Beaten: The Castlevania Adventure (Game Boy)

 Finishing up yet another classic Game Boy platformer with my modern Analogue Pocket and its save anywhere ability, I did something I’ve only done once before: I beat a Castlevania game! 

This series is special to me and I have lots of Castlevania games unfinished in my collection, but I’ve only beaten Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest before. The rest, I play, I’m in awe, but then I hit a wall that breaks down my resolve to continue.

These games are top level Konami platformers, which were kind of like From Software’s Souls games of the 2010s, just in the NES/ SNES era and mostly 2D hellscapes of painful sidescrolling. Only the most dedicated players would beat them.

I picked up The Castlevania Adventure for my Game Boy on August 9, 1991, which was over a year after it had come out. Hey, I was on a tight budget and supporting a Turbografx 16, an Atari VCS, and a Commodore 64 at the time, so the Game Boy library grew slowly.

I think I made it past the first boss once back then, but quickly used up my remaining lives in the next level and put it away. Over the years I pulled it out and played it many more times, but I never made it much farther than that.

Playing through, I realized that I’ve been getting psyched out by the difficulty of these and discouraged by the repetition, when, in essence they are not insanely hard. Each encounter I had after each save point I made was reasonably difficult to figure out, meaning that the attacks, dodges, and jumps I had to make would only take a few tries to get right.

Even the final boss, Dracula himself, had an easily discernible attack pattern for both of his phases. Once the player knows it, it isn’t too hard finish him off and start the end credits rolling.

I’ve just about finished all of the old Game Boy platformers that are in my meager library at this point. The two remaining - Ren & Stimpy’s Space Cadet Adventures and The Amazing Spider-Man - were pretty bad.

I really need to toughen up and go after the first Castlevania game next. Then like ten of its sequels. They are great games, but I’ve always taken them in small doses and never felt guilty about abandoning them when things got tough. 

For now, though, I’m good with just beating The Castlevania Adventure on the Game Boy. 

Beaten: Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear (Gameboy)

One of the hardest action-platformers I had left unfinished for the Game Boy was Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear, a continuation of the NES game series. Those games were fun and frantic, with the first one made easy to beat with unlimited continues, and the second one being much more challenging.

For the Game Boy entry into the series, they made a tighter, tougher, and shorter experience built solely around horizontal side scrolling in a single fortress. There are no wilderness areas nor vertically scrolling levels. 

Armed with just a sword and a flighty, pointy-toed jump, the player fights their way past all sorts of monsters and other defenses, picking up minor loot like gems, food, drink, keys, and extra lives. Every ten gems collected equals an extra life as well.

Keys unlock the chests one encounters, but the placement of these items is not usually connected. Grab keys when you see them, a chest will be around at some point. Chest items are either more gems, an extra life, the Shield of Protection (no idea what it did), and the most useful Boots of Jumping.

I always tried to get and keep those boots, which allow for farther jumps and soft landings. Luckily the chest loot is not random so one can note which chest has what reward.

Some levels have multiple paths through them and hidden areas discovered by exploration, including the classic “above the screen” areas as seen since Super Mario Bros. The healing items are relatively scarce so it’s best to not get hit at all.

Of course this was easier to achieve with the use of save states on my Analogue Pocket. The crisp screen and the elimination of blurring while scrolling helped as well. There were five sections to the game, with the first four broken into subsections 1.0, 1.1, etc. The final section was just one large area with multiple paths. 

I entered the final boss battle with Malkil unexpectedly but had six hearts and nine lives to burn as the battle does not stop upon death and regeneration. He fell after I sacrificed about three lives. 

The under appreciated Wizards & Warriors series was unique and challenging and I’m glad I got to play three of them. On the Game Boy, Wizards and Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear captures the style and gameplay of its NES brethren while presenting its own vibe as well.

Beaten: James Bond 007 (Game Boy)

That Analogue Pocket I brought earlier this year is so good, it keeps begging for more use. While I've been tapping my existing library of games so far to enjoy on it, I've also done some research into any Game Boy "hidden gems" that I might have missed. People post those sorts of lists all the time these days.

One game I saw appear while looking for Game Boy role-playing games was James Bond 007, another licensed Bond game, but not based on any movie past or present. It's a top-down action-adventure similar to The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening, featuring travel to multiple global locations, cool gadgets, and cameos by some previous Bond villains like Oddjob and Jaws. Early in the game, as in the movies, James returns to headquarters and gets to interact with Moneypenny, M, and Q.

Items are assigned to the A and B slots, which was pretty standard, and weapons run the range from bare hands to rocket launchers. Gadgets include the classic watch-with-laser, a primitive mapping tool, a grappling hook, shields, and so forth. 

