Golbat: A Blog

Ever play a competitive match in a game against someone who looked super-underleveled, but still lost horribly due to raw skill or better game knowledge? Yes, I'm talking about 'smurf accounts', a plague on multiplayer games pretty much everywhere. Well, it ends up PRANG, my Pseudo-Random Number Generator hookup bot, heard me complaining about smurf accounts so much, it dredged up a date about the 90's cartoon the term 'smurf' came from. So here we are, reviewing my night with Smurfs Travel the World. Let's see if these smurfs are worth cursing out too!

Not sure if 'smurf the world' is rude or cute. I never got the whole 'replace every verb with “smurf”’ thing. Are they always being humongous jerks or...?

So the game starts with a pretty arbitrary cutscene about some crystal shattering into pieces, forcing a shard fetch-quest on both token girl Smurfette and...Inquisitive Smurf? Was that actually even a character? Meh, just go with 'Generic Smurf' instead. Or better yet, don't go with him at all! I can only assume there's no difference between the two. And I mean like legit no difference, I mean if there was, then how can one female birth every similarly-aged male in the Smurf Village? It's like reverse Gerudo Valley, replacing the super-hard horse archery course with inbreeding.

You know, the magic crystal that's the main power source in Smurf lore. I'm sure you're all aware of it, right? Definitely not made up outta nowhere as a MacGuffin.

You start your globe-trotting platforming adventure through miscellaneous obligatory terrain, like jungles, ice, deserts, Australia, etc. You need to scour each of the levels for 7 crystal shards, and they're not always simple to get! Some are held by enemies, some are at the end of high-up platforming challenges, and you may need to go backwards through a level to find others. Along the way, you collect what I assume to be trash people left places, because we're conscientious of that messaging to sell this game to worried moms or something? Not sure why collecting trash gets you extra lives, but grab a dumpster and start harvesting life force, cos the game is kinda rough.

Is this the only map the Smurfs have? Can't they like photocopy Library Smurf's atlas?

I'm not sure if this was a Game Boy port of an SNES title or not, but the game suffers from typical Game Boy issues of not being very clear on what's a platform versus what's background. 4-color limited palettes will do that to you. I found myself dying due to passing through what I thought were obstacles or touching static water tiles, thinking it was just flooring. The enemies were sometimes pretty annoying as well, shooting at you the second they pop on-screen, giving little time to dodge. At least the variety was okay, though most looked like what you'd get if you could do one of those google translate back-and-forth things but with cartoon characters instead. Pretty much end up hokey and unsettling lookin'.

Definitely crappy design here, as there's only one thing I can assume these monkeys are throwin' at you.

That said, the platforming was okay outside of the few terribad enemies. The game devs actually tried to come up with some interesting obstacles, to my surprise! It had kind of standard rope stuff and bouncy junk, but it also had me flying kites up to higher areas, grabbing birds to soar horizontally (assuming you could tell good birds from bad [protip: you can't]), and vine-like swinging kind of like Donkey Kong Country. You had a lame kick attack that was usually useless but could be used to deflect some enemy attacks, so that was neat in the few instances it was useful, too. There were even swimming levels as a change in pace. Though that thoroughly confused me since water killed me before? Whatever, toss on that bikini and go do some polar bear plunges.

No really, how freaking big was that crystal explosion to launch shards all the way to Greenland?

There's not much else to talk about. Though I would be remiss to mention the one sidescrolling level with...I assume it’s Azrael, the evil cat from the Smurfs? I guess so, but it looks like someone dismembered the thing and put its parts on some death robot off-screen, with a random paw super low appearing now and then and a soulless expression on the bobbing head. Definite horror movie vibes happening here.

I hear this thing still roams the landscapes of Texas. Maybe that's why Texans are all crazy about packing all the time?

In the end, you bag crystal shards, take down O2, free Dream Land, and...I guess just kinda go home? Or teleport? I don't know, how are these blue things even traveling? Do they bum rides on planes? Is there a frequent flyer program? The game disappoints and never goes into these details. Maybe it was in the manual. Or on some wiki lore page somewhere, because you just know that would exist.

Looks like y'all picked up some radiation along the way. You may want to get a cancer screening....

Alright, so at the end of the night, I bid the Smurfs adieu and walked on home. I'll confess that I ended up kinda enjoying this one. Sure, it has it's problems, but it wasn't really that bad for a licensed game. I supposed I'd date it again sometime for funsies, or at least refer it to a friend who looking for a game date. It's not perfect, but who is? I mean, besides Vanity Smurf. That guy is unflappable. Speaking of being flappable, take this Sprite of Passage! It's quite literally a sprite of passage, as it deals with passage through the air via bird taxi. Hope Smurfette remembers not to tip the driver.

Well today's date was a blast from my past. Remember way back when in yesteryear, before the advent of anime in the west? Probably not? Well hey, let's go back in time to when Sailor Moon was like the only anime being shown on TV. Okay, so yeah, it's really not super-great and all (at least the dub wasn't...), but whatever, it was my jam as a young impressionable lad of...what was I, like 10 or something? I can't remember, but since my old grey brick Game Boy was the cornerstone of my youth, I am a little excited to revisit a merging of two old passions. That's right! We're gonna play some Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon R!

It starts with a cutscene, of course. This IS based off an anime, so we gotta get a fill of some anime girls with their obligatory high school problems! Sadly for me, it's all in Japanese, but I can provide some crappy machine translations to no doubt elucidate the action-packed dialogue!

"Today, every one of them..."

