Beat Every Game Boy Game - 2023

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Alright, Primal Rage is done

I don't have much experience with this game on any system. Maybe played it in the arcade once or twice, so I really have no clue how this port compares to others, but I did not enjoy this game. I didn't have the manual, but did find an ebay listing that had pages scanned so I could learn the one listed special move that way. (I don't allow myself to use information that isn't in the manual, so I didn't want to risk checking gamefaqs for a moves list and have it tell me things that the manual doesn't include). That ended up helping because the CPU can spam the crap out of their projectile special moves. I had to cheese things and do my best to stay alive. Then the mega punch for blizzard (the manual evidently doesn't show you how to do his freezing move?) was a good spam option for me sometimes. It's a short adventure and the sprites are not great. The environments are fine but there are only 6 stages. I mean, thankfully that's all there is. The stupid gauntlet at the end was a terrible surprise, but at least the ending was lackluster.

I also got a little bit of learning done on Home Alone and I think I'll get that done next week. I played up to the boss on level 3 but didn't get a hit on it. With that knowledge and 3 continues given, I might beat it when I play next.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Home Alone is done

This was a little better than expected, but overall a tedious adventure. The levels are split between two parts. First is collection, where you go through one of the 4 wings of Kevin's house and grabbing expensive stuff before the bad guys do. Once you have enough, you get a key to one of the 4 basements and need to navigate creatures to get to the bosses.  Each level has more rooms, more bad guys and more things to collect, but ammo carries over. The last level sees you collect 70 items (you can hold 9 at a time before depositing) which doubles the length of the rest of the game. I found level 3 to be the toughest and it took a few tries to understand the basement part. Really none of the collection areas are all that hard as extra lives are pretty easy to get.  The final boss area was incredibly easy.  The music loops are a bit grating and too repetitive and I do wish there was an option to actively place my own traps instead of leading people to spots or shooting them with weapons.  Still, it was pretty fun overall.

I also found a glitch that ended up softlocking me.  In the attic in level 3, you can jump over the stairs and leads you right into the level 4 where you can collect animals.  Depositing those gives you credit on level 3, but if you pass the boss and then go to level 4, those items are still gone.  Maybe there's a possibility you can skip a boss, but I always died before reaching the basement door to test that. Dying puts you back into the level 3 floorplan.

I'll be working on Cliffhanger tonight and if it's as short & easy as it sounds from looking up times, then I'll be working on Boggle Plus as well.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Cliffhanger is done

I haven't seen the movie, but there's quite a bit of story and apparently it's relatively faithful, even if written like a children's book. This is not a very good game. It took me about 30 minutes to get through all parts of the first level as I learned the jumping mechanics and quirks. Jumping while not running, you can control your guy mid-air. With the run jump, you cannot.  Hit boxes are pretty wonky which occasionally caused problems with minor enemies who somehow got hit priority over me. Weapons don't stack, so if you have a gun with 5 bullets left and grab a single-use knife, that gun is gone forever. Thankfully a lot of the enemies can be straight-up skipped. The health bar is generous and resets with each new section of the level and most of the bosses pose no problem. I couldn't figure out the strategy for the level 4 boss, though and got lucky trading hits.  The music is better than what we got in Home Alone and the cut scene graphics are good enough, while in game sprites are average with decent backgrounds.  I had trouble with just a few key frustrating areas, but having 3 continues and short levels kept the true rage at bay.

I did not start Boggle Plus like I hoped, so I'll work on that tonight. The win condition says to beat the 4 top CPU players. Does the game tell you which are the hardest? The manual gives descriptions of their playstyle, but doesn't specifically say if they are easy, medium or hard. @Splain, you've beaten this one before, right?

[Splain | 2,569]

9 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

I did not start Boggle Plus like I hoped, so I'll work on that tonight. The win condition says to beat the 4 top CPU players. Does the game tell you which are the hardest? The manual gives descriptions of their playstyle, but doesn't specifically say if they are easy, medium or hard. @Splain, you've beaten this one before, right?

It's a little odd, but when selecting opponents, you can switch between the Top Four or the Bottom Four. It's confusing because when you're viewing the Top Four, the side of the screen says Bottom Four with an arrow pointing right. So just make sure you're looking at the Top Four (so that the thing says Bottom Four, lol) and choose all of those opponents. Monopoly uses this same menu, and based on the opponent descriptions for both Boggle and Monopoly, the Top opponents seem to be "better" at the game than the Bottom ones. I've never actually tested it though, I guess.