Combat involves using whatever item one has equipped with whatever button it is assigned. There is also a basic but important block ability that can be equipped and used, body armors, and even shields. It’s pretty basic but gets complex when pixel perfect timing is required in a certain boss fight.

Speaking of those, there are a few boss fights scattered around and they’re all unique and fun. Health packs are plentiful enough that being mostly thorough in exploring the game will give the player an ample supply, although it was really really close for me at the end of the game. Searching for hidden items is just a matter of pressing A or B when near it, then it loads itself into the player's inventory. There are no visual cues about what is to be searched, though, leading to just walking along every wall and object in an area pressing A and B to see if something pops out.

I was worried as the first few areas were relatively small, but when the player gets to Marrakesh the map gets really big and meaty, with maze-like city streets and tunnels to navigate. Opening parts of the map may require items and side missions to get there as well. The story unfolds as one explores and plays, and it's standard James Bond stuff. That's a good thing, though, as NPCs are lively and helpful with tips and items. There is humor and innuendo, as one would expect in a James Bond experience. Sound effects are good, and hearing the James Bond theme throughout the game was a treat.

There is also a casino that has Blackjack, Baccarat, and some other basic card game to gamble on. Upon completing the game, these open up to free play. There is one part of the game where James must get to a certain amount of winnings, but the ability to save anywhere (both built into the game by design as well as the option to use the Analogue Pocket to save) allows the player to simply bet everything and if they lose, reload and try again.

It's almost mind-blowing that Goldeneye 007 came out for the Nintendo 64 in August of 1997 and then this Game Boy title followed in February of 1998. One was a state-of-the-art shooter that was a commercial and critical success and has been lauded ever since. The other came out for a nearly decade-old monochrome portable system at the end of its life cycle. These were developed by different companies and had no connection to each other that I could discern. Nonetheless, James Bond 007 on the Game Boy shines as a fun adventure, and those who made this game should be just as proud as the team behind Goldeneye 007.

Spoiler alert: James gets the girl at the end.

 

Beaten: Ultima Runes of Virtue (Game Boy)

 Talk about a pleasant surprise. At some point in the past I picked up a loose cartridge of Ultima Runes of Virtue for the Game Boy, knowing that it would not be a full Ultima-style RPG, and tried it out. It seemed at first to be more of a dungeon puzzle game than even an action adventure and I didn’t fiddle with it much.

Then I plugged it into my new Analog Pocket and really dug in. Having beaten it after a few weeks of portable fun, I can gladly say that this game stands shoulder to shoulder with Final Fantasy Legend, The Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening, and Final Fantasy Adventure as must-play Game Boy RPGs and action RPGs. 

So yeah, puzzles. It is a masterpiece of a dungeon puzzle game, with lots of monster combat thrown in. By that I mean, stepping on a floor plate might remove a wall and unleash a horde of spiders. That’s just one example though and fails to describe the gloriously crazy variety of such puzzles and traps.

Once again, playing this on an Analogue Pocket allowed me to save anywhere, eliminating the frustration of multiple repetitive dungeon runs. No, only my own lack of thoroughness and attention to detail resulted in multiple repetitive dungeon runs. None of these puzzles are insanely hard, and if I remember correctly, most can be solved within the same dungeon, with the items you should have, through trial and error and observation.

The game takes place in a standard, classic Ultima top down world. The player starts on a single continent with a few castles, shops, and dungeons, and opens up other sections of the world as the game progresses. Boats act as ferries to get to and from these landmasses, with the final continent only reachable through a dungeon at first, but a ferry opens up once the player has made it through so the dungeon trip does not have to be repeated.

With such complex and clever puzzles in the dungeons, the designers had to come up with a way to get players unstuck if they did the wrong thing. It is possible to get stuck in a lot of situations, so there is an item in the player's backpack to instantly teleport them out of the dungeon and back to Lord British's throne room for a quick healing and reset. It's an ugly solution that forces a complete dungeon restart, but with the Analog Pocket and its save states, I did not need to utilize it often.

There is not much in the way of NPC conversation and interaction, but the player does level up attributes and equipment to a basic degree. And it bears repeating that the player must explore every tile of every dungeon to avoid missing important items. While the goal of each of the eight dungeons is to recover a rune, there are also important items hidden that will be required for the player to advance.

In this sense, the game requires some level of backtracking if the player is not paying attention (like me), and some level of grinding to save up money for some of the more expensive purchases available in shops. Fortunately, it was easy to find places to quickly grind gold, and even some of the more useful items.