Oh. Guess I shouldn't have just kind of took a random screenshot in the middle of nowhere. Well, uhh...I'll ad-lib. Today, everyone is apparently milling about whatever Sailor Moon's hometown was. Serena was being a git and verbally harassing everyone she found on the street. That kind of accurately described the first phase of gameplay in this game: an 'adventure' where you have to talk to the right person, then talk to someone else, etc. until the game decides that surprise! You found the area's boss! (My apologies to the script writers here for my clear bypassing of their hard work.)

why hello there fellow school girl, let us talk about boys and how hard maths are

I get some bad vibes of two sorts: One, adventure games where you just try things randomly until you click the right thing and the game decides to let you progress; and Two, Mario is Missing. An odd marriage, especially considering the random boring mini-games they sprinkle in here and there, like matching cards, guessing if the next card will be higher or lower than the current card, and of course the staple of youth fun, sliding puzzles.

At least Final Fantasy gave you money for completing these dumb things....

Well, luckily the game isn't just mingling. There's a platforming phase where you use magical powers to jump, shoot foes, and do battle with evildoers from the Sailor Moon universe! Though I really don't recall any of these enemies since I never watched this season of the show, so I can't speak to their accuracy to the source material. The platforming is accurate for girls wearing high heels, though. These jumps're so stiff, you can mount 'em on a ladder and do high dives offa them.

I can only assume these are the Japanese temple versions of Jehovah's witnesses

The bosses are unsurprisingly dull! Pretty much the only cool thing about them is their animations, which are alright and fairly fluid. Combat is summed up as ‘spam the attack button and don't even try to dodge, because who cares?’ You have more health than every boss in the game. Which is a good thing, ‘cos it's not like you can actually move around and dodge anything anyway.

Ahh yes, the handstand of dominance. A most impressive display for an inter-dimensional being bent on destruction!

So after thumb-wrestling a boss, you get kicked back into story mode. It shifts the scout you play as, but who cares, they all blabber to randos on the street. Come on, just let me fight things! This sucks! While the best aspect of the street-roaming phase that gets changed up is the road layout, later platforming levels get a little cute with their traps and enemies. Still, though, it's all stupidly easy and kinda boring. Except that one time Sailor Mercury was dodging spike mace balls in a sea of scaffolding. Dang, I liked that episode of the show!

Why can't they ever have spiky cubes? Why always balls? C'mon devs, get creative!

Also, I feel the need to point out that the background artists definitely got paid more than the foreground artists. There is so little effort put into the foreground, you may as well be playing an old Game Boy g...oh. Right.

Mmyep, this sure looks like release material and not placeholders during development.

The story starts getting kooky near the end, at least from what my illiterate self can tell. Your first foes are some David Bowie wannabes. Next, a cloaked fortune teller pops in to ruin your self esteem and flash their $40 glass orb (as they do). Eventually, you meet the REAL enemy pulling the strings. It's...a planet? I think? A planet with a dirt lip and a mohawk. Sure. That's fine, I don't see anything that could go wrong with that.

"...my life is Wiseman. This is my heart." Yeah no, I don't think you should have put 'Organ Donor' on your driver's license then, buddy

"Moon Crystal Power!" The faces are definitely part of the power summoning rite. I get a similar look from my wife when I take the last ice cream bar from the freezer

The ending was lackluster, really. I mean, don't get me wrong, the character portraits were pretty good, but you don't get many more unique ones in the final cutscene. But hey, at least you can use the existing ones to redo some popular internet memes.

Overall, not really that great. It was pretty disappointing, but I mean, that's kind of spot-on for all of my revisits to fond childhood memories. So what I've learned from this date is that holy moly did I have terrible taste as a kid! While my younger self might have sprung for it, I ain't going on a date with this one again. Nopes all around! But at least I found a baller Sprite of Passage from one of the lame mini games! Have it as a reminder to never revisit your childhood. Keep that past rosy!

Been a while! I think some ample recovery time is called for after trying out odd game after odd game. A couple bad dates can really muck up any enthusiasm to try again. Well, I'm refreshed now and ready to hit the scene again! C'mon, PRANG, matchmake me with a winner tonight! I'm feeling amped and energized!

RoboCop vs. the Terminator? Well if that doesn't just sound sweet as a high-priced room at a hotel! Hopefully it's a battle of steel and shells and not just like the impatient staring contest it looks like on the title screen. Let's get right to it!

I feel like RoboCop doesn't just mildly go on patrol. I also feel like he wouldn't do paperwork or any of the other super-boring tasks police actually do.

We start with a stiff animation of RoboCop walking past a title card. So between these two sci-fi titans, we play as RoboCop, eh? Sounds fine, let's take a peek at lovely downtown Detroit!

I assume this is what Detroit normally looks like after hearing about it all the time in the media. This game is only reaffirming my vision!

So what we have here is a slow-paced shooter/platformer. Think of Contra, but your player character moves at half speed, jumps like a squirrel in a full-body cast, and can only shoot forward and diagonally up. Also, enemies spawn relentlessly, are tiny, and you can only have 2 shots on the screen at once. So, uhh, to say...not superb. But hey! They took time animate little bullet casings flying out of your gun, so it's got that going for it!

The level design is mildly amusing I guess, with paths through sewers, up and down ladders, across pits using overhead pipes, and some other staples of platforming games like lame moving platforms and stacks of boxes. The music is blasé and for whatever reason there's a constant droning sound effect, like RoboCop here has old mechanical parts rattling around constantly. The whole scene kind of killed my initial excitement, but oh man! At the end of level 2 or so I met the Terminator! Let's get this rockin' pop culture battle started!

The battle of shades versus visors begins

Aaand it's a really stupid fight that I didn't even get hit during since you can duck to avoid anything Terminator can do. Wow, is this really what the ultimate cyborg badass is capable of? Also, does this mean the game's over? I mean, the title was RoboCop vs. the Terminator. Why'd we jump right into the title bout? Why's it so pathetic? I mean, I know the answer is 'because it was jammed onto a tiny Game Boy cartridge, but come ON, game devs, gimme something more!

Guy's like, "Oh hey there, take an explosive yo-yo, officer rustbucket"

Well, spoiler alert, it's not over. We end up casually beating some more Terminator models, navigating through Omni Corp, defeating some really irritating foes, and then time traveling to Los Angeles in the future. Yeah, I don't know where time travel comes from here. RoboCop just kinda casually walks by as he always does and poof! Greeted by the future.

