Beat every Game Boy game - 2020 - 225/497

[koifish | 555]

I'm working to finish College Slam, I have made it to the semi-finals, and will comment on my feelings once I am finished with it.

Update: College Slam is complete.

I said I'd say my thoughts on the game, and they are: "Wow, what a nice surprise!". There are a lot of ways that a sports game can go; Some are fantastic, some are just painful. This game was firmly in the former camp, because lo and behold, it's just NBA Jam in a College paintjob! Yes, it's almost identical to NBA Jam Tournament Edition on GB, which is not only way better than NBA Jam on GB, but is just a fun, solid b-ball game all around. This one gives you five players to choose from for your two-man team, and you can play representing numerous college teams. The modes are multi-faceted, and whether you like this or not, the game is much shorter to clear than NBA Jam TE was, at only four matches to win the tournament vs. 27 for TE.

 

Yeah, so for a game called "College Slam", which could have been amazing or terrible, this one was, well, a slam dunk. Definitely worth looking into for your GB sports collection.

Only caveat is, again, you have to hold start button for turbo, which means you're going to use a really awkward grip to hold the system. If you're used to midway ports on GB though, then you can manage. Overall, I was definitely pleased. Might have to check out the other system versions too.

Edited September 5, 2020 by koifish

[koifish | 555]

Going to take a break from playing Bases Loaded to play Extra Bases, it feels a bit more forgiving and also has some fun music to encourage you.

[Splain | 2,560]

I remember College Slam as a kid, a friend of mine had it on GB. I didn't like sports games but it actually looked pretty good and it was fun to do all the crazy NBA Jam style stuff.

I beat Klax. It loops after 99 waves and nothing happens in between. Sooo, here's a shot of wave 99 and then wave 1 with a 6-digit score.

 

[bronzeshield | 293]

3 hours ago, Splain said:

I beat Klax. It loops after 99 waves and nothing happens in between. Sooo, here's a shot of wave 99 and then wave 1 with a 6-digit score.

It loops?! Klax is supposed to end at Wave 99 and congratulate you! Pretty sure the Lynx version does, and I know the Genesis version does. What a cheat!

[Splain | 2,560]

2 hours ago, bronzeshield said:

It loops?! Klax is supposed to end at Wave 99 and congratulate you! Pretty sure the Lynx version does, and I know the Genesis version does. What a cheat!

Huh, really? It says "this is the last wave of Klax!" before 99 starts, and that's all you get. I've got it on Lynx, I might fire it up just for closure. Or the Genesis one for the thread.

Also, the Japanese version of Klax on GB is for some reason very different from the US version. I should try that too.

[bronzeshield | 293]

8 hours ago, Splain said:

Huh, really? It says "this is the last wave of Klax!" before 99 starts, and that's all you get. I've got it on Lynx, I might fire it up just for closure. Or the Genesis one for the thread.

Also, the Japanese version of Klax on GB is for some reason very different from the US version. I should try that too.

Yep, here's the ending for Genesis:

:ᴝo𝄩ᔕᓓጠ< ×ᴝ⤙⌐ ጠェ⊣ ᗜᴝᗆ

 

[koifish | 555]

Can anybody confirm that Extra Bases has some indication that you are doing it right? I won a game and it just sent me back to the menu screen. Am I supposed to set a password that isn't 0000 perhaps?

[Splain | 2,560]

2 hours ago, koifish said:

Can anybody confirm that Extra Bases has some indication that you are doing it right? I won a game and it just sent me back to the menu screen. Am I supposed to set a password that isn't 0000 perhaps?

Here's everything I know: when you play a game for the first time, you select your team, then it asks for a password. If you enter 0000, you then choose your opponent. If you enter an actual password, it automatically chooses your opponent and starts the game.

When you win a game, it shows you a password before kicking you to the title screen. It's kinda tucked away on the right side, easy to miss. There's an FAQ on gamefaqs that says you complete the game when you've beaten every rival team. I've never done it myself to confirm.

[koifish | 555]

On 9/8/2020 at 11:56 PM, Splain said:

Here's everything I know: when you play a game for the first time, you select your team, then it asks for a password. If you enter 0000, you then choose your opponent. If you enter an actual password, it automatically chooses your opponent and starts the game.

When you win a game, it shows you a password before kicking you to the title screen. It's kinda tucked away on the right side, easy to miss. There's an FAQ on gamefaqs that says you complete the game when you've beaten every rival team. I've never done it myself to confirm.

Looks like I never noticed the password on the first match. I got it this time, so now I can continue.

 

On that matter, Bases Loaded is complete. It was a tough game, I had to beat 5 teams in a row, each getting more and more difficult. The last two teams were basically all stocking players with batting averages in the 300s.