It's always a good feeling when a game gives you more than you were expecting. I was expecting a half-assed dungeon crawler that was just cashing in on the Ultima name. Instead, this is exactly what one would hope for in a portable adventure and it was a joy to explore and solve over a few weeks. I guess I had better start looking for the sequels to Ultima Runes of Virtue for more pleasant surprises.

Beaten: Operation C (Game Boy)

 Oops I did it again.

Playing Operation C, the Game Boy entry into the Contra series on my shiny new Analogue Pocket, I was just hoping to see how far I could get. 

I’ve never beaten a Contra game before, but have fond memories of trying, especially those Contra 3: The Alien Wars co-op sessions I had in 1992 or 1993 with my friend Dave Frye.

The difference, as one can tell from recent articles I’ve written, is that the Analogue Pocket can create a save state anywhere when playing an old Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance cartridge. If the cartridge has its own save battery option, that still works too.

These games are still difficult, don’t get me wrong. The save state option merely eliminates the repetition of having to play through everything over and over again when attempting to get through a difficult part.

A game like Operation C has no built in cartridge save of the player’s progress, so when first all the players’ lives are gone, and then a limited number of continues are used up, it’s back to the beginning of the game, not just back to the beginning of the level or the boss fight.

Operation C is a great, five stage sampler of Contra, containing every bit of that game’s run-and-gun shooting action. The player starts with a rapid-firing machine gun that has unlimited ammunition, starts running and jumping to the right as waves of various enemies attack.

There’s no time limit, fortunately, but few places where one can stand still without endless respawning enemies running up from behind. Occasionally a power up will fly by with a big letter on it indicating what it does. “S” for upgrading the gun to a spread of bullets rather than a straight line, “F” for fire, and a few others.

“H” is for homing bullets that home in on enemies, curving their trajectory, and other than the save state was my key to victory in this game. I had the spreading fire first, then picked up the homing bullets, and then took care to not pick up another power up at any point after that.

In addition to scrolling and jumping right and sometimes up, some stages are viewed top-down and scroll up. This certainly adds to the variety, as does several mini-boss type of encounters scattered here and there. The boss fights are likewise challenging, but patterns exist in their attacks for players to discern.

I had a perfect playthrough going on at the final boss fight, meaning I went into it with five extra lives. I failed to beat it with my first life and his homing bullets. Since the game at least puts the player back in the midst of the fight for their second and subsequent lives, I was able to burn through those extra lives to victory.

I can now cross “beat a Contra game” off of my videogame bucket list.

Beaten: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (Game Boy)

 Platformers have never been my strong suit, even when they reigned supreme during the 16-bit era.  While I tried and played many, there were few I finished. This was especially true on the Game Boy, where the hardware limitations could cause a blurring effect when the screen scrolls in some games.

Thus, my Game Boy collection has quite a few unfinished platformers, and I’ve been giving some of them another shot since getting the Analogue Pocket, as the clear screen, the save state option, and the end of any blurring issues with these types of games makes them shine in a new light.

Enter Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, a five-stage game featuring the famous reptilian heroes scrolling right to defeat an army of ninjas and other foes from the cartoon and comic. After failing to beat the very difficult NES TMNT game I must’ve been hoping the Game Boy game would be easier. 

I have no idea how far I got back then, but sliding the cartridge into the Analog Pocket, I dove in without much hope of getting anywhere new, but I was having fun so I pressed on. Soon, I was beating the first stage without using the save state feature, which gave me enough confidence to start a new playthrough and use the save state, just to see how far I could get.

Now, save states have not been a guarantee of success for me by any means - I still got stuck at very difficult parts of Castlevania on the NES mini and Splatterhouse on the Turbografx 16 mini - but they do remove the frustration of completely starting over upon death.

Thus, with TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan, I locked into a pattern of slowly moving right until the next enemies spawned and attacked, killing them without taking damage, waiting until things settled down, and saving. 

With no time limit this made most of the game pretty easy, but there were boss fights at the end of every level to contend with as well. These were not particularly hard either, and saving right before them made it easier. Some I beat on the first try.

There were three small bonus mini-games I found during my travels which added variety to the experience, and those were mostly fun. I kept waiting for a spike in difficulty that never came.

Played as intended, this would be a fairly tough game, simply because there is no natural save option on the cartridge and each attempt would mean starting over. Oddly enough, the player can pick any level to play right at the start, but to get the ending one must play and beat them sequentially, I suspect.

I had fun beating this turtle sized platformer after owning it for 34 years. However, there is no way I’m trying that NES TMNT game again, thanks to the now legendary water level’ difficulty. 

A lot of these old platformers are difficult simply due to the need to start over every time. I’m too old now to hit those walls, but with the advent of save states, I can save a good playthrough in progress and take on new challenges as I encounter them.