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Ms Pacman & Super Pac Man (GB)
by davidbuttery
** Background **
The arcade game Pac-Man probably needs no introduction, and even in the unlikely event that it does, it's pretty easy to explain: you rush around a maze eating dots (and sometimes fruit) and keeping out of the way of ghosts, apart from when you eat a power pill at which point you can chase them. Simple! ... Unsurprisingly given the original's enormous success, it spawned a number of sequels which enjoyed a greater or lesser degree of success. This 1999 cartridge for the colour Game Boy brings together versions of the first two follow-up games: Ms. Pac-Man from the dim and distant days of 1981 and Super Pac-Man which originally appeared a year later.
** Ms. Pac-Man **
It's really rather remarkable that Ms Pac-Man managed to gain as much success as it did, given how very similar its gameplay is to its progenitor. It's true that for an arcade game to have a female protagonist was a very unusual thing in the early 1980s, and the game itself is well designed and pretty enjoyable to play, but you don't really get a *lot* out of it over and above what you can take from the original. One of the changes that is significant is that, while in the original Pac-Man the ghosts' movement followed very definite patterns, here there's a certain amount of (pseudo-randomness) which means that the old expert's trick of "blindfold" Pac-Manning won't work here.
The graphics and sound are very much in the same mould as with the original Pac-Man, but I rather prefer them. In particular, the little intro jingle that plays just before the game proper begins is much nicer than its equivalent bleepy tune on the older game. The character design for Ms. Pac-Man herself is not exactly original - she gets a ribbon in her hair and a dimple on her cheek - but I suppose when you're writing a game in which the central personality is a circle with a segment chopped out of it, there isn't an enormous amount of room for manoeuvre! The old "wokka-wokka" sound of dot-eating has gone the other way, in that I think the earlier game's sounds had more tension and drama to them.
** Super Pac-Man **
The other game in the pack is slightly more of a mould-breaker - though "slightly" really is the operative word here! You still control a (male) Pac-Man, and you still wander around a maze wary of ghosts... but it's now fruits (apples on the first stage) which play the part of basic score-racker-upper and which have to be cleared. Scattered around the maze are little keys, and when you collect one of those entry is enabled to certain other parts of the screen - you need to collect all of them, since the level cannot otherwise be completed. As you continue through the game, you'll find an extra challenge provided by the fact that keys no longer always open *nearby* doors!
The traditional power pills are still in existence, and still allow Pac-Man to gobble up ghosts; but now there's a second sort of pellet too, which when eaten will turn your little yellow character into an outsized version of himself - the "Super Pac-Man" of the title! This makes him invulnerable to ghosts (though he can't actually eat them) and allows him to barge down doors without having found the requisite key. Another potential way to rack up points is the "bonus box" which sometimes appears close to the centre of the screen, containing rapidly changing symbols; how many points you get for eating it depends on just what those symbols are at the time.
Although it's a later and rather more complex game (as is also demonstrated by the existence of against-the-clock bonus levels here and there) I'm not really anything like as enamoured by Super Pac-Man as I am by Ms. Pac-Man. Especially on the Game Boy's small screen - which itself forces a slightly annoying scrolling viewport of the maze - the enormous sprite that is the "super" version of the character looks rather silly, almost as though there'd been a strange bug in the programming! Apparently when it came out a number of players found it rather confusing, and I'm not entirely surprised. It didn't do anything like as well in the arcades as the earlier (or many later) iterations of the franchise.
** Buying and verdict **
Both these games are brought to the Game Boy Color with considerable fidelity, allowing for the obvious limitations of the handheld's hardware. These are old enough titles that even the frankly feeble sound capabilities of the GBC don't really get in the way, while the aforementioned scrolling viewport undoubtedly *is* annoying but can't be helped without making the sprites so tiny as to be eye-straining anyway. It's not a terribly rare cartridge, though you might have to shell out Ł7 or so, and if you can see past the really rather hideous pink-dominated label (and box, if you have it) design then Ms. Pac-Man is a great game, Super Pac-Man perhaps rather less so. Three and a half stars, nudged down to three because Ms. Pac-Man alone will be cheaper and almost as much fun.
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Super Mario Land (GB)
by davidbuttery
** Introduction **
Does anybody really need an introduction to the Mario games? Ah well then, if I must... Super Mario Land is an incarnation in the long-running and phenomenally successful series of Nintendo platform games in which you control the lovable (perhaps) Italian-American plumber as he negotiates his way through a ... series of "worlds" to attempt to reach his goal, in this case a confrontation with the mysterious alien Tatanga. Super Mario Land was a launch title for the Game Boy handheld (being released in 1990 in Europe and 1989 in North America and Japan), and Nintendo judged their market very well: the game was a huge success and has racked up sales of around 18 million.
** Gameplay **
Super Mario Land is quite an easy game, certainly by the standards of the eight-bit era. I'm sure that part of the reason Nintendo went down that route was that there is no save facility: you have to complete the whole game - twelve levels in all - in a single sitting. This doesn't actually take a particularly long time once you get the hang of it, and so this is by no means an impossible game to complete in one session; in fact, you may eventually come to find it a little too short! The controls are straightforward, and very similar to other games in the series, although it does take a little while to be able to control Mario's jump-landing slides with reasonable aplomb, and you may lose the odd life this way at first.
