2009 seems to be the year of Handheld system anniversaries , we've had the 20 year birthday of the Game Boy, Wonderswan turned 10 back in March, the Atari Lynx is gonna be 20 in September and this week marks the 10 year birthday of the most awesome little Handheld system not made by Nintendo coming to the US, the Neo Geo Pocket Color.



So I'm in Australia, we never had the Neo Geo Pocket released down here, it was one of those systems like the Turbo that we only heard about in foreign Video Game mags. I never got a chance to enjoy one and I'm not sure if I would of, I was and guess I am a rather hardcore Nintendo fanboy and would not have a slice of anything non Nintendo related back then. At least I have matured enough of the last few years where I am fine with playing other stuff, anyway I digress. So yeah all I knew about the Neo Geo Pocket was that it had a crap load of Fighting games on it as well as Sonic (another reason me being the Nintendo fanboy I was to look down on it).



Years went by and I never really paid much attention to the Neo Geo Pocket, I did kind of always want one as it looked really cool, but as time went on it faded into the background. Fast forward to a few months back when the Game Boy had its 20th birthday and I really started getting back into all things Handheld gaming (well I've always been a Handheld gamer but it was only really a few months back I realised it and embraced it), I was buying Game Boy games left and right and then I got a sudden urge to buy a Neo Geo Pocket off ebay. Found a really nice looking clear one got it off ebay 2 weeks later it arrived.



The system feels awesome, just the right weight, I'm in love with the little dpad nub feels soo good I can see why Fighters work so well for it. I've only got Samurai Showdown 2 for it so far and I haven't played that much of it only due to the fact that I need to replace the internal battery for the system, but I've been told thats not a hard thing to do. I'm waiting on the Metal Slug games to arrive and I also just bought a massive stack of 11 games for 40 bucks US so I'm looking forward to my future of discovering all the great things about the Neo Geo Pocket. Its such an awesome little system and it would of been interesting to see how things would of played out had it been noticed for the awesome little system it is.



Its such a shame the way everything ended up for it with SNK getting bought out and then the Pocket getting killed off in the States. So heres to you Neo Geo Pocket Color, you are a fantastic little system and really deserved more then what you got. Granted your time on this world was short but damn what a hell of a time it was.

…So I can play them again
 
You know what sucks when there is a game you love to death but just for some reason can not go back and play. Most of the time I find that its mainly cause I remember too much about the game and me being me I get bored too easily. It can be the best game ever but if I’m getting bored and frustrated there is no point to me going on. The next 10 games are the games I want to go back and play again, but I can’t for some reason or another and I just wish I could wipe my memory of them so I can play them again.
 

When WiiWare came out there wasn’t a hell of a lot to play through all I picked up at launch was the amazing Toki Tori and Lost Winds (Toki Tori was a launch WiiWare game for us lot in the PAL regions). I got Lost Winds on launch day and would of finished it within a day. I’m not going to gripe on the length of the game, it was only a 1500 point game which I think is near 20 bucks Aus which I think is fair for a game that took me 4 hours. So while the game only took me 4 hours to finish, what an amazing 4 hours that was. Problem with such a short game is that there is hardly any replay value in it. Half the enjoyment I got out of Lost Winds was walking around trying to figure out where to go next. Now I know where to go and what to do and it really destroys the fun of it for me going back. Man I so hope they make a sequel sooner or later, soo want to go back to that game world soon.


 

I haven’t finished this game yet and trust me its not through lack of trying. I think I have had at least 3 failed attempts at finishing it. First time I got near the end, got the uber sword and everything and then cause I was a cheap ass and got a dodgy 3rd party memory card the game wiped on me. Second time I got to just before the end realised I had missed something and couldn’t get the uber sword, being the perfectionist that I am, I gave up and tried again. Final play through I just honestly could not be bothered I knew what was going to happen and as Eternal Darkness is not really a game with a strong gameplay system there was not much to keep me going and got bored. I just want to finish the game but its soo hard trying to sit through the same old levels over and over again.




I tried playing this again the other day, I was really in the mood for something Zelda related and 2d. I got up to the second dungeon I think and was just meh. Its an awesome game and all I’m not denying that, its just I’ve played it way way way too many times now and it just I dunno dare I say it feels boring to play now. I know whats going to happen, I can hum the themes in my head off by heart. It just all seems same old same old. Man I feel bad just for saying this. To be fair to the game this is the Zelda I have played the most if only cause its the one I've had the longest and maybe if I give it a break for a few years I'll be able to go back and play it again, one day.
 