I always wondered what Los Angeles was going to do with the piles and piles of human remains they constantly generate. Good to see the future folk figured out that piling them on the streets was the correct solution!

The future is always bright. But the enemies are really starting to get annoying. Some split up and divebomb you, and with the limited, stiff offensive capabilities you have, you really start getting reamed by things. Plus, enemy spawns can just keep happening if they're on the screen edge, so some platforming is nigh impossible without getting hit. That wouldn't normally be a problem but one hit make makes you lose the only powerup in the game to improve your offense, because why should you have fun?

Eventually, you fight some giant flying drone with an annoying hitbox. It explodes with little fanfare and you go straight to Skynet.

Yoiks, the game starts trying to get artsy here, as Skynet is all in this weird perspective that makes it hard to tell what's a platform and what isn't. Also, you have tons of electric traps and foes spamming the screen all at once, so you truly never know what's going on here. Sometimes electricity counts as being behind you and it passes harmlessly through you. It's all very confusing, which I mean kind of makes sense for the future. Maybe hitboxes evolve?

But then, after a long level full of lasers and tiny platforms, you reach what I assume is the central brain of Skynet! Hope you're packin' some heavy ammo, Rob O'Cop, this brain don't think you got much time left to live!

Man, this brain sure poops out a lot of tiny keyholes

So this boss is pretty much exactly the same as the prior drone boss. Amazing. Well, it dies easy, so I win easy. Now let's take it easy and see the ending sequence!

Good job robocop, you get a gold star and a prize from the toy jar

Oh. That's all I'm getting, huh? Yuuup, it just dumps you to the title screen after Mr. O'Cop does his dumb walking animation past the text. Geez, they were really proud of that animation, I guess. It plays all the freaking time throughout the game. Whatever, I took down both OmniCorp and Skynet on a single shift. I ought to at least get a time off award or something. Maybe Officer of the Month? Someone's gotta dethrone Sullivan. Jerk's been Officer of the month for like 2 years straight. (That buttkisser...)

So that was the thrilling, action-packed journey of two hard cyber men duking it out. My life is considerably less enriched than I was hoping for. Well, at least I can say, "nope, not gonna date again" and go hit the showers before I go home.

Oh hey, look! There's was a Sprite of Passage in my locker! Well, why don't you take it, rookie? You might need it since you're starting the next shift covering all the paperwork I generated by forceably entering shifty corporations and traveling through time. Lucky dog, you!

You all know PRANG, my Pseudorandom Number Generation matchmaker? Well, it recently gave me this weird questionnaire to try and set up a date more suited for my odd personality. I happily filled it out, hoping for a real connection to be made with my next game date. We fed it through the sketchy scantron machine attachment that somehow got grafted to PRANG's chassis and, after an ear-splitting buzzing that may have made me slightly deaf, the results were printed out. They dictated that I needed a real family game. I guess that triggered something special in PRANG, as it quickly flipped around and grabbed what I can assume totally wasn't the first title in its game list with the word 'Family' in it: The Addams Family!

Man, computers are too complicated for simpletons like me. Well, let's get datin' and see if this is a match! I started the game as what I can only imagine is a chubby, tiny clone of Gomez Addams. I mean, why else would all of the house decor be the size of 2.5 Gomezes? (Is that a unit of measurement? Well it is now)

He's small, but can jump like 3 Gomezes in the air! He's like the Jack Russel's of 90's characters

So you run around your house looking for sub-areas, throwing daggers that go about 2 Gomezes in front of you before disappearing. Enemies lurk at every step, and boy are they horrifying! Mostly in how crappily they are programmed and placed. Bats flap to your level and never deviate, pretty much ensuring you get hit. Ghosts constantly spawn and may be right on staircase tops, meaning you get hit as soon as a map loads. You can jump on some enemies to stun them but like you have no indicator what can and can't be given the ol' hop-treatment.

I'm not sure if this guy wants a hug or is holding a really heavy invisible box

None of this would be an issue if you didn't have limited ammo. From the get-go, your knives are all you have. In a boss fight and run out? Well, go commit suicide, because you can't do anything. Fun! The bosses are alright, though. Most are too easy, but they are definitely interesting. Like in one case, there's this bear that cannot attack you if you jump behind it. In another, the Grim Reaper's best weapon is spitballs? I feel like there's some lost lore here in the Addam's Family universe that needs fanfic-ing.

Still waiting for this model to be offered at Build-a-Bear Workshop

When you beat a boss, you rescue a family member and get a cool new item. Usually, they're weapons of some sort, but some instead help you to traverse the world. While this could have been a nice progression system, there's really only one place where this is required, and instead progress is tied to how many family members you have rescued. Only THEN do random doors in your own house become accessible. I think Gomez needs to install those doors with open-able locks that constantly prevent my toddler from dying alone from starvation in most rooms of my house because she doesn't know how to unlock locks she's already locked us out of.

Your gratitude is well-received, Lurch my man. But can we talk about what the heck some frozen water is going to do besides get my pockets wet in like 5 minutes?

There are also small potion powerup things that transform you into typical movie monsters, but none are really super-interesting. Regardless, I get through a bunch of ho-hum platforming levels, collect my fam, electrocute my brother some more (as is tradition), and make it to the final level! This level is akin to the final level in Super Mario Land 2 in that it is long, filled with neat traps, and pretty rough. I do like the decor, though, what with buzzsaws, unmarked falling spike chandelier things, and amazingly large guillotines.

I may be an Addams myself because these little death traps actually made me smile a bit. Very cute, level designers! I like your chops!

So after I boogie down his gauntlet of Super Meat Boy paraphernalia, I at last make it to the final boss's room. And he's...some...guy? This is probably a dude from the movie, but I haven't seen it in years, so I have no clue. But like legit all he does is stand, jump, and throw knives. Well, two can play that game! No really, I mean like, that's literally all I do, too. En guarde!