Although most things about Super Mario Land are unstartling, there are a couple of nice touches to mention. When you capture a fire flower, you gain the ability to shoot enemies with fireballs - but these have a secondary purpose, as they can be used to bounce around corners and pick up tricky-to-reach coins with minimal danger to Mario himself. I also like the end-of-level choices, whereby you are offered two exit doorways. The easier simply takes you onward, but should you succeed in making the harder one you'll be offered a small bonus stage; this offers basic but very useful prizes such as fire flowers or that old standby of extra lives.
** Graphics and sound **
This being a title for the original, Game Boy you probably won't be expecting miracles of the graphical presentation, and indeed you don't get them. A machine with a tiny monochrome screen displaying at just 160 by 144 pixel resolution simply can't produce the effects available on even a simple TV-based console like the NES. This inevitably leads to a certain amount of disappointment - the background areas are hardly detailed, for example - but on a screen like this clarity is more important than subtlety, and on that score Super Mario Land rates well. Animation is smooth (by Game Boy standards) and little touches such as Mario's mushroom-induced growth are fairly satisfyingly handled.
Nor was the Game Boy renowned as a centre for symphonic virtuosity, the skills of chip-tune programmers down the years notwithstanding, so don't go expecting any orchestral masterpieces in the game's tunes. That really doesn't matter, though, as Mario games are all about bleepy bounciness and chirpy cheerfulness, and Super Mario Land manages *that* very well indeed. The other sound effects are very much secondary, and in fact on occasion the music gets in the way of hearing them, but don't worry too much about that since when you *can* make them out you'll realise that they're mostly rather generic and unmemorable.
** Buying and verdict **
Unsurprisingly for a game selling well into seven figures, Super Mario Land is one of the very easiest Game Boy titles to find second-hand. If all you want is a working cartridge and perhaps the little plastic protective case, then as little as Ł4 should be sufficient. If you're after a fully boxed example with the instruction manual, then you will probably have to double that budget. It's still hardly a bank-breaker, and although personally I'd place its sequel significantly ahead on the all-time list, this first handheld outing for everybody's favourite plumber remains very playable and quite a worthwhile investment.
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Dragon Warrior Monsters (GB)
by MonsoonBaby
Dragon Warrior Monsters (known as Dragon Quest Monsters in Japan) is the first game in the vastly expansive, and successful, Dragon Quest series.
Released on the GameBoy Colour in 1998, Dragon Warrior Monsters follows the story of Terry, who has been forced into a quest in the magical land of Great Tree in order to save his ... kidnapped sister, Milly. Those who have played Dragon Quest VI will notice that this is the same Terry and Milly represented, but in this first game, they are small children. When Terry arrives in Great Tree, he is greeted by the King, who gives him his monster-a Slime called Slib (in a side-note, I kept Slib in my party and trained him right up until the end of the game. He never left my side-maybe it was those wide eyes and infectious grin of his?). With Slib at his side, the King tells Terry that if he wins the Monster Trainer's Starry Night Tournament, he is granted a wish. Knowing Milly's current predicament, I think we can all guess what Terry's wish would be right now. So, the player spends the entire game catching and training monsters, and traversing up the tournament ladder until they reach the final.
Like most RPGs, Dragon Warrior Monsters relies heavily on the levelling-up system in order to progress further in the game. The game becomes increasingly difficult by the end, and the player will find themselves defeated more often than not if they do not train and level up their monsters, and assign them new skills. The monsters are not as overly cute as those in Pokemon, but each has a cartoonish, and interesting design nonetheless.
Whilst it is true that Dragon Warrior Monsters shares follows the same game play as the Pokemon series, there are certain aspects that definitely set it apart. For instance, the breeding system is vastly complex. Not complex in a way that gamers would have difficulty understanding how to make their monsters breed, but in the sense that there are so many different choices during breeding. This means that many monsters will breed with almost any other, so players are never quite sure what breed will hatch out of the egg. For me, this was one of the most exciting parts of the game.
The breeding aspect may remain one of the most memorable aspects of the game, but what I also have fond memories of is the music (an adventurous, often cheerful sounding retro score), the huge variety of wild and wonderful monsters, and the large level of exploration involved. I have always been a huge fan of RPG's, and I find I am in my element if a game contains a huge amount of exploration, free-roaming and levelling up. Thankfully, Dragon Warrior Monsters contains all three of these aspects.
Overall, Dragon Warrior Monsters is an excellent game that combines a complex but significantly impressive breeding system, enjoyable RPG elements such as the exploration and item collecting sections, memorable music, and a satisfying story. Many people may dismiss this straight away as being a Pokemon copy, but I urge you to give it some credit-it is worthy of being classed as an excellent game. So excellent that it still remains one of my favourite games, even today.
-Also on Retro Kingdom http://retrokingdom.blogspot.com/2011/08/dragon-warrior-monsters.html
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