 

The ending is funny, the team captain goes up to the Majors captain, gives him a handshake (though it looks kind of...questionable) and then comes back to his teammates and they all cheer, with the captain jumping up in the air and CONGRATULATIONS on screen. The player chars being really small and short compared to the adult (and frankly, American-looking) major league players makes much more sense when you consider that the original JP release was called "Baseball Kids", so it's a fantasy ending where you and your group of friends successfully defeat professional players. Under the English release name, it isn't as clear, which makes it look like a bunch of cartoon people just beat a bunch of giants.

 

It was probably the toughest baseball game I've yet played on GB. The one issue with it is that there's a trick to basically always strike the opponent out, but I'd rather keep it to myself unless people want to know. Even when you know it, the trick still won't help you batting, and sometimes it seems to just not work anyway. Tricky game for sure!

 

At this rate, I'm gonna be the new GB baseball king on this board

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by koifish

[Splain | 2,560]

I beat Play Action Football. It's another game I had as a kid but never got very far. It wasn't too bad, it's sort of a "lite" football sim, even among Game Boy football games. It's excruciatingly 2-dimensional. I'll write up my winning game-cheesing strategy in a little bit.

There's no ending screen or fanfare of any kind; it just dumps you at the title screen when you win the playoffs.

[Floating Platforms | 713]

Great to see some sports games cleared!  I've started the Sports Illustrated FB & BB after returning from being out of town but it will take some time.  Unless I'm missing something, the tournament for FB forces 1 hour games and it turns out that's real world time, so adding in all the clock stoppages, etc, it actually takes about 2 hours per game.  It's showing 8 games in the tournament, but it's a list and not a bracket, so I don't know if there's going to be more rounds after this.  So far it's not too hard, just boring.  The plan is to get through most of these this week.

[Splain | 2,560]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

Great to see some sports games cleared!  I've started the Sports Illustrated FB & BB after returning from being out of town but it will take some time.  Unless I'm missing something, the tournament for FB forces 1 hour games and it turns out that's real world time, so adding in all the clock stoppages, etc, it actually takes about 2 hours per game.  It's showing 8 games in the tournament, but it's a list and not a bracket, so I don't know if there's going to be more rounds after this.  So far it's not too hard, just boring.  The plan is to get through most of these this week.

Infuriating, lol. Even with Play Action Football, the games would go decently quickly... but it's frustrating when the CPU gets a lucky break and threatens to win a game, for the sole reason that it's going to be boring to have to play that round again.

[Floating Platforms | 713]

8 hours ago, Splain said:

Infuriating, lol. Even with Play Action Football, the games would go decently quickly... but it's frustrating when the CPU gets a lucky break and threatens to win a game, for the sole reason that it's going to be boring to have to play that round again.

So far I'm not worried about the CPU winning as I've been doubling their score, but if the AI gets a lot tougher it will be hard pill to swallow. The game gives you very little control over the outcome since there's no tackle button and you almost always tackle/get tackled after a pass (no Tecmo juke or breaking tackles), so it's mostly boring because I feel like I'm mostly watching a sim game. But there's a password to save progress after each game, so at least I won't have to start from scratch if something goes horribly wrong.

[bronzeshield | 293]

On 9/10/2020 at 1:56 PM, koifish said:

On that matter, Bases Loaded is complete.

It was probably the toughest baseball game I've yet played on GB. The one issue with it is that there's a trick to basically always strike the opponent out, but I'd rather keep it to myself unless people want to know. Even when you know it, the trick still won't help you batting, and sometimes it seems to just not work anyway.

I'd be interested to know the trick and see it preserved for posterity. You could always hide it behind a spoiler tag if you think it's too game-breaking.

[koifish | 555]

On 9/15/2020 at 7:57 PM, bronzeshield said:

I'd be interested to know the trick and see it preserved for posterity. You could always hide it behind a spoiler tag if you think it's too game-breaking.

It's not too bad really, but I'll tell y'all what it is. You'd probably stumble upon it through regular play after a while anyway.

Spoiler

Normally, when pitching, it is all but impossible to throw a pitch that the CPU batter won't hit, unless you blatantly throw right at him. This can make things hard, because, until you figure out the best ways to throw pitches that they can't hit well, you're just giving away hits and runs, and likely getting smoked just by the first or second team.

Well, as it turns out, there's a very specific trick you can do with one specific pitcher. If you throw exactly the right pitch, the batter will never swing the bat, and you can get easy strike-outs. Here's how you do it:

1. You must pick the East team, and you can ONLY do this with "Rand", the first pitcher in the East lineup (It's the same pitcher name in the JP version but the team is called "US" team in that game). It does not work with anyone else, as far as I can tell.