Oh hey, Troy McClure is in this game, too!

So we have the lamest version of the Dark Link fight from Zelda 2 ever and I end up on top. I save my wife from what appears to be some killer soup stock? Sorry honey, I won't get to experience your umami tonight, we gotta bury this businessman's corpse and stop Lurch from overheating the fridge's icemaker. Oh, but where are my manners, caramia? Let's catch that ending sequence first! What should we do with the rest of the Addams Family now that we have secured their freedom?

I like that, of all action verbs at their disposal, they chose 'throttle'.

Brilliant. Well, that was a quick jaunt. Not great, but also not horrible? I probably wouldn't try to date it again, but that's more because I feel I've experienced all it had to offer. Gomez should either find some super mushroom or hire a better home decorator who isn't a giant? But knowing the Addams Family, they probably know literal giants. Whatever, he probably need a stool to reach his toilet, but that is all his choice. As for you, your choice is whether or not to take this Sprite of Passage. (I'd say do it! You earned it!)

I feel like the manager made the enemy designer give him 2 pitchforks because he wanted the boss to at least appear SOMEwhat spoopy, but didn't have the heart to tell the designer to start over

BONUS: I feel like sharing this music track from the game because I think it's absolutely baller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlTNNOeX-E0&list=PL5YdbMaKCdoiF4XkX-ac-4M9QU1UPjlmq&index=5

There was a time when Looney Tunes were like one of the staples of cartoons. They acted as an inspiration to other illustrators and paved the way for many of the cartoons we know today. As such, it's easy to understand why they were used in so many video games back in the old times. Nowadays they are more or less relinquished for cash grabs like the new Space Jam movie, but in the past...wait no, they were still cash grabs! Crud! There go my debate points on nostalgia! Well, I guess I at least have a case in point: meet today's blind date, Bugs Bunny Collection.

As it would turn out, this is a Japanese game that combines the thrilling action of a game just called 'Bugs Bunny' and its sequel with a clearly obvious name, 'Crazy Castle II'.

Man, the thumbnails look like they were the TI-83 calculator versions of the games

Oh-ho! A double date! Well, I'm not sure if dating the same-ish game twice counts as a double or not, but who cares! Semantics! Let's start with 'Bugs Bunny'. It's vague enough to be about nearly anything! Does it have to do with anvils? Outsmarting hunters? Understanding correct Google Maps directions to Albuquerque? Only one way to find out!

ok it's hotel mario

In a nutshell, you collect carrots by navigating doors, stairs, and pipes, avoiding enemies and using sparse attacking powerups to defend yourself. Out of a nutshell...uhhh...that's really it. There's no clever additions to the levels to spice things up or anything. About the only changes you get in the game is the count of Looney-Tune-themed enemies that want to walk into you. And sometimes that number is a ridiculous slap in the face (and I ain't talking slapstick, Looney-Tunes-type of slap).

Cats...cats everywhere

You can't tell from screenshots, but the controls are horrid. If you start to move down a staircase, you MUST walk down to the bottom. This makes avoiding foes your main issue. You can try to fight some enemies, but attack powerups are rare and the random items you can push into or onto them to defeat them are usually put in dumb locations that really don't foster their use. Enemies will stand still or gravitate back and forth without changing strategies. That sounds manageable, but they will stand still atop a pipe you need to go up, or other times they will refuse to go down pipes, blocking you off from a carrot you need to finish the level. Oh, and one hit and you die. One level had me racing to get a specific carrot before an enemy went up a specific pipe, as he would be stuck forever up there on a 2-tile wide platform. The saving grace for most of the game is that you can, for whatever logical reason, enter a pipe at the same time as an enemy and navigate through without getting hurt. You'll be using the pipe invincibility to avoid a lot of enemies, so get used to watching slow pipe bulges a lot. (That sentence sounds so gross...)

I'm sure there's some lame pun about getting a hare clog in these pipes, but I am plumb out of good puns

So there are 80 levels of this boring, mind-numbing game with shoddy controls and crappy music. And I, like an absolute goon, sat through them all. Some were ridiculously hard, most were simple. Difficulty wasn't linear either, because of course it wasn't! The cherry on top, though, was the lackluster ending that captured my sentiments of this game perfectly:

Brings tears to my eye. And like I mean that I am crying because I want those 2 hours of my life back, dangit

Ugh. Anyway. Let's go to the next! Maybe the programmers learned from their mistakes and improved their formula for Cah-razy Castle part deux!

This one has a story and cutscenes! Far as I can tell, a big doofy-looking witch kidnapped a duplicate of Bugs in drag and locked her in a castle that really doesn't look particularly crazy to me. False advertising, man. Nothing wacky here, just like ring the doorbell and ask to see her gas meter, then find your femme self and bolt! Well, you WOULD, but the navigation of this castle is apparently bloody terrible.

This looks like a really intense DDR song

Luckily, the programming is a bit better this time for movement, and the graphics look a bit better. The core gameplay...well, it's exactly the same. Okay, you can now cross ropes, use a couple new tools to traverse the map, and utilize jump and warp pads to get around, but you still go in doors, avoid walking enemies, use pipes, and collect junk to finish levels. This time, it's keys instead of carrots (because this witch has like 200 different locks on her doors?). Attacking items are more plentiful now, too, and there are FAR fewer levels. So at least there are better experiences somewhere, right? So we good now?

This castle would never get past any house reseller's inspection with a plumbing layout like that

Of course not! Things are still repetitive. The programming is still clunky at times, like when controlling jump pads (which either launch you into space or gently set you 2 block above your position...on the same jump pad). Enemy AI is still atrocious. The icing on the stale, store-bought red velvet cake is the amazing glitch I somehow triggered that replaced the typical non-skippable 20-second clip of Bugs walking slowly to a door that plays after you beat a level with fragments of his head shooting into the sky like fireworks. Now, that would actually be an entertainment upgrade, but all fun halts since the game was caught in some infinite loop, essentially locking me on the end level screen.