My Analogue Pocket finally arrived, so I've been playing GB games again. I'm determined to finally bag Jungle Strike. I don't know why they made the first mission of the first level so stinking hard. I either barely survive with 1 life and half my armor left, or I die trying. Why aren't there any armor refills on the first level??

[Floating Platforms | 716]

3 hours ago, Splain said:

It's a little odd, but when selecting opponents, you can switch between the Top Four or the Bottom Four. It's confusing because when you're viewing the Top Four, the side of the screen says Bottom Four with an arrow pointing right. So just make sure you're looking at the Top Four (so that the thing says Bottom Four, lol) and choose all of those opponents. Monopoly uses this same menu, and based on the opponent descriptions for both Boggle and Monopoly, the Top opponents seem to be "better" at the game than the Bottom ones. I've never actually tested it though, I guess.

Thanks! Once I got in the game, that's what I saw and went with.  The manual indicates that one of the guys in the top 4 is not so great and that one of the people in the "bottom 4" is pretty good, so that's what threw me off.  Charles is the one to watch out for and I honestly don't know a legit strategy to win with my vocabulary and my inability to play the game well.

I noticed that boards do repeat on subsequent tries of the tournament, so my tactic may be to map out what words Charles gets points on and what ones I get points on and basically squeak out a win that way.  The dictionary is so strange. So many actual words I put in that aren't in there. The one that bugged me the most was one where I put soiree and soirees, but yeah...not in their dictionary. But Hereof and hereto and xray as one word count? Dumb.

[Splain | 2,569]

I finished Jungle Strike. This one has been on my list for a long time. I'm tempted to write a FAQ for it because I couldn't find anything helpful anywhere online. At the very least, here's a map I made for the very last level, there are some missions where your intel "doesn't know" the location of ten tanks and two generals you have to find and destroy/capture, so the only thing you can do is comb the entire level to look for them, note their locations, run out of fuel and die, and try the level again with the map. Red dots are the tanks, blue dots are the generals. All the other mission objectives are shown on the map.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Interesting. The old trial and error method.  I've been wanting to play this for a while too since Desert Strike seems so long ago and it was a blast.  It's been picked a few times in my viewer polls, but never won the raffle. Are you moving right into Urban Strike next?

[Splain | 2,569]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

Interesting. The old trial and error method.  I've been wanting to play this for a while too since Desert Strike seems so long ago and it was a blast.  It's been picked a few times in my viewer polls, but never won the raffle. Are you moving right into Urban Strike next?

I played Desert and Urban Strike a couple years back, and hit a wall with Jungle Strike. Honestly though, Jungle was probably the most fun, barring that first mission of the first level. I liked the missions where you pilot other vehicles. I remember Desert Strike not having very many levels? Not sure if I'm remembering right. Then Urban Strike was kinda janky but still fun. Jungle was the most polished, except that the difficulty is all over the place.

Tips for posterity:

Dropping people (either rescued or captured) off at a landing site fills your armor by 100 points per person. This can be useful in levels where enemies are brutal and armor refills are sparse. (Just not level 1, unfortunately) Some missions are completed right when you pick them up, but you can still go drop them off for the armor.

There are more goodies (fuel, ammo, 1ups) than the map shows. You kinda learn what you're allowed to shoot and destroy in each level, that might have a powerup inside.

It's a resource management game, and there's a password after every level, so use your lives strategically. If you're low on ammo, fuel, and armor, sometimes it's best to just die and reappear with everything full.

If I remember right, these all apply to all of the Strike games.

Next up I'll probably try to beat some of those European titles that haven't been cleared.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

3 hours ago, Splain said:

I remember Desert Strike not having very many levels? Not sure if I'm remembering right.

Yeah, I think it was 4 levels, but most had multiple missions within it.  I remember the revelation of being able to destroy some buildings for health, ammo, & armor. Figuring out the right route ended up being a lot of fun.  You're making me look forward to Jungle Strike even more.  Hopefully next year (unless it wins the pending raffle)!

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Boggle Plus is done

50 point regular Boggle tournament against the 3 hard CPUs. This took over 10 hours because Charles is a cheating dictionary that steals every word possible and uses words no one has heard of.  Rejecting unrecognized words was painful sometimes.  I had to toss out "nope" "denting" (but dentin is allowed...) "nanny" "soiree" "quad" and a few others that were definitely words. All while the computer got to play stuff like "Ait" and "ret" and "xray".  On my first night of trying I noticed some repeating boards. To win, I had to take notes and list what Charles scored on and also list the words that I scored on so that if/when that board came up again, I could prevent him from gaining points while still getting my points.  I also learned that when the boards repeat, they do so in the same sequence. Still, there were so many configurations that it took 20 pages of notes that had 3-4 boards on each before I finally got a set of repeats early enough in the game to finally win. This game felt like a homework assignment that never ended. The solo modes were fun, though.