2. Now, at the pitch, align your pitch cursor PERFECTLY with the left side of home plate. The ball cursor over home plate should have its middle placed exactly over the left edge of home plate. I've attached a picture, it's hard to get it perfect but you can learn to do it. Just know that this is ESSENTIAL, if you don't align it correctly then it won't work.

3. Hold the right-arrow as you throw, so that you throw a curveball breaking right. If you lined up perfectly in step 2, then you will throw a curveball that curves from outside the strike zone to inside the strike zone, and the CPU batter will never swing.

Some more details, problems and functional elements:

• This does not appear to work at all for any other "East" pitcher, and it doesn't work for any of the "West" team pitchers. The only exception is the last West pitcher, "Myer", who throws so hard the batters may just not be swinging for that reason (some pitchers I noticed are fast enough that the batters won't hit when normally they would).
• There's a chance that such a "magic pitch" exists for other pitchers, but I am not sure what it would be. I typically didn't switch pitchers much though.
• I can confirm that it works on both left- and right-handed batters.
• I can confirm that it works on both the NA and JP releases.

If anybody next year plays Bases Loaded, then I recommend playing some of the other pitchers and experimenting with this. Or you can just struggle to reach the level needed to beat the final team; At that point you will probably not even need the magic pitch. It's a great way to shut down the game and practice your batting though.

 

bgb00059.bmp bgb00060.bmp

Edited September 17, 2020 by koifish
I always forget to attach pics to things

[Floating Platforms | 713]

Still making progress on SI FB & BB.  I've now completed 8 games in the FB tournament which is all the game shows initially, but it gave me another password and dumped me into another game against a new city (but no new list of opponents), so my current guess is it will be a 16-17 game season and I'm halfway through?  Fingers crossed that the baseball games go faster when I get there.

[Floating Platforms | 713]

Okay, my guess was wrong. The Football tourney is 9 games long. The list of 8 they show you and then the championship match. What's weird is that yesterday I wrote down the password and then the game was sending me to a match with Pittsburgh.  Today that same password sent me to a game with Cleveland, so I guess the finals are against a random team you haven't faced yet. Anyway, I beat Cleveland easily and got the normal victory cover and then a second cover to say Football's Best and then it kicked me to the title screen without giving any more passwords. I'll post a screenshot when I'm done with baseball, which I'll start this week.

[Floating Platforms | 713]

Very happy to say that Sports Illustrated Championship Football & Baseball is finished.

Just like the FB tourney, the baseball one was 9 games. I was 7-1 in the listed games (losing on the last one), but that was enough to get me to the final game against Montreal (I played as NY American after trying several different). It went down to the wire, but I tied the game in the 8th and got the walk-off win in the bottom of the 9th.

Here's my review for those interested:

Football: I'll never understand why someone would decide to force player into 1 hour games for the tournament, because that is real time. Add the time for stopped clocks, menus, etc and each match takes 90-120 minutes to get through. I eventually got to a point where I would sit for 30 seconds if the clock was running because that was faster than running an actual play. You have very little control over the outcome. Most passes will be complete no matter what, but you're tackled instantly 99% of the time. Runs have a greater chance of breakaway touchdowns. Defensively you can't choose your defender after they pass or hand-off and there's no tackle/dive button which means you can't actively sack the QB or get in position for an interception. So basically the game largely plays itself. Penalties are very much randomized too.  The voice clips and animations are fantastic, but there's no music except for during the cover shots and TDs, etc. So it looks nice, but it's a boring experience at the tournament level. Stick to a single, shorter, game.

Baseball: This was a much tougher game to play.  Thankfully the games were shorter, but it took a lot of experimentation to figure out what might sort of work when batting and pitching. I never fully understood how to field properly.  The fielding was the worst aspect since it was highly unpredictable. The ball would go to what seems like the same location, but one of multiple players could be going for the ball. Sometimes the computer would control it fully, sometimes it would control it for part of the time and then you were expected to take over, and sometimes you had to do it all. But not knowing which player you were expected to control, paired with the pixel perfect placement to pick up or catch the ball meant a lot went past you. Thankfully I finally figured out the trick to striking a lot of players out so I had to deal with that less.  Once again, this looks sort of nice, but it's a frustrating experience and I wouldn't even recommend playing a single game on the baseball side.

And the championship cover shots

Next up for me will be Tetris 2. I have no experience with this game at all, but I plan to get it done this weekend and maybe another game if I'm fast enough (currently slated to be The Pagemaster).  After that, it's more sports for me.

