Beat Every Game Boy Game - 2024 - 123/566

[Floating Platforms | 750]

Brain Drain is one of the more frustrating games I've ever played.  Few games so far have legitimately made me rage but this is now one of them.  I'm in the 130-150 stretch and what pushed me over the edge was this one level where the game will not only freeze your cursor for a couple seconds, but will also swap pieces randomly on you. So you can put something in its proper place and while you're waiting for the game to let you move again, it is swapping things once or twice and negating what you just did or making it worse. Absolutely infuriating. This game stopped being a puzzle game about 50 levels ago when it introduced these gimmicks. I'm no longer solving rotating puzzles, I am now actively fighting against the game.

I miss bowling, but I can't go back to it yet because of my challenge numbering system and the amount of progress I've made on saved videos. I need to finish this dumpster fire out first before bowling can lull me to sleep again.

[koifish | 562]

On 4/25/2024 at 8:38 AM, Floating Platforms said:

Brain Drain is one of the more frustrating games I've ever played.  Few games so far have legitimately made me rage but this is now one of them.  I'm in the 130-150 stretch and what pushed me over the edge was this one level where the game will not only freeze your cursor for a couple seconds, but will also swap pieces randomly on you. So you can put something in its proper place and while you're waiting for the game to let you move again, it is swapping things once or twice and negating what you just did or making it worse. Absolutely infuriating. This game stopped being a puzzle game about 50 levels ago when it introduced these gimmicks. I'm no longer solving rotating puzzles, I am now actively fighting against the game.

I miss bowling, but I can't go back to it yet because of my challenge numbering system and the amount of progress I've made on saved videos. I need to finish this dumpster fire out first before bowling can lull me to sleep again.

You're around the point where I gave up. Hard to believe the game still has 100 more levels to clear after that.

[Floating Platforms | 750]

On 4/29/2024 at 8:44 PM, koifish said:

You're around the point where I gave up. Hard to believe the game still has 100 more levels to clear after that.

So, I managed to get through that block and things got surprisingly easier.  I got through two more chunks within a couple hours so I'm on 191 now. If it stays this easy, I can probably get it done early next week

[koifish | 562]

@Floating PlatformsVery nice. Good luck finishing.

I was cruising through Race days the other night when the game finally ran out of continues. don't know how many you actually have, but it is finite. Makes sense; Aside from bad luck you don't lose many races once you get a few engine and acceleration upgrades. If they made it easy then you'd finish the game too quickly. Still, I like this game. Reminds me of RC Pro Am or Icy Tracks Indy 500.

 

[Floating Platforms | 750]

Brain Drain is done

I finished the game on Genius and then...

Got the hall of fame on Genius in Brain Race (which only took one try and is much more forgiving than the main mode)

What an awful puzzle game this turned out to be. The basic premise is fine. You have a pattern in the upper left corner that you're trying to match and you move the cursor around to rotate 4 tiles at a time to try to match it. That seems engaging enough for a while. Then around the level 100 mark (of 250 levels), they throw the BS at you. The levels now are plagued with various gimmicks to make things harder. Maybe the pieces will rotate on their own, or you'll be blocked from seeing parts of the screen, or the game will move your cursor, or it will freeze it in place, or invert your controls. Then even later, it applies two of those gimmicks at a time. Very quickly, it stops being a puzzle game. Now you're fighting the game itself, wrestling for control and there simply will be unwinnable situations. Other BS from the game: There are 3 difficulties, rookie (levels 1-50), student (31-150), and genius (51-250). That means that if you don't know any better (and I didn't for a long time), beating student and then going to genius would mean you are redoing 100 levels. Why? Passwords come every 20 levels in Genius, but bonus games where you earn either level skips or an extra live (you only get 3 before needing to start over at that batch of 20) appear every 15. All of this garbage means that the developers had no faith in their game. Artificial padding from lives and hard to reach continues paired with frustrating, nasty gimmicks that take away the actual puzzle solving aspect means you made a terrible game. It doesn't take a genius to see that.

Now, since this was my "break" from bowling, I'm going to roll some balls for a while again. When I get sick of that, I have Hunchback of Notre Dame waiting.

[Splain | 2,626]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

Brain Drain is done

Congrats!!

I finished Bubsy 2. It's an interesting case for me, because I remember picking this game up years ago, and deciding it was garbage, because the hitboxes are bad, Bubsy skids all over the place like he's on ice, and I couldn't kill any enemies.

After trying it again in earnest, I can say that it's not a masterpiece but it's not THAT bad. Push Select to choose different weapons, including a projectile weapon that never runs out. You can jump on enemies to hurt them, and even though it LOOKS like it's hurting you, you don't actually take damage. In each level you just have to find the exit. There's lots of marbles to collect, but I think it's just for points that don't affect anything. Just find the exit.