I have a problem with RPGs in that I will pick them up, play halfway through them get bored (yay for ADD), stop playing for a few weeks come back and then have no idea where I was and really don’t want to start the game again because I know I’m gonna get bored again and even quicker this time cause I already know what’s going to happen more or less and I just really can’t be arsed sitting through 20 hours of gameplay to get back up to were I was, but I also for the life of me everytime I put it in can’t recall where the hell I am meant to go next. And not knowing where the hell I need to go is one of the most frustrating things in any RPG. So I want to forget I ever played the game so I can play it again cause I forget what I had done in the game, if that makes any sort of sense.


 

God damn I hate emulators. In my earlier days it was fine for me to play a game via an emulator I had no qualms about it at all. So I played through a ROM of Chrono Trigger, a game that sadly until the DS version never came out down here. I enjoyed my play through and finished the game. A few years latter when I was on a major retro game shopping spree I decided to pick up the game again cause lets face it, it is a damn amazing game. But alas I could not play through I had spoiled the game for myself and just really couldn’t be bothered. It’s the same with most RPGs once you’ve played through the game you’ve kinda seen everything, I know Chrono is different with its multiple endings and so on and I am trying to slog through it on DS right now. Still I really wish I hadn’t ruined the game for myself, so would of loved to have played it the way it was intended to be played.


 

After Fallout 3, this was my fav game of 2008, it was such an amazing experience to play through. Such an amazingly awesome puzzle game, each puzzle builds upon the last and makes you do things in new and interesting ways. So many OMG moments in the game when I finally figured out a solution to a puzzle. That’s also one of the pains about playing it again now. The experience is never going to be as strong as the first play through. I know what has to be done with each puzzle now and it really takes away that experience of figuring out the right answer. True the game does have a lot of replay value what with the OCD challenges and the World of Goo headquarters, but still I’m never gonna be able to play the game again and have the same experience and that sucks.
 



This goes for both the Golden Sun games just cause I more consider them 2 parts of the same game. I loved the Golden Sun games, easily up there as the best games on the Game Boy Advance. But again as is with most RPGs, there is just not really much incentive to play through them again. And its not like I haven’t tried but I just can’t seem to do it. I’m sure it’s a gameplay thing as with a lot of RPGs playing the same the main enjoyment I get out of them is the story, but when you know whats going to happen there is little reason to play through it again. Oh well at least there is the upcoming DS one to get me back into the games so yay for that.




I can still remember the first time I played this game, I got it from the shop and then got on the train to go to work, I then spent the next 20 mins on the train just paying the first level, a level you can finish in 3 mins if you want. I was just having soo much fun on it. I would have had the biggest goofiest grin on my face ever. That’s why I want to wipe my memory of this game, so I can play that first level again the way I did the first time. That and I've also played the hell out of this game, finished it with all characters, got all coins theres not a hell of a lot more for me to do in the game. This game is easily my fav DS game right now and I think I'm gonna need to blog more on it sooner or later. But I love this game to death and it would be soo awesome to wipe my mind clear and fall in love with it all over again.


 

I guess this goes with a lot Point & Click adventure games, once you’ve played through the game once theres not a hell of a lot of point to go back. You know where everything is you know every puzzle you know what you need to do. Which is annoying as hell cause it takes all the challenge out of it. Monkey Island is the main one for me just because its honestly the best one I’ve played and also cause I really want to play the new version on XBLA but I just can’t get into it cause I know everything like the back of my hand. That and I really don’t like the graphical style, if I could play with the old skin and the voice over I would, but alas you have to take the good with the bad.


 

This is the same as Kirby Canvas Curse, the game is still amazingly fun to play, but nothing in the world can compare to playing this through the first time. The first time you are in the Egg Galaxy with that music playing and this amazing little world to run all around and then you see whats around you, wow. Or how about the first time you see Mario flying through space with his arms stretched out. I know there is a sequel coming up, but I know what to expect with that, there is no way I’m ever gonna get the same feeling as I did when I first played it.


Or maybe instead of writing about how I can't play the games I've already played maybe I should just try and finish half the games I've got that I havent finished yet, but you know that would be like productive and not wasting time like writing this artivle was :P

So this week marks the 20th birthday of the Game Boy being unleashed on the western world way back in 1989. I’ve already done a whole series on the Game Boy back with my 20 Game Boy games in 20 Days. The whole point of that series was more to take a look back on the games that stood out to me and made me the gamer I am today. Thing is 20 games is in no way enough to cover the great legacy that the Game Boy has. There are all the games I didn’t buy when I was younger, the games I’ve discovered over time, the games I never got a chance to play. So that’s what this series is going to be for, not just the games I played as a wee lad, but all the greats on the system I never owned as well as the rest I grew up with. And while we are at it, the Game Boys Legacy is not in Game Boy games but for all hand held games so I figure why the hell not look at some stuff from other systems. So lets book ourselves a reservation and check into the Handheld Hotel.
 