Next up I'm playing Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Two more down.  Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues

The gameplay in this pseudo-sequel is much different from Jurassic Park 1. That was a top down adventure-like game. This is a horizontal platformer with some maze-y stages and a couple auto-scrollers. Here you only have three weapons. The gun or grenade on land and the spear in water. I only used the grenade on two boss encounters to cheese the hell out of them. The levels are fun and pretty quick. Health replenishments are frequent enough to never truly feel like you're in danger, but I did game over once as I learned the T-Rex chases and some of the unique patterns of the different boss dinos.  The music is quite fun and the graphics look impressive. I wish there was a tad more depth to the gameplay with different weapons or power ups but that would also require more grunt enemies that posed a challenge.  It's really easy to run and gun and kill them all on your way to the next collectible needed to pass the level, so the base gun doesn't "need" improving other than to stave off boredom. I think I like the original game slightly better but this was still a good time.

After that, I had a little bit of time so I started and ended up finishing Revenge of the Gator in 30 minutes.

Some of the other GB challengers have taken multiple hours to beat this, but that might have been them trying to see all the bonus stages or imposing some other goal. It took a couple games to get a hang of the absolutely terrible pinball physics in this game, but after 10 minutes, I got a handle on how to manage the delayed inputs and work with the awkward scene transitions in order to keep the ball in play. I could never really aim for anything sucessfully, or hold the ball with the flipper even, but keeping it bouncing eventually was enough to reach the high score of 500,000 points.  I don't think I beat a bonus stage and I didn't even clear out all the stuff on the top-most board of the three screen high layout. So, there's more that can be seen content wise, but no real extra goal to go after.  It's cute in its presentation but lacking in depth and in fun.

I'll be starting up Shanghai next and going for all 6 of the end screens that the manual mentions. I think that will happen in one night, so I might start Bases Loaded very shortly too.

The next 3 after that (for soft dibs) are: Batman: Return of the Joker,  Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics & Road Rash. Then it's my milestone game Donkey Kong Land which has been covered here already.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Yesterday, Golf was picked for me as a future game.  I see the win conditions say to get par or under on both courses, rather than just one. Are there different endings for each? Since we don't typically require 100%, I'm interested to know why both courses are required in this case.

[Splain | 2,569]

34 minutes ago, Floating Platforms said:

Yesterday, Golf was picked for me as a future game.  I see the win conditions say to get par or under on both courses, rather than just one. Are there different endings for each? Since we don't typically require 100%, I'm interested to know why both courses are required in this case.

Hmm. My best guess is that someone, at some point, told me that both should be required, lol. Looks like there's a Congratulations screen when you top the leaderboard on either one, (which looks to require a better-than-par game) so maybe the requirement should be to do that instead. What are your thoughts?

[Floating Platforms | 716]

15 minutes ago, Splain said:

Hmm. My best guess is that someone, at some point, told me that both should be required, lol. Looks like there's a Congratulations screen when you top the leaderboard on either one, (which looks to require a better-than-par game) so maybe the requirement should be to do that instead. What are your thoughts?

Ah, ok. I've never touched the game. I know the NES "Golf" has a reputation and it's tough to get under par there.  If the ending is the same for both courses, then it does make more sense to only get one by topping the leaderboard.  I'm certainly open to other people's thoughts too if they have experience.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Shanghai is done

So... @Splain, I have some possibly new info.  I try to beat every game as comprehensively as possible, so for this one I saw that the manual mentioned 6 different screens. I wanted to see them all. I figured, it would be RNG to find them, but after a couple play sessions, it seemed like that was not the case. The screens were coming in the same order, but I wasn't getting the 6th after winning 7 or 8 boards a day. I figured I either needed to win x in a row, or x total and I believe the answer is 10 games total in a single play session, because after I beat game 10 I got that 6th image above for the first time (which the game says means Gratitude) followed by....

Credits!  The manual doesn't tell you but they are there.  So, we probably need to adjust the win condition for this to say win 10 games in a single playthrough to see credits or something like that.

The game itself is fun, but far too limited. I was obsessed with Shanghai/Mahjong Solitaire back on Yahoo Games, but that offered multiple different board layouts and limited shuffles. This has one single layout type and zero shuffle ability.  You can choose any three letter combo for a unique board, which is nice and I chanced into a random easter egg one (REV turned all the tiles upside down). It would have been great if certain letter combos gave a different layout. I honestly don't know if all the boards are beatable, but if I was younger with fewer games I probably would have tried to keep track and beat everything. It's a shame that original GB didn't get a better Shanghai game in the US, because this feels very low effort and isn't a great introduction to the game.