I think I found more than 13 bugs here, fellas

So, I figured I'd earned a break after getting an acme-sized headache from these dumb games and just looked up the password to the last level. It wasn't too bad, actually kind of fun, but still had no new features. However! There was another level afterward, and it was a boss fight! You get to shoot arrows at Gruntilda,but man is she cheap. She's invincible most of the time and clips through walls faster'n Wile E. Coyote.

I feel like that's bad broom posture, but whatever. You look like the mayor from Nightmare Before Christmas.

After some rough-ups, I finally nailed her and got a much better ending than the first game. Though like I still don't know who this love interest is? Also, why are there 2 Cupids, and why do they aim like my teammates in Overwatch? It's cool, it looks like Bugs'll get to go on a date of his own after this one. Take her to Crazy White Castle or something.

I like to think Bugs is actually just doing some soul-trapping stare into the eyes of this poor female rabbit while doing some creepy heavy breathing and profuse sweating

Well dang. That was a big ol' adventure, one that I wish I purge from my mind. I'm actually one of the potentially few people who love collectathon-like games (which I guess this one counts as?), but like...please put the collecting in a decently coded and paced game. The lack of building game mechanics, poor controls, boring level design, and overall shoddiness makes me not want to go on a second date with Bugs here again. Although I know of at least one more Game Boy Looney Tunes game, so no escape here. The corporate overlords demand more money! And you should demand this Sprite of Passage for surviving through my whiny rant on a cruddy 90's portable video game!

Oof. Today's date reeked of mimicry, like I was going out on a night with a mockingbird holding a photocopy machine. Now, copying ideas and putting new spins on them is hardly new to the gaming industry (or any form of entertainment, really). Many decent titles and concepts came from such efforts, in fact! However, sometimes the new spins are rather odd choices. It's like taking the idea of a sandwich and tossing in soup. Do you want a stock-soaked PBJ sandwich riddled with noodles? Probably not, and that's kind of how I feel about Monster Race Okawari, tonight's blind date.

Looks kind on novel, right? There's some sidescrolling dragon runnin' at top speeds through different landscapes, some odd creepy things holding down the copyright date like it's a hostage. So what game does this emulate, you ask? Well, I'd say it sort of reveals itself quickly upon the game's start.

Nope, this looks pretty original, not at all almost exactly like any other majorly successful game boy game

So yeah, it's a Pokémon knock-off. The spin here is that, instead of fighting your little slave creatures, you throw them into auto-races. And by 'auto-race', I don't mean they drive little shriners’ cars around tracks all menacingly-like. I mean the monsters just...automatically kind of run with no real input from you. Like you wound up one of those cat toys and let them go. What fun.

Gotta watch 'em all!

You get to pick from 3 starters, just like in Pokémon. Let's check out our options here:

Okay, so you got generic snake, kawaii hedgehog, and definitely-not-Rhyhorn. Amazing. So, which to pick? Well, unlike pokémon, they don't have types; instead they have terrain rankings. For example, the snake is better in water, hedgehog best in grass, and I guess Rhyhorn could be good on ice? I dunno, I didn't really look much at the time. Each monster also has stats such as balance, jumping, and guts, but I couldn't tell you what any of those actually, y'know, do. Their HP is stamina, allowing them to run for longer periods. All of this is available for review in a totally unique stats page.

What amazing monster design. Definitely not something from a Lisa Frank sticker set.

Okay, that's well and good, but what of the overworld? After all, monster racin' is only half the game, right? What about the cool areas to explore and people to meet?

This is not building confidence

So the starting area is absolute crap. It's a city, for sure, but every single building looks identical and there are rows and rows of these houses. Interiors all look the same. I got so lost trying to find out where to go in the first 15 minutes or so. No one in the buildings has much to offer for progression (though I do wish I knew what they were saying...), but I eventually stumbled into what I assume is my rival and got my first pokémon. Err, joggimon. Whatever you want to call them. I went with the snake because it was so dang generic I felt bad for it. I named it a bunch of Japanese characters that vaguely looked like a snake so I could tell who it was in my party list.

What's this joggidex entry say? Well, Google translate seems to indicate 'It's always plotting things and playing pranks. When I'm bitten by a brood parasite, I get a good night's sleep.' Gotta love machine translations.

You eventually get shuffled to some generic field area where you can start enlisting other monsters to your team and leveling them up. Leveling is odd. Either you are completely outclassed by the random encounter (mostly due to terrain ranking) or you overtake them in a couple seconds and the game is like, "welp, good enough, have some XP". You can try to overcome the foes who are decent on the terrain, but they get perks you don't, like random speed boosts.

The lines mean speed! See?! This game has ACTION!

You, on the other hand, can swap between monsters on the fly, but it takes a few seconds for the current runner to stop and the new one to get started. Usually this means a loss, as once the foe is far enough away, the game counts it as your loss. Eventually enemies lose their stamina and can be handily beaten, but it's really not worth wasting time. Just grind on the weak, derpy-looking enemies.

Once I had a killer team of monsters, I ambled over to what I assume was the gym equivalent building in this game. I got into a few races against some new monsters, but with my ace runners, we overcame the lot of them. At least the terrain changed a bit, allowing me to get a minor taste of strategy (if you'd call it that?).

I'd better get a decent TM from this

Afterward, I was congratulated by my rival and left to go...somewhere? I have no idea. I wandered for like 30 minutes all over the copy/pasted landscapes and could find no way to progress. Probably somethin' due to the language barrier. I think I saw where I needed to go, but some idiot blocked me off and wouldn't allow me to pass. I slipped a 20 in his pocket, but the jerk just looked the other way. There goes my dinner payment.