 
The Game Boy Color was a big deal when it came out. In my humble neck of the woods the 1st handheld wars had finished by 1997, but I can recall a few times I would get mocked for not having a Game Gear or a Lynx and why I stuck with the crappy black and white Game Boy. And then 1998 happened and the world of Nintendo Handheld had changed just like it had for Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ when she left Kansas and entered to Wonderful World of OZ in the 1939 movie. It was around the time of the Game Boy Color that I started getting back into buying video game mags. I had given up on them a few earlier when there was a big shake up in the staff on NMS. But things were heating up in the world of Nintendo for me at the time I needed a mag to get my source of video game news. Also happening around the same time as the Game Boy Color launch was Turok 2 for N64. Acclaim love them or hate them were a huge part of the N64’s support. And without a doubt their major brand name was the Turok games.
 


I’ve never played Turok 1 in either its N64 or handheld variants but I didn’t care, the amount of hype that game was getting, it would have been the first of many potential Goldeneye killers as many video game mags started referring to any new FPS that was hitting the N64 market. And every new N64 FPS it seemed needed a Game Boy conversion, Amorines had one, Perfect Dark had one and yes The Turok games had theirs. Of course the Game Boy being as primitive as it was FPS weren’t something you saw on it (unless it was Faceball 2000) so you had a lot of these odd ports that where more designed to take advantage of the 2d playing space. Turok 2 was a relatively simple run and gun platformer kinda in the same vein as a Contra or a Turrican game. The game starts you off as Joshua Fireseed walking the streets in an interesting little prologue level until you find some sacred item that turns you into the legendary Turok the Dinosaur Hunter. From that point you have to run and jump your ways through various levels fighting off the hordes of Dinosaur things with various auto scrolling dino riding levels chucked in for good measure.



The controls are pretty solid and I never found myself dieing cheap deaths, would have been nicer had changing weapons been made a little easier but what are you gonna do when you only have a few buttons to deal with I guess. The sound is also pretty good, the music has a very C64 feel to it which I guess would be mainly down to the fact that the developers Bit Managers hail from Spain and its just something I've noticed in a lot of early Euro made games. As for graphics it looks good I guess, the game was in the first wave of Game Boy Color games and one of those ones that could be played on both original and color versions of the system. The animation is quite fluid something you would expect from a late gen Game Boy game but nothing on the late gen Game Boy color games (aka Shantae), but for when it came out it was an amazing looking game well for me anyway. Looking back now its not that crash hot, the backgrounds are rather bland looking. It funny looking back at the Game Boy Color graphics cause they sort of seem to be their own thing in the grand scheme of video game graphics. I mean here you have a system that is as powerful as a NES, but I dunno that games don't look like NES games, they look like GBC games, ever ports of NES games like Cystalis and Super Mario Bros DX just don't look like their console versions. Then again I guess when you think about it, most of the 8bit systems graphically wise look nothing alike so mot point I guess.



As I said this is the first GBC game I got, I don't think it took me that long to finish, its not exactly a long game. I'm pretty sure I finished it while I was waiting in the car for my mum while she was at a hospital visiting someone. I think I finished it in about a week from getting it, I can remember being a little disappointed in how quick it too me to finish, I did play through it a few more times but after that it got left by the wayside and eventually traded in for something else. Its quite sad to see how Turok has sort of faded away from the spot light now, true thats no ones fault but Acclaim but back in the day Turok was huge. It was the main console FPS franchise outside of whatever Rare was bringing the table and was one of the cornerstones in the N64 library. On the Game Boy the series wasn't much more then a run & gun, but it was still fun I've heard good stuff about Rage Wars and number 3 so I look forward to checking them out sooner or later. Next week I think I feel the itch for some monochromatic SHMUP fun so I'll see you all then, peace out.

So I've had my DSi since it launched down here. I wasn't going to get one at first, I was quite content with my DS Lite and there was not much that appealed to me about the DSi at first. When you just glance at the new features the DSi brings to the table there was nothing that really appealed to me. Cameras where meh as I already had one on my phone. Music playback, well thats what my mp3 player is for. As for DSiWare which was the most interesting thing for me, the launch line up was not really overly appealing to me. Then the launch week came and I thought stuff it I'll get one. So I traded in my DS Lite and a few games that I no longer played (Golden Eye Rogue Agent, Zoo Tycoon, Mario 64 DS, Asphalt and Metroid Prime Hunters I think) and got myself a DSi. My immediate impressions on the system where great, it felt good and I really liked the new matte finish, felt odd at first but I've really come to like it. The size of the system also just felt better then that of the DS Lite and for something like a handheld system the overall feel of it is rather important.