Next I'm starting Bases Loaded. Depending on how many games are in the "tournament," I might get that done tonight

Edited September 20, 2023 by Floating Platforms

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Bases Loaded is a lot tougher than expected. Reaction times are brutal. The fielding takes quite a bit of getting used to and doesn't work as expected (but still better than Ken Griffey Jr.). I'm not sure how many games are in the tournament, but I'm assuming 5 (rookie, 1A, AA, AAA, Pro - but maybe there's another level after that like All-Star, or maybe it doesn't follow the minor league levels?). Rookie I can beat. Next is 1A and the best I did was tie them. Tying the score after 9 innings doesn't take you to the 10th inning. Oh no. It ends the game and forces you to play the entire 9 innings again....how stupid.  If I can figure out how to get pitching to work in my favor, I will be in good shape, but they never swing at anything even slightly outside of the zone and almost never take strikes looking, so I have to field everything which is a big issue currently.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Bases Loaded is done

This took some time and effort. There are a total of 5 games in the tournament and even the second (1A) is pretty hard to score runs on. I had to play them twice in my winning run because I tied them the first time and for some stupid reason, the game doesn't do extra innings on ties, it forces a full replay of 9 innings. There are two main things I learned to help me out. When batting, hit select and that will bring up a cursor that allows you to, in theory, aim your hits. It's not incredibly effective, but I think it did help some.  I also had a really hard time with the very quick reactions you need to identify the pitch, so my strategy was to wear out the pitchers by taking everything until I either had 3 balls or 2 strikes. Then I would swing shortly after release and hope for the best.  When pitching, it seems like everyone has 1 specific sweet spot that will allow you to get strikes looking. But it's extremely specific, so it took me 7 hours of playing before thinking I could strike anyone out. If you miss your spot one way (or pick the wrong direction to pitch), they will hit it. If you miss the other way, it will be a ball. The difference is pixels. It's a cruel and unforgiving baseball game, but still fun and better than a few others I've played so far. Extra Bases is still better but this might be better than the launch title Baseball.

Next up is Batman: Return of the Joker.

[MegaMan52 | 2,445]

Beat Mickey's Chase.

So it's pretty similar to Super Mario Bros. 2, M.C. Kids, and, of course, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers in that you throw blocks at enemies. The game is pretty easy until Stage 5-1, then it gets a little tough. However, the battle with Pete is pretty simple once you know the pattern. You just jump on the block, then jump over three balls, move underneath him to the right (don't jump), wait for him to jump to the left, grab a block, turn right, throw it at him, and repeat until he's defeated. Alternatively, you could try ducking instead of jumping but it doesn't always work (you can still sometimes get hit when ducking).

Edited October 1, 2023 by MegaMan52

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Batman: Return of the Joker is done

Trash. Batman is such a powerless weenie in this. He controls like a wet fish, but he himself cannot get wet even a teensy bit or else he'll take more damage than he would from enemies and get knocked off his ass.  His punches do not consistently land and you need to be close enough to the enemy to hit them, which means you're usually trading hit points.  Batman cannot jump to save his life. Two steps at a time...that's a huge struggle. He also can't fit into gaps that are his height, unless you are pixel perfect on your timing and placement. His grappling hook does not always work. You can be right at the top of the screen, obviously close enough for it to latch on, and instead you punch the air and fall down, likely to your doom.  The batarangs are essentially useless. The manual says that they will not be used if you're close to an enemy. That's wrong. They always are thrown. It also says to save them for the bosses.  Pointless, except for the third level (but even then, it's not really needed when you learn the pattern). The bosses will deflect them, they will not get hurt by them and it may change their pattern so much that you actually can't get good hits in.  The hit boxes on the bosses is incredibly questionable. The Joker fight was a massive, massive pain for me. It took tons of tries to sort of figure out a good strategy for the first phase. The second phase was really just a crap shoot where I hoped to have enough health and stay away from his relentless attack options and the magnet to get more hits. The graphics were fine. The music was decent. The gameplay was horrendous and I spent most of my time fighting the unnecessary and unintentional wall jumping that happened far, far too frequently.

