't feel like doing it again lol.

Kirby's Star Stacker: an enjoyable but sometimes frustrating puzzle game. This took about around 2-3 weeks overall.

I tried looking for a good requirement for Game Boy Gallery, but it doesn't seem to work on a star system like Game and Watch Gallery.  Retro Achievements has points requirements but nothing consistent. 

I am still on track to complete Mario's Picross. WWF Superstars and Game and Watch Gallery are after that.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

1 hour ago, bronzeshield said:

Fortunately, Bart vs. the Juggernauts isn't that bad. Once you figure out how the game works, it's not difficult to beat --I think both times I cleared it, it took one day of practice and then I beat it the next time I picked it up.

It's one of those games that's built a bit of a reputation. I think the longest time I have recorded from other challengers is 11 hours, which means it will likely be 3 sessions for me. I know it's one of those games where you have to start from scratch each time you lose and replaying those earlier games over and over just for the opportunity to learn or re-try later levels is going to be the truly annoying part. I also know you can get through all of the games/events and still not win. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the other Simpson's games in my mind.

[MegaMan52 | 2,445]

Beat Donkey Kong Land 3. Got all of the DK Coins and Bonus Coins.

Edited June 15, 2023 by MegaMan52

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Wheel of Fortune is done

Since you can pick your prize before the bonus round, I decided to beat it "100%" and win all 5 prizes.  That took quite some time because the game has the old school rules where you don't get any freebie letters at the end. If you pick the wrong stuff, there likely aren't enough clues to guess. The bonus puzzles aren't separate from the normal puzzles either (I got 3 repeats I saw in normal rounds over 5 hours but only recognized 2).  The time limit on the bonus round is the only thing that makes this game hard in my opinion as it is extremely short and if you don't know the answer immediately, you will probably run out of time as you try to input something. Oh, and a lot of the puzzle solutions are based on things from the 1920s-1960s. For a kids game released in the 90s. I always played against the computer and half the time they were picking X, Z, and other nonsense. They only solved one actual puzzle in the entire time I played.  There was one other problem I encountered twice. When solving, I would select a letter, but the board displayed something else. For instance, I picked "E" while trying to solve and the game filled in "F" even though that was off the board already. Both times this was on a normal round and the CPU is dumb so it only wasted time, but strange that it happened twice. Anyway, I'm rich now, so I'm going to hitch my sailboat up to the cruise ship on my way to Hawaii and spend $25,000 on who knows what and then come back and show off my Porsche. Later, suckers

Next week, I will be the sucker playing Bart Vs. the Juggernauts and openly wondering why they didn't also port American Gladiators to the Game Boy.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Floating Platforms

[MegaMan52 | 2,445]

Beat Mega Man III. The soundtrack sounds really good with a Sound Bar. If you have a GameCube and Game Boy Player, I recommend connecting the console to a Sound Bar. You might be surprised by how good some Original, Color, and Advance Game Boy games sound (Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is another example).

Edited June 16, 2023 by MegaMan52

[Drunktendo64 | 18]

Arcade Classic No. 2 - Millipede complete. 

[MegaMan52 | 2,445]

Beat Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break. Short and sweet.

Once again, I'd like to point out that Game Boy games sound surprisingly good with a Sound Bar. and I've heard them with a Sound Bar for over a decade now. I turned my TV off but am leaving the game and Sound Bar on a little longer because I want to keep listening to the credits music.

Edited June 20, 2023 by MegaMan52

[Splain | 2,569]

Here's what it says in the manual for Pyramids of Ra. No mention of what the prize actually is, lol:

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Awww man, I could of had a certificate of completion at least.

[Splain | 2,569]

14 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

Awww man, I could of had a certificate of completion at least.

It says "All correct entries." Send in the card!

[Floating Platforms | 716]

4 hours ago, Splain said:

It says "All correct entries." Send in the card!

I just tried to search the address to see who might have the PO box and I don't think it exists anymore. I think they switched to a different system.  With my luck they would have just sent me a live scarab to deal with.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

The Simpsons: Bart vs the Juggernauts is done

I was expecting this to be much worse, but honestly this was a mostly enjoyable game. It had the potential to be my new favorite Simpsons game on Game Boy, but there was one event that ruined it all.  The Moe's Tavern shoving thing is a broken mess where my button presses would not recognize, my attacks would push me back farther than my opponent, they constantly recovered from the brink of falling and all kinds of other terrible things happened. After a lot of error and some trial I finally found a strategy that worked well enough. The rest of the events had ways to learn what to do with consistency so you could easily improve and it ended up being a fun collection of mini games that are a little rough around the edges. Moe's event felt like a hurried afterthought and struggling with that added literal hours. That's especially true as it turns out you basically need to win every single event in order to reach the money goal at the end.  Good writing, decent enough graphics, terrible music, mediocre game.