It wasn’t jus the form factor that made the DSi feel better then its predecessor the DS Lite.  On the firmware side, things were a lot better. You could now take out DS cards while at the main menu without having to turn the system off. If you wished to play a different game while you were already playing one just hit the power button and it would take you back to the DSi menu. However as cool as this stuff was, its not going to sell the system to someone let alone convince them that the system is worth the extra cash they would need to put down on it.
 


The main selling points for the DSi are the camera and the DSiWare games at this stage, The camera while not really made for the so called “Hardcore” gamers I can imagine the “Casuals” eating it up. As I have shown in my previous blog I have found some fun to be had with the camera but that stuff will get old rather quickly I imagine. I find it odd that Nintendo did not do that with the DSi as they did with the Wii in that each system has its only friend code and you can send messages to each other. Would have been a great thing to be able to take a photo and then send off the photo to a friend. Maybe something in a future Firmware update will make this a possibility.
 


The main selling point for myself with the DSi for me though is the DSiWare. Thus far the DSiWare has been a real mixed bag, you have a lot of trash like the various clocks and calculators on it, which would be fine despite the fact that they want us to pay for them, to really good stuff like the Art Style games. I’ve got six DSi games so far, Aquite, Pictopict, Boxlife, Kubos, A Little Bit of Dr Mario & A Little Bit of Planet Puzzle League. Now these are all good games and anyone owning a DSi needs to get Boxlife, but the one problem with them is variety, they are all puzzle games.
 


Now don’t get me wrong, puzzle games and handheld gaming go hand in hand and its been that way every since the dawn of the hand era with the Game Boy. But the Game Boy also had other titles at launch like Super Mario Land, Tennis and so on to go with Tetris. True DSiWare does have some other stuff on there like Asphalt 4 & Real Soccer 2009, to shake up the endless wave of Puzzle games, as I have played neither I can’t speak for their quality. Its been over 3 months since the launch and we still don’t have anything on DSiWare that I would call a system seller. Mario vs Donkey Kong 3 is the closest thing to that at this stage (alas that game is yet to come out in the humble PAL regions as of yet but we live in hope).
 


The thing is for a lot of gamers it’s the games on the system that make us want to buy it and thus far there is not much on the DSi for a lot of gamers to give up their DS Lite for a DSi. Its a real shame that developers have not really started to make use of the DSi’s features yet. The DSi has more power under its hood then the DS but I’ve yet to see a game that takes advantage. To be fair however if I was a developer I wouldn’t be making games that could only be played on the DSi at this stage. The amount of DS’s out there in the world would just make making a DSi only game at this stage way too stupid.
 


I’ve always looked at the jump from DS to DSi as kinda like a halfway point between the jump from the Game Boy to Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance to the Game Boy micro. With the Game Boy Color you had an awesome system with the same functionality as the original Game Boy and then a whole lot of extras on top of it. There was no question if you should get a GBC over a GB you just did. With the Game Boy micro what you had was an upgrade in the look of the system at the expense of features like backwards compatibility. The jump to the DSi should have been as big as the jump the Game Boy Color, but it falls way short of being something people want. I guess its different in that the Game Boy Color bought something we had been craving for the Game Boy for years, the DSi on the other hand I don’t think anyone was really asking for more power or 2 cameras. Which brings me back to the point of DSiWare and why it is soo important to the future of the DSi.
 


Nintendo should really be pushing DSiWare to be the main focus of the DSi experience. We should be seeing lots of AAA quality titles on the service to give people a reason to own a DSi. There are some really good DSiWare games as I said before, but they are only puzzle games and even though I am a huge fan of puzzle games I think the days of seeing puzzle games selling a handheld system are long behind us. I’m hoping that we do see a Virtual Console added to the DSi sooner rather then later as I think something like that would get a lot of interest in the DSi. Another thing I would like to see Nintendo do would maybe bring some of the older DS games to DSiWare, stuff like Polarium, Yoshi Touch and Go, Meteos or Kirby Canvas Curse. Would be a great way for people who missed out on some of the older DS games a chance to play catch up.
 