There're also these random holes in the ground I can't seem to reach. Who built this infrastructure? ...Are the races in the sewers? (Cue repressed memories of Battletoads)

Guess that's the end of my journey here. This one was a bit of a letdown, to be honest. It seemed like it had potential, but the crappy map design, boring monsters, even more boring gameplay, and inclusion of brood parasites just made for a dull experience. This explains why I'm not going on another date with this title. It might be more fun if it got translated, but why bother? I'd rather take this Sprite of Passage and run. Hopefully faster than these loser monsters.

Tonight's date was a trip. I've been burned out from quite a few Japanese titles lately, mostly bashed over the head with the language barrier and left with mild concussion symptoms. To my surprise, though, this date went relatively well. In fact, I would say it was great! So let's cut the pleasantries and dive into Little Master 2!

You start with a cutscene dictating the story. Yeah, well, you only get my take on it from the static image you see below. I assume you're a knight of this king's army, vowing to protect the kingdom against some big threatening enemy. Pretty standard stuff. Hopefully we won't go at it alone, as a kingdom ought to have a decent military at its disposal. I guess we'll find out who we get to command.

It's like if Dr. Light was a monarch in ye olde England. Hey, Roll's there, too!

You start in a battle that is very reminiscent of Fire Emblem, controlling units on a map and attacking foes in popup battles. Luckily you don't have to worry about weapon durability or anything. There are some different terrains and each unit has pluses and minuses, as you'd expect with any good strategy RPG.

I feel like there's a better way to show movement ranges than dots. Unless you're like Pac-Man, but he has an addiction, so he gets a pass.

Ok, so I get all these units, right? Well okay, let's start a fight! The icons look cute and all, but I don't think the battle-hardened warriors you'd bring into battle would be...

Nope, it's barnyard animals

So...that's different. Your main character is a knight with a sword and magic spells. Your second-in-command is...a cow person? Your flying units are chickens, your archers are rabbits, and then you have this one that looks like a giant board game meeple that I really don't know how to process. THIS? This is your kingdom-saving crew? Well, okay, I guess, I mean at least the enemies are also all silly animals, too.

Nothin' but epic battles at Farmer Brown's

As I played, I discovered a few cool things, though. There are healing tiles that stay active unless you take damage while standing on them. Characters heal themselves a bit each round they don't move. You can find chests with permanent stat powerups. And the mystery deepens with Meeple Man. In fact, he turned into an obsession of mine.

Let's review this guy's capabilities. He has paltry HP, incredible defense, and terrible attack. And I mean those adjectives. The dude almost always takes 1 HP of damage from attacks and only does 1 HP of damage. This makes him incredibly hard to level up (as you get the bulk of XP from the killing blow), but every so often, the game just decides, "nope, he's just gonna absolutely wreck this enemy.” Like, we're talking instadeath.

I think he's taunting, but he just kind of looks like a a mustard canister with arms?

I was so focused on him that he ended up leveling above my entire party. Once he was high leveled, the chance of instakilling skyrocketed. Even worse (for the rest of my XP-craving units), enemies prioritized him, causing them all to fall to the might of the big formless doofus. Further, apparently he can traverse water and even act as a bridge to get land-based troops over to new areas? What is this thing? Why hasn't he gotten his own spin-off game yet?

...Anyway, let's move on. You do get some added story as you go, meeting new characters and gaining some new roles, like a healer. But the healer can only heal 5 times per map? Also, when she gets hit, she turns into a random unit type for the rest of the match. Odd choices in game design were made.

It's surreal seeing human girl, human boy, weird anthropomorphic beefy cow thing (pun intended) with one giant eyebrow. I don't always understand anime.

You do fight a variety of foes, and the maps are pretty fun to traverse and plan out attacks. Some fights are unique, like one where you had to destroy gravestones that kept summing zombie units.

This game does suffer from the same limitation toward XP as Fire Emblem, too, meaning you'll be trying to soften up enemies with strong units and having weak ones do the final blows. It kind of ruins the flow of battle, especially since most new units you grab start at level 1 (and there are almost never any weak enemies to raise those units up at all). At least defeated party members just disappear from battle and are revived in the next fight. It's a bit of a bummer that you can only have so many units on the field at a time, especially when you recruit pretty much anyone you see lying around.

Literally. Stop napping and fight me, other human stuck in farm world!

Regardless, I had a lot of fun with this game. I read up on it a bit and found it has a decent amount of levels to play through. It's a bit slow since you have to watch animations and command each unit slowly one at a time, but it's enjoyable enough to look past these annoyances and some of the odd choices in unit designs. All in all, I would totally date this game again if I could. In fact, it would be nice to try and do a fan translation of it, as one does not currently exist! If I wasn't busy with a family and making an indie game, I probably would be tempted to do just that. Instead of a cool translation, though, you're stuck receiving this Sprite of Passage from me today. If you mix it with 1/2 cup of soy sauce and 3 teaspoons of garlic powder and bake it at 375 degrees for 13 minutes, it turns into some kind of meeple-shaped bread. Feed it to animals to turn them into ruthless warriors!

It's no shock that going on a large amount of blind dates is sure to result in a few duds. Not everything always clicks perfectly; you can sometimes tell right away that there's no chemistry. It follows, then, that such a statement holds when 'dating' in the gaming world, too. Granted, I try to give all titles my full attention, but some just don't end up lasting the whole night. For the games I got paired with that fit this category, I thought I'd still honor our (brief!) time together by sharing a collection of quick summaries. We'll call them 'mixers', and I'll share 'em as soon as I get a handful.

So let's kick this first mixer off with some pizazz, alright? Well, maybe just with some pizzas. Just remember that a second topping is extra.

Our first stop is Super Momotaru!  Looks promising, what with the dude saluting us with a swanky peach hat! Let's not disappoint him, eh? We won't let a little language barrier stop us from-

Mmm, yeah. Okay. I, err...got this. I'll pick...those? Okay. Next!

Ehh? I'll take the, uhh...180. Sure! That's good, right? Like half a rotation? So then we can...