Next up, I'll be trying Tom & Jerry: Frantic Antics, but that's waiting a bit because A) my cart was freezing, so I might have to buy another; and B) a community challenge was unlocked forcing me to play Penguin Wars for the next 3 streams to try to beat all 40 matches without stage select. This will be pain.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Well, I did my three nights of Penguin Wars and I'm still no closer to really getting a solid strategy in place. Most of the time I still failed somewhere between game 17-21. My PB is now 26 of 40 games/matches.  I'll revisit this from time to time, but I'm done for now.

Tonight, I was free to get back to other things. With a working copy in my hands, Tom & Jerry: Frantic Antics is now done

I do not understand the plot of this game. There is a lot that the game dialogue is clearly leaving out and the manual is not much help either. Tom & Jerry's house gets destroyed, then they have to help this random girl by going into another house and stealing stuff while sentient toys attack you and then you go to a cabin that's "on fire" but it's actually a vertically auto-scrolling level, so you're actually sinking and you escape by getting to the roof when you stop moving and do the final boss fight on top of what is supposed to be a burning building all so you can "rescue" this guy who we never actually hear about in the game as far as I remember.  It's weird.  The gameplay is super simplistic and the levels are constructed in a way that most of the time you'll be fine with health pick-ups and get through a good chunk of the game on your first try. There were 3 sort of tricky levels. The horizontal scrolling level with the dog, the vertical scrolling last level, and the one before that where you have spring shoes as it doesn't tell you how to use them and the manual is wrong. It took some experimenting, but once I got it down it was fine.  The real struggles in the level are with the slippery movements. It's easy to overshoot jumps or fall of the edges or over-correct in the wrong direction. That caused most of my damage and deaths. If it weren't for that, this would be an extremely simple game. Instead it's just a simple game.

After that was done, I also started Road Rash and I have 2 wins in the 2nd level so far. I might not finish it this week, but hopefully Monday.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

Road Rash is done

I don't have much experience with Road Rash, but I have played a tiny bit of the Sega CD version. This is lacking the licensed rock music, but that's alright because the songs in this are pretty dang good.  The backdrops of each track looked nice, as did the end screens.  Gameplay wise, it's quite simplistic and the hardest thing to get used to was how to handle those sharp turns. I don't think there's a break button since B punches. Letting go of A allows you to slow down, but sometimes it wasn't enough to avoid the obstacles on the sides, even with the best bike.  Getting tossed in the air didn't help either. I don't think the obstacle challenges ramped up as the 5 levels went on, but the opponent's speed did.  There were definitely some dumb RNG moments that ruined a few races, but only level 4 gave me any real trouble. 

This may end up being my last contribution for the year.  Next up I have game #175 - Donkey Kong Land, which has already been done for this year. After that, I'm going to finally be starting my CDi challenge and have 8 games lined up for that. Then I'll come back to Game Boy for another 25 games, etc. If I do get back to GB this year, I'll be starting Golf, but we'll see how long some of these disc based games are first.

[Splain | 2,569]

If nobody's opposed, I'm going to turn this thread into a forever Beat Every Game Boy Game and stop resetting it. I'll keep everything that has been done this year, so it'll be Every Game, retroactively starting January 2023. Thoughts?

[Gloves | 11,777]

Just now, Splain said:

If nobody's opposed, I'm going to turn this thread into a forever Beat Every Game Boy Game and stop resetting it. I'll keep everything that has been done this year, so it'll be Every Game, retroactively starting January 2023. Thoughts?

Sounds fine to meeeeeeeeee.

[Floating Platforms | 716]

3 hours ago, Splain said:

If nobody's opposed, I'm going to turn this thread into a forever Beat Every Game Boy Game and stop resetting it. I'll keep everything that has been done this year, so it'll be Every Game, retroactively starting January 2023. Thoughts?

It's a sad thought, but it does seem to make sense. If we broke the 200 game mark again, then it might be worth keeping as a yearly reset as it seems like some people still go after the high points or never finished titles.  The non-yearly threads tend to usually be very, very slow burns or afterthoughts.  But, I think this year was the lowest turnout in several years and I even got sidetracked at the end by my secondary challenge and then a dog surgery. I'll still plan to be good for 30-40 games each year, hopefully.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

On 12/25/2023 at 12:33 AM, Floating Platforms said:

The non-yearly threads tend to usually be very, very slow burns or afterthoughts.

I think that's because the yearly threads, especially the NES completions thread, are sort of the main attraction and just have the most people really invested in it. The people in the N64 thread were very dedicated this year and are very close to beating the library, but even that is most likely not going to happen every year from now on. That's usually the problem with spreading your ressources too thin.

Or maybe beating an entire library is a miracle to begin with and there's no way, that it's going to happen regularly.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Gaia Gensouki