Still a GAME BOY at Heart: 25 Years in Eight Games

The other day browsing through my Instagram feed I discovered that April is not only National Poetry Month (I’d known this for decades, of course, being a poet since the age of thirteen), but that this year marks the 25^th birthday of one of the most pleasurable aspects of my childhood: The Original Nintendo Game Boy.

 

In all it’s bulky, black & white compactness, this paradigm of the portable game playing device absorbed hours of my life into mere minutes as I immersed myself in worlds both familiar and foreign, all the while migrating with the sun and stars through the day so I could play until the wee hours of the night.

At my game-playing fighting weight, I must’ve owned around twenty or so of the iconic Game Boy game cartridges, and kept them all in a black vinyl case until I gave it all to an ex-girlfriend when I prematurely decided that it was time to grow up. One of three times I’d told that to myself in my life –– thankfully, the growing up never quite takes.

But I did have a few favorites, which I not only played time and time again, but which also inspired me to get creative with telling my own stories.

Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters

It must have been the Greek or the geek in me (or a little of both, perhaps), or maybe just the fact that I needed to know the origins of the strange Eggplant Wizard in the old Captain N: The Game Master series, that I picked up this version of the original 8-bit Kid Icarus game for the NES, which I never owned.

 

 Double Dragon

I’m a lot less violent now than I guess I was back in the ’90s, but I enjoyed kicking arse as Billy Lee and punching, side-kicking, and knifing my way through the scum-lined city streets, for which this black & white version shadowed a nice little noir aspect to it, especially when the contrast was adjusted just right.

 

Super Mario Land

Ever since playing the original Mario Bros with my dad, to elevating to Super Mario Bros., eventually falling in love with Super Mario Bros. 2, and having the Mushroom Kingdom culminate with SNES’s Super Mario World, there’s still a soft spot in my soul for Super Mario Land. It has a charm that the others lack. Perhaps it’s the fact that Mario flies in a plane and dives deep in a submarine and battles an all-new villain –– the evil alien Tatanga –– and rescues a different lovely princess named Daisy. I always wondered what Princess Toadstool thought about that. And where the heck’s Paula in all of this?!

 

Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge

With much better gameplay than the original Castlevania: The Adventure for Game Boy and the ability to whip while climbing up a rope, Belmont’s Revenge was a whip-cracking good time as I battled familiar monsters and a few gruesome new faces in four really interesting realms for Christopher Belmont to wander through before his final bout with Dracula ensues.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan

By far, this is my all-time favorite Game Boy game. I could play a ton of others, but being an ardent fan of the heroes on the half-shell, owning all of the original action figures and loving the TV series more than any other cartoon series that came before it, I always slipped this cartridge into the back of my Game Boy and played for another hour or two. Even after beating The Shredder and Krang, I would simply restart and do it again, marveling at the graphics as I played each time as if it was the first time.

 

Now, there were also a few games that, no matter how much I played them and how hard I tried to master them, I just couldn’t do much to get past a certain level on each one of these. But I still tried, and (most of the time) I still had a blast playing them.

 

RoboCop

Playing this straight forward side scrolling shoot-‘em-up, and I could never get past the level where it became first person, and Murphy has to save a screaming woman from a thug holding her at gunpoint by positioning the crosshairs and shooting him to save her. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I never become a cop.

 

The Final Fantasy Legend

One of my favorite posters I ever hung up in my room was one for the NES Final Fantasy game. Final Fantasy II for SNES quickly became one of my most played games ever, partly for the role-play factor (the Dungeons & Dragons geek in me), but also for offering an mesmerizing storyline that took a Dark Knight turned Paladin from terrestrial worlds and airships all the way to the moon itself! The Final Fantasy Legend for Game Boy, however, with its much slower pace, nameless characters, and lack of a solid storyline, didn’t make as lasting an impression on me, though I did keep playing it, but would oftentimes get bored by the wandering around and battling lame monsters.

 

T2: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

I never made it past level two in this game, in which players have to rewire the terminator into Schwarzenegger with shades. End of story. Before it ever begins.

 

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What are some of YOUR favorite (and/or least favorite) Game Boy games? Fill ’em in the comments below.