Okay so yeah I don't know what the heck is going on

Long story short, I think this is some kind of Mario-Party-like game? You roll a die and move a train across the map. It lands on spaces, reaps some kind of reward, and then you get to watch the CPU players go. What's the end goal? Why is the map completely open with no directionality? What are these items I'm apparently getting and what do they do? I have no idea. That about sums up my experience with this game: I have no freakin' idea. I do know one thing, though: it's really not fun. At all. Next!

Goukaku Boy? Never heard of this one. And there're over 10 titles of it? Well, let's try the first one out.

Oh. Yeah, okay. Lots of text. Like almost entirely text. Let's just choose some random things and try to figure out what this is...

Mmm. Yeah, it's trivia. Japanese trivia. Well, I can see how far random guessing can take me!

Nope, not far. Shock! Welp, that's about all I can do for this one. I'm pretty terrible at trivia in my native language as it is, so at least I can use the 'I can't read a lick of this' excuse to explain away my poor performance here. Bring me another! Hopefully this one isn't just another Japanese title!

Roger Clemens MVP Baseball. Great, one about SPORTS! Well, at least I can understand it. I like the whole attempt to emulate the successful ‘John Madden’ endorsement by usin’ Roger Clemens to try and boost sales. I'll bet this title is completely different than all the other baseball games out there!

Nope.

It's baseball. Not much else to say. Well, except that choosing a target to throw the ball to is maddening and nonsensical. Pitching controls don't make much sense either, and I don't think it's possible to get anything beyond a single and a home run. But hey, we get to see a generic dude and Freddie Mercury singing the national anthem, so there's that!

I think someone installed your flagpole a little...uh...crooked. Buy that company a level!

The least I can say about this one is that I got lucky at one point and scored a GRAND SLAAAAAM

You can just feel the absolute exuberance pulsing out of my body

Okay, okay, that was fine, whatever. Not super-good, but definitely not bad. I need somethin' better, though, somethin' that just...fits my need for mediocre entertainment. Let's try one more, eh?

Tetris! Finally a title with some recognition! So why's it in this mixer? Well, uh...there's really not much to explain. It's Tetris. I'm sure you know about it. Also, while the game is fun, I don’t really think it needs more than an hour or so to experience it. So I guess I'll just post up some shots I got while playing it?

Double tetris! I always loved the weird howl sound effect when you got a tetris in the game boy version. I need to make it a text message sound on my phone or something.

Oh yeah, we also got into space! Maybe astronauts use Tetris as part of their training regiment?

Truth be told, I don't think I've ever played type B in my youth. It lets you start with a bunch of junk all over your screen like this. Is this what a puzzle custodian has to deal with? They need to write their union and demand higher pay, 'cos this is horrible.

At least I got the band in here to jam with me. Looks like my next piece is a couple of ladies waving hankerchiefs. Are...they made out of 4 blocks, too?

Well, I've taken enough space up this time. All told, some duds, some meh, and some Tetris. Basically explains my time at the old computer labs at school back in the day. But hey, it was a nice change of pace, I guess! Thanks for humoring me on this mini dating spree. As a token of my gratitude, take this Sprite of Passage. Each title gave me a quarter of it, like some horribly-generated Heart Container in a Zelda game. It's...unique? We'll go with that. It may also be contagious, so don't share it with friends or pets.

Oh lordy. I never thought I'd see THIS one again, at least on a Blind Date. See, a while back, I heard good things about this particular game series that PRANG had matched me up with today. It was supposedly a very good strategy game with some addictive gameplay and a background rooted in Japanese history. So, I bought a used copy for the NES on a whim one day at the ol' resale shop. That choice ended up being a horrid one, as what followed was me being utterly confused at what the heck was going on and ultimately losing the game, my time, and my patience. But...a blind date is a blind date. So say hello to Nobunaga's Ambition.

Let me put this out there at the get-go: I'm certain this game is actually all that I've heard it was. It seems to have the makings of a decent strategy game, with a lot of factors going for it: resource management, tactical fighting, choices on methods of tackling adversaries, and just enough randomness to keep each playthrough fresh. However, like my experience before, I have no manual. Unlike the NES version, there's no option to watch the CPU play the game itself. That's not a typo. There's an option to watch a game play itself so you can muddle through how to actually play it yourself. So, I turned toward the modern marvel of the internet. Online resources seem to point more toward recent versions of the game, and so here I am once more getting lost in complex menus and options that mean absolutely nothing to me. Imagine playing a board game like chess, but not knowing what pieces do what. Actually, this is more like Arkham Horror without any instructions and replacing most information with symbols. So yeah...I am lost. That said, let's pick this guy to be our Daimyo! I based this decision solely on his resemblance to Agahnim from Zelda: Link to the Past!

Of course I'mma need a guy with some high Ambition. We all know what that stat translates to in game terms, right?

So you manage a fiefdom among several other fiefdoms. It's kinda of like a board game where everyone gets a turn to manage their area. The 'board' has several territories, each with a 'player' managing the resources. You can go to war with foes and capture their fiefdom, converting it to yours. There's a ton of other players, all differentiated by horrible patterns in the 4 colors the game boy is capable of.

Looks like a war of tie patterns

Going to war with a neighbor starts the military strategy part of the game, where you direct your forces against the enemy's. If you capture the enemy's warlord, you get to claim their territory as your own. In this way, you can slowly claim the territories and become the sole Daimyo of all of (blocky, misshapen) Japan!

The warlords are symbolized as horses stroking their chins with indecision, of course

Makes sense, right? Okay, let's look at what we have to deal with to make these decisions. This right here is the primary action screen of the game. It's the interface to your resource management, like a menu screen for running a country.