You can "glide" to slow your descent, which is good. It also has strong inertia, you have to ramp up your speed to start moving, and stop well before you want to, and lining up with doorways is a pain. It has silly minigames for extra points and lives. The sprites are big, so you can't see very far, a common problem on GB. But the character animations are charming and pleasant-ish. It has gotcha enemies that fall from the sky, unmarked passageways through walls, and no continues/saves/passwords. But lots of 1ups.

So it's... fine. I'll have to figure out how I rank this one since it's got good things and bad things. It's probably about as enjoyable as..... Barbie Game Girl?

[koifish | 562]

On 5/7/2024 at 12:45 PM, Floating Platforms said:

Brain Drain is done

I finished the game on Genius and then...

Got the hall of fame on Genius in Brain Race (which only took one try and is much more forgiving than the main mode)

What an awful puzzle game this turned out to be. The basic premise is fine. You have a pattern in the upper left corner that you're trying to match and you move the cursor around to rotate 4 tiles at a time to try to match it. That seems engaging enough for a while. Then around the level 100 mark (of 250 levels), they throw the BS at you. The levels now are plagued with various gimmicks to make things harder. Maybe the pieces will rotate on their own, or you'll be blocked from seeing parts of the screen, or the game will move your cursor, or it will freeze it in place, or invert your controls. Then even later, it applies two of those gimmicks at a time. Very quickly, it stops being a puzzle game. Now you're fighting the game itself, wrestling for control and there simply will be unwinnable situations. Other BS from the game: There are 3 difficulties, rookie (levels 1-50), student (31-150), and genius (51-250). That means that if you don't know any better (and I didn't for a long time), beating student and then going to genius would mean you are redoing 100 levels. Why? Passwords come every 20 levels in Genius, but bonus games where you earn either level skips or an extra live (you only get 3 before needing to start over at that batch of 20) appear every 15. All of this garbage means that the developers had no faith in their game. Artificial padding from lives and hard to reach continues paired with frustrating, nasty gimmicks that take away the actual puzzle solving aspect means you made a terrible game. It doesn't take a genius to see that.

Now, since this was my "break" from bowling, I'm going to roll some balls for a while again. When I get sick of that, I have Hunchback of Notre Dame waiting.

Congrats on beating the game. I don't share your dismissal of the game as a whole, but then again I didn't put up with it enough to get to 250 clear. Impressive finish anyway, really tough game.

[koifish | 562]

I beat Dirty Racing on 2nd highest difficulty, and got the screenshot attached. Trying out Totally Dirty difficulty and I find that the tracks are pretty different; Portions of them are entirely removed for offroad track. I haven't figured out yet if the game is just more difficult (you have less control and move slower offroad) or if more has changed.

[Floating Platforms | 750]

22 hours ago, koifish said:

Congrats on beating the game. I don't share your dismissal of the game as a whole, but then again I didn't put up with it enough to get to 250 clear. Impressive finish anyway, really tough game.

Thanks. Yeah, that's understandable. I have a pretty low threshold for games that take my agency away. If you want me to play your game, let me physically play the game. Don't freeze my cursor, or flip my cursor randomly, or actively undo my progress. That's not fun and no longer the puzzle game I signed up for. The flipping tiles puzzle solving was fun when it was just that. They could have made more complex configurations, or messed with the time limit, or simply decided to not force 250 levels (many of which were repeats with different de-buffs applied). Instead, they took the puzzle solving away through the gimmicks. 

[Floating Platforms | 750]

Here's a quick update to my soft dibs list:

World Bowling - In Progress - 61 hours in so far..........

Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
Ninja Boy
Madden '95
Sports Illustrated for Kids: The Ultimate Triple Dare!
Spy vs. Spy

The stretch of rough games continues. Maybe a couple of okay titles in there.

[Splain | 2,626]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

Here's a quick update to my soft dibs list:

World Bowling - In Progress - 61 hours in so far..........

Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
Ninja Boy
Madden '95
Sports Illustrated for Kids: The Ultimate Triple Dare!
Spy vs. Spy

The stretch of rough games continues. Maybe a couple of okay titles in there.

61 hours. I will mail you a trophy if you beat that game.

Hunchback is great. I've messed around with Ninja Boy but never actually beat it. I'll be interested to see what you think of Triple Dare and Spy vs. Spy.

I'm past halfway in Cool Ball. Really liking this one.

[Floating Platforms | 750]

1 hour ago, Splain said:

61 hours. I will mail you a trophy if you beat that game.

Hunchback is great. I've messed around with Ninja Boy but never actually beat it. I'll be interested to see what you think of Triple Dare and Spy vs. Spy.

At this point, I'm wondering if it'll break 100 hrs. I need to do some emulation practice to see if I can learn something.

For Hunchback, do we know if there's any ending at all for the fun fair? I can't find a manual scan, and it looks like most people just get to the funfair with the 5 tickets and then play for a few rounds until they decide to quit and assume it's endless.

Ninja Boy will be interesting. I know that Kung Fu Heroes has a terrible reputation, but maybe the GB version will be a lot more forgiving as a 1P experience?