Something it looks like we are seeing more of on DSiWare if Japan is any indication is older DS games being broken down into smaller bite sized chucks. Japan has just had Electroplankton broken down into smaller sized portions for DSiWare. Also just came out for DSiWare (for us PAL areas at least anyway) is A Little Bit of Planet Puzzle League, which is great for someone like me who never got around to owning the original one. I would love it if other publishers would go this route on DSiWare, maybe if its too risky to release something like Retro Game Challenge 2 as a stand alone title, how about release it as episodic content on DSiWare, would make a lot more sense then releasing it in store I guess.
 


All I really want to see at the end of the day is good games. I will spend my money on them, they just need to give me a reason to do so. It’s a shame looking at the DSi right now as I can see sooo much potential in it what with the DSi Store, system memory, SD card slot, Camera, all of it. They could be doing soo much more right now then what they are. I’m not saying these past 3 months have been bad for the DSi. Do I regret buying a DSi, hell no, I’ve had lots of fun on it the Art Style games are amazing. But that’s me and I’m a guess I am a hardcore gamer when it comes to all things handheld. But I still find it hard to recommend to other people to get a DSi at this stage. There is no point right now, I’m hoping things may change sooner rather then later. I’m hoping the DSi becomes the awesome system it can be and not just the norm cause Nintendo is phasing out the DS Lite. I still don’t think that the DSi justifies the higher price point at this stage, hopefully things will change.

Something fun I've found to do on the DSi is to take photos of stuff and then draw over it using the the picture editing software its got on there. I'm not the best at drawing, but I think its somewhat cool to muck around with.










I'm not saying I'm the best artist ever, but meh I think they look cool. Oh well at least I found something somewhat entertaining to do with the DSi's camera.

And to show you what I mean by I'm not the best drawer in the world, below is what I would think is the best pic I've ever drawn.



Its meant to be Kirby riding a rainbow but alas all I had on me at the time was a blue pen, yay for getting bored at work I guess. I just really wish I could draw well, oh well practice makes perfect I guess.

*Days oh so not concurrent

So I hope you all enjoyed my 20 Game Boy games in 20 Days (Days definitely not concurrent), I honestly enjoyed writing it up. For me thats the most I every written for anything video game related other then a few forum posts around the place. I'm not much of a writer, much better at talking then writing articles. But I think I did good with this series, just wish I could of gotten it out in a more timely fashion. For anyone who wants to go back and check out some of the older posts and really CBF just clicking on my name above and seeing all my old posts well the you can just click on any of the links below.

Day 1: Tetris
Day 2: Ghostbusters 2
Day 3: Golf
Day 4: Super Mario Land 2
Day 5: Gremlins 2
Day 6: Kirby's Dream Land
Day 7: Terminator 2
Day 8: Pokemon Blue
Day 9: Snow Bros Jnr
Day 10: Metroid 2
Day 11: Sneak Snakes
Day 12: Power Quest
Day 13: James Bond 007
Day 14: Revenge of the 'Gator
Day 15: Alien 3
Day 16: Mortal Kombat 2
Day 17: Pokemon Silver
Day 18: Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly
Day 19: WWF Superstars 2
Day 20: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Something I wanted to keep to with this series was keep it more about my experiences with the Game Boy while I was growing up. The Game Boy was the system that set me on the path I ended up on as a video gamer. Had I started on a NES or a Master System or whatever things would of ended a lot differently. So with the series instead of just going with the 20 best Game Boy games I went with the ones that stood out the most in my memory from my early years of gaming. Hence why stuff like Gremlins 2 makes the list over something great like Donkey Kong 94.



In doing this thing I've come to appreciate the Game Boy more and its made me love the thing more then ever. I've been playing soo many Game Boy games over the last few months. I'm just amazed how well some of these games still hold up to this day. Add to that the rate I've been buying Game Boy games off ebay as of late, and not just ones I used to own, but ones I overlooked at the time for various reasons, which brings me to my next point.



I realised something while I was doing this list, that to talk about only 20 games for the Game Boy in no way does the system justice. There are sooo many games for the system that you could just talk about them forever. Also the lack of Game Boy Color games I covered annoys me as it was an important part of the Game Boys life that I feel like I glossed over a little and there are some truly amazing titles in the Colors library. So starting in a few weeks I'll be doing a new series covering the rest of the Game Boys library, hopefully this series will more regular then this. This next series will not just be the games I played when I was younger (and trust me there is still a lot of them to go over), but the ones that I missed out on for whatever reason (Shantae anyone?)



So until I beg you go back and dust of your Game Boy and give the old friend some love. Its still even 20 years later one of the most amazing video game systems ever made. Thank you Gunpei Yokoi, you made an amazing system that will never ever be forgotten, may you rest in peace.