[koifish | 555]

On 9/20/2020 at 5:22 PM, Floating Platforms said:

Okay, my guess was wrong. The Football tourney is 9 games long. The list of 8 they show you and then the championship match. What's weird is that yesterday I wrote down the password and then the game was sending me to a match with Pittsburgh.  Today that same password sent me to a game with Cleveland, so I guess the finals are against a random team you haven't faced yet. Anyway, I beat Cleveland easily and got the normal victory cover and then a second cover to say Football's Best and then it kicked me to the title screen without giving any more passwords. I'll post a screenshot when I'm done with baseball, which I'll start this week.

"I beat Cleveland easily" hits too close to home for this NE OH boy

[koifish | 555]

Still playing through extra bases. I thought it seemed familiar, turns out it is just a rebranding of famista, aka family stadium, the Namco baseball series that has run since the 80s and has shown up on practically everything, including wonderswan, where I have the very similar version, Wonder Stadium.

 

I really like how the exciting music starts when you have men on base. I also like that I can apparently win on Mercy rule if I'm up, say, 17-3 at the start of the 7th inning. I find the score lines match what I often see in the Japanese league; Those games regularly see 10-20 runs per game (between both teams). Last week for example, I saw a game end tied at 10-10. So in that way, the games on gb feel really accurate!

@Splain

 Was curious if you had seen the newest game boy leaks from the "gigaleak". There are a lot of interesting things, and I was curious if any of them would potentially work their way into future annual contests.

[Floating Platforms | 713]

3 hours ago, koifish said:

"I beat Cleveland easily" hits too close to home for this NE OH boy

If it's any consolation, at least that means they made it to this game's version of the Super Bowl!

[Floating Platforms | 713]

Question on Tetris 2 for anyone that's done it.  So, it looks like the Game Boy version has 30 puzzles instead of 100 for the SNES but no save/passwords.

I was trying to look at normal mode before I start as well, since "Tetris 1" had best endings for Game A & B. I can only find SNES runs of normal mode, showing 80 levels (again with passwords) and cut scenes/ending. Does anyone have experience with the GB version to know if an ending is possible on normal here too?  I'd want to do both for my own challenge even if not required for this.

[koifish | 555]

6 minutes ago, Floating Platforms said:

If it's any consolation, at least that means they made it to this game's version of the Super Bowl!

But on the other hand, that also means that their perfect super bowl record would be no more.

[koifish | 555]

The game of harmony is complete. I didn't know this game existed and honestly, I never thought I would see a fusion of asteroids and puzzle game. Though the tether action reminded me of another space shooting game whose name escapes me (anybody remember the arcade game I'm thinking of? You had two ships bound by a tether with elastic physics between them).
 

Sometimes I really enjoyed the game. It was fun to figure out its systems. Other times it made me want to pull my hair out. Such a frustrating game when things go wrong! One big problem with it is that the game is just very obviously not meant to run on game boy. It runs smoothly only on the most simplistic of stages, and very quickly you run into framerates so thick you could slice em and fry em for dinner. I found the best option was to play it like driving on a crowded snowy highway. Read the patterns and put your inputs in, expecting what will happen well before you see it (because by the time you see it you're already too late).

 

I'm thankful that they give you continues to keep going from only a few levels back. I would like to try it another time for score challenge, but moreover I want to find out next time if there are ports with less difficulties running. It feels like a game that is from a Euro PC originally, so I will have to look sometime in the future when I have more of an agency to explore such things. Anyway, I give it high marks. Very fun game, even with the stressful later levels. This game makes me feel like I'm curing cancer. The way that the incorrect balls going together causes new balls to appear and how you work to stop them from spreading made me think of that. It's a cool game, happy to have played it.

 

[Splain | 2,560]

On 9/23/2020 at 7:05 AM, koifish said:

@Splain
 Was curious if you had seen the newest game boy leaks from the "gigaleak". There are a lot of interesting things, and I was curious if any of them would potentially work their way into future annual contests.

You know, I didn't know there was anything for Game Boy. Turns out the article I read must have been written by someone who doesn't care about GB, lol. I'll have to take a closer look!

 

@Floating Platforms as for Tetris 2, I don't know anything about a "Game A" ending, since I thought it just went on forever. But obviously it doesn't on NES or SNES. And while the SNES version doesn't let you move past a puzzle level without first solving it with the minimum number of moves, GB lets you go on ahead, and then you can see a screen that lists 30 puzzle levels, and a little swirly icon next to the ones that you did in the minimum moves. I don't know for sure if you can go back and re-try the non-minimum ones to get all icons, or if there are more puzzles after that. I was operating under some faulty assumptions when I wrote that requirement I guess. I'll see what I can find out, but your experience with the game might end up being one of the internet's best resources on the subject.