Triple Dare scares me a bit, but can it really be that much worse than Bart vs the Juggernauts?  Spy vs Spy will be fun, I hope. My only experience is playing the C64 game against my brother.

[Splain | 2,626]

On 5/14/2024 at 2:40 PM, Floating Platforms said:

For Hunchback, do we know if there's any ending at all for the fun fair? I can't find a manual scan, and it looks like most people just get to the funfair with the 5 tickets and then play for a few rounds until they decide to quit and assume it's endless.

This is all the manual says about it. I counted it beaten a few years back since I had unlocked the entire "wheel of fortune" and I had spun it enough times to land on (and complete) all the events on it. It would be great to discover some kind of an ending though.

[Floating Platforms | 750]

16 hours ago, Splain said:

This is all the manual says about it. I counted it beaten a few years back since I had unlocked the entire "wheel of fortune" and I had spun it enough times to land on (and complete) all the events on it. It would be great to discover some kind of an ending though.

That's very helpful. Thanks for sharing. Do you recall how many challenges you've personally done in the funfair before calling it a day? I haven't looked too deep but the most I saw was 5 of 6 beaten. 

[Splain | 2,626]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

That's very helpful. Thanks for sharing. Do you recall how many challenges you've personally done in the funfair before calling it a day? I haven't looked too deep but the most I saw was 5 of 6 beaten. 

I just kept going in until I had done all the challenges at least once. There's 5 challenges and it's random which one you get each time.

[Floating Platforms | 750]

2 hours ago, Splain said:

I just kept going in until I had done all the challenges at least once. There's 5 challenges and it's random which one you get each time.

Okay, yeah I knew about the random selection part. I saw on Moelleuh's video that after he quit it said you completed 5 of 6 challenges (he failed one). There probably isn't an ending/credits after X challenges won, but I might see how far I can get when I play it.

[Splain | 2,626]

5 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

Okay, yeah I knew about the random selection part. I saw on Moelleuh's video that after he quit it said you completed 5 of 6 challenges (he failed one). There probably isn't an ending/credits after X challenges won, but I might see how far I can get when I play it.

5 of 6? I'll have to check that out

[Floating Platforms | 750]

53 minutes ago, Splain said:

5 of 6? I'll have to check that out

I'm pretty sure it just meant that he spun the wheel 6 times and won 5 of them. It showed up after selecting "no" on the Another challenge? screen. But it at least shows the game is keeping track of stats.

[sp1nz | 630]

Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman!:

[sp1nz | 630]

Bomberman GB:

[Floating Platforms | 750]

Congrats! I had a really tough time with that final boss. I think that fight alone was half my playtime!

[sp1nz | 630]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

Congrats! I had a really tough time with that final boss. I think that fight alone was half my playtime!

Yeah, get to final phase without bike, die instantly and learn nothing  It must've been over half of my playtime.

[Splain | 2,626]

Cool Ball is done. I really liked this. I was worried that I would hit some point around halfway where the puzzles are too hard or too tedious for me to want to finish them, but fortunately, the difficulty curve is kind of a zigzag. Even some of the last levels can be done on the first try if you plan it out well enough. You can look at the level all you want before starting, there's a password for every level, and there's lives, but just hit start when you run out of lives and it just resets your score and continues.

It's just a matter of learning all the weird rules of each type of object and platform in the game, and it's kinda funny how your "items" that allow you to unlock stuff, put out fires, or break walls carry over from one level to the next. I was worried that the last level would do something like require 99 of each thing, but it didn't, and also... you have to collect every item to finish each level, so you're going to have all of everything at the end anyway. There's a couple of shortcuts in some of the levels to keep from having to use a key, etc but it you don't have to worry about running out of anything. Why are they even there? I don't know.

Fun game though. I played it in a bunch of sessions over a couple weeks, because you can always slam out a few levels, they're never frustratingly impossible. It's more like Mario Picross than Boxxle in that way. The only eye-rolling part is that you don't know where the exit is until you have all the items. In some levels you can guess where it's going to be, and in some you just have to do it twice. That's my only real complaint. This is possibly a top 50 game for me.

The last level is called HOME and it auto-plays you going into that house-looking place and reuniting with your girlfriend.

[Tantalus | 464]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I've played through this one several times over the years, but this was my first time with the Game Boy version since the Switch remake came out. I can't say much about it that hasn't been said before. Over 30 years after it's release, it still holds up. It may not be my favourite 2D Zelda game (that goes to A Link to the Past), but it's still a damn good game.

[koifish | 562]

On 5/14/2024 at 12:30 PM, Floating Platforms said:

Here's a quick update to my soft dibs list:

World Bowling - In Progress - 61 hours in so far..........

Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
Ninja Boy
Madden '95
Sports Illustrated for Kids: The Ultimate Triple Dare!
Spy vs. Spy

The stretch of rough games continues. Maybe a couple of okay titles in there.

LOL Ultimate Triple Dare, more like Ultimate Triple Doody.