Next up for me is one that won't count for this thread but I need to do - Joshua: The Battle of Jericho.  I think this will be better than Exodus simply because it looks like there may be passwords?!??! So I won't have to tediously re-do the last 20 hardest levels just to make a little more progress?  We'll see. After that I have Battletoads....

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Was anyone else planning to play the original Super Robot Wars (fixed typo) this year?

...Probably not. But if so, I WILL DENY YOU POINTS.

Edited July 18, 2023 by MagusSmurf

[Floating Platforms | 716]

13 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

Was anyone else planning to play the original Super Wars Wars this year?

...Probably not. But if so, I WILL DENY YOU POINTS.

At first I thought you meant Super Star Wars and I was going to say no because I've already finished the first one at some point and I'm not looking back!  But now that I've re-read and seen the screenshot, I can say no because I'm avoiding non-US games to give myself a fighting chance at finishing my challenge.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Joshua: The Battle of Jericho is done

I know this doesn't count for this thread, but it's been keeping me from doing more since it is part of my challenge.

This is the same style of game as Exodus, but more forgiving.  You have boulderdash style levels but this time there are a couple of new mechanics like the goat enemies and potential secret exists that lead to bonus points.  It also has passwords! That literally saved me 20+ hours over Exodus when I had to do levels 81-100 all in one run.
Like Exodus, the game itself is actually pretty good but while it's improved in some ways, it's worse in others. There's no background song and the storybook part only shows up once every 5 levels, instead of after every level with Moses' story. I don't understand many of the sprite choices here, either. Overall, I'd say the difficulty of the puzzles are harder, but Exodus had the hardest levels between them. Exodus also had more devious exists. Both have a good variety in puzzle type (sequence of events, speed, enemy, explosion, etc). I still think that 100 levels is too much, and that the difficulty is antithetical to the point of having a kid progress through the game to see and answer more Bible questions. But it has passwords, so I'm not complaining nearly as much this time around.

Now that this is finished, I am starting Battetoads. Then I have several quicker games lined up like Little Mermaid, so I'm hoping to add a few clears by the end of the month

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Two games finished yesterday.  First was Battletoads

This is the first Battletoads game I've ever actually tried to beat and it was probably the best place to start. While it shares a name with the NES cartridge, this is its own thing and seemingly a lot easier overall.  The stages are all incredibly short and many of the bosses are incredibly easy. I had some trouble with the first level's boss because the dash function never worked as consistently as I wanted. The rest of the mechanics were smooth.  You definitely still need to learn levels through some failure but pretty quickly you'll get to the point where 75% of the mistakes, death and damage are your fault and the other 25% are from strange hit boxes and backwards attack priorities (where you'll throw a punch first but the enemy gets a cheap shot on you anyway).  The vertical levels were the worst. Going down, they stop the scrolling in places that keeps enemies too high on the screen to hit and the tunnel doesn't fit on the horizontal, so the insta-death slimes can be very tricky. Also the rat at the end has one of the more confusing hit box set-ups I've seen. I have no clue what actually causes me to get squashed sometimes. The going up level turned out to be the last and is a tightly timed gauntlet where you dodge a bunch of stuff and stop to do mini space invaders stuff and then keep going before you die. 3 hits and you're screwed. Go to slow, you're screwed. So that's all learning the path and executing it well.  I also hated the spinning blades level as there are circular platforms and holding right at a certain spot moves you left. Of course if you're off-center, your jump will send you to death.  So yeah, it's not easy and not always fair, but it's manageable and I felt like nearly every try was new progress made.  The music and graphics are outstanding as well with plenty of character and it still has the variety of attack animations and new enemies each level. If I had more tolerance for harder games, this would get a higher rating, but if you're a fan of Battletoads in general, it's worth trying.

After that, I had just enough time in the night to start and finish The Little Mermaid, which took about 45 minutes

Here's a nice, simple, semi-relaxing game to cleanse the palate. Unlike many other Disney games, this one really emphasizes the story through several cutscenes and good still images between levels. The actual levels are maybe a little short, but dying will usually send you to the start. The only part of the adventure that gave me any trouble at all was the slow reaction time of Ariel compared to the faster fish enemies. There isn't enough time to turn around and shoot if they are close enough. A couple of tight spaces (and my aggressive play) made me game over a couple times. There are unlimited continues and as long as you make it to the boss, all should go well. The boss fights are the same concept of take bubbled fish and toss it into boss and presents them in different ways.  The last phase of Ursula looked great, but did not present any more of a challenge.  I do wish there was a bit more depth to the game, but the presentation was nice and it was fun for what it was. 

Here's the list of what's coming up next for me. I expect to get through Primal Rage before the week is out at least

Game #164    Primal Rage
165    Home Alone
166    Cliffhanger
167    Boggle Plus
168    Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues
169    Revenge of the 'Gator
170    Shanghai