I can only assume most modern presidents or monarchs have one of these puppies

...okay, so uh

what

I think I managed to figure out the left side. The money bag is cash, which you need to do everything. And I mean pretty much EVERYTHING. Like, you can't talk to other nations, go to war, or develop anything without some dosh. The one underneath it is rice? I guess in bags or something? I think you use it to sustain your people and for bargaining. Under that is the number of men you command to battle, and I assume the emoji dictates how happy your people are. The entire right column? No friggin' idea. There's a plant and I guess some water? Does that have to do with farming? And what's under that, an Excel spreadsheet? And I have 30 pagodas? Well, it might have something to do with infrastructure, but I have no idea how to improve that since it takes money, and I have no idea how to make money. Let's not even touch the decimal values of Rate (?), Rice, Men, and Arms. No clue what those mean or if my numbers are any good.

This was me trying to figure out wtf was going on

So yeah. Like the real world, everything revolves around money. However, you don't know how much is needed to do anything. You're told when you don't have enough, but never how much ANYTHING costs. Further, outside of selling your rice to traders (who, I might add, are not always there), I have no clue how to make more money. Defeating foes doesn't give you any. Resting gives you none. In fact, resting does absolutely nothing! You sometimes? get more rice and money after a turn, but when and how is a mystery. When you do, it's like 5 gold and 3 rice. If you have no cash, you basically lose. Period. I spent some money developing my farms, but that didn't do anything for my rice yield. I got married successfully, too, but that didn't do anything either beyond costing like 30 gold. Hooray?

So, I spent all my time training my military. I used whatever scraps of gold I had left to buy more men. Feeling brash, I took on a small territory south of me and managed to defeat them. It gave me some classy options for their captured leaders!

I think more games need a 'Behead' option

Ahh, the life of a samurai. I got a new head and hired a dude for posterity. After that, it was more training since I couldn't do anything else. Eventually my warriors were maxed out, so I tempted fate by attacking a larger neighbor. With all my time in training, I thought I had this in the bag. Then their men outnumbered me like 4 to 1. Also, some of their units were invisible and sneak attacked me? So, uhh...yeah, that didn't go well.

Excellent news.

That was apparently all I needed to be completely destroyed. Maxed out strength means nothing compared to AI that actually know how to play the game. What a waste of time.

Probably says 'Don't let the shoji hit you on the way out'

And thus ends my returning nightmare that is playing Nobunaga's Ambition. Classic confounding gameplay with a sheer cliff of difficulty, no tutorial, no help, no decent UI, and no fun. Glad to put this one back into the far depths of my mind again. Obviously, I wouldn't dare date this again unless I get a tutor to come show me how to play this dumb game. I'm sure there's some college-level class to do so somewhere. At least I did manage to find this Sprite of Passage from that one daimyo I slew. Now I can see why all these samurai are fighting so hard!

I knew going into this whole dating business that I'd hit some titles that are well-known. I knew I'd hit some I'd sunk hours of my youth into as well. It was only a matter of time! Well, the clock stopped tickin', 'cos I just had a date with Pokémon. Not, like...with a Gardevoir or whatever weird stuff the internet serves up, I mean a single night of old Pokémon Red. Let's see how far I can go in, say, four hours without really trying to speed run or anything!

So you all know this title well enough. Sic your pets to boop each other on the noggin' until one is left standing. Scooch over to the pet hospital with your amazing socialized, free healthcare. Go abduct a few more pets until your computer yells at you to change the channel. So let's dive in and just get some quick highlights. First up: your rival. He's a pansy with a turtle now.

He never could handle spice. Plus, how exactly does whipping me with a tail not hurt? Whatever.

I bruised through a forest, no big deal. Oddly enough, I almost made it to the end with no encounters! Then, suddenly, I got harassed by a couple of mascots. I nabbed 'em for shiggles, named them all Clark. They're all Clark inside anyway.

I need to pit these things against Mickey Mouse for a rodent death match of the ages

Got to Brock Sampson, the rock-type goon. Unluckily for me, my starter is fire-type and has the disadvantage. Luckily for me, this game is really dumb and the rocks only tackled, defended, and used Bide, a.k.a. the worst move in the game. I just Growled during Bides and lit the 35-foot rock snake on occasional fire. Free badge!

They really dropped the ball with Onix. I've always assumed a stone serpent should be a total badass, but here we are.

Flew through Mt. Moon, learning of shorts and meeting some thugs that reflect the wild-west of old Nintendo games by including whips. Not sure if this guy is a lion tamer or a dominatrix, but we'll let him slide for now. He needs to get his cartoon hands checked out at a hospital.

Just came back from Zubat Lovers Anonymous, I see

After reaching Cerulean, we hit our next hurdle: Misty, the water-type gym leader. Her starfish would own my fire lizard, who is currently the only member of my team, so I decided to shop for a new groupie. Saw a sleeping tele-cat in a corner of a grassy field, so I threw a ball at him. Turns out he has amazing latent psychic powers. Too bad I ain't got time to train a coward who can only flee. I decide to use him only to ferry me back to hospitals.

Can't escape now, sleepycat

I decided to shift some gears, move some numbers around. Turns out you can alter time and space with this magic napper. I stare into the abyss it creates in our reality's fabric and out pops a different cat. It's like the internet with how many cats there are here. Regardless, this cat was who I needed and deserved. He became my new partner in crime.

Man, how many eight-year-olds would have killed to see this screen back in the day?

I abused my world-manipulating powers to drudge up a third in my little crew. The Scots all thought that there was a monster in their loch, but little did they know it was actually warped to me from 50 years in the past. Not wanting to create more dumb souvenirs based on a Turonian-era sea creature, I chided it to stay at my side.

Man, those ears make me want to eat some cinnamon rolls

With my dream team in tow, we expertly sauntered through Vermilion, the good ship St. Anne, and some really annoying dark cave. I got to Celadon just in time to gawk at the ladies in the local gym. It was yoga day, but I wasn't there for the trainers. I was there for the Oddish.

Them some fine feminine mobile bulbs, right guy?

Soon after, I started focusing on Team Rocket in their little gambling heist. Inside, I got reminded of the severe limitations of the older age of gaming.

Dude can carry 99 of the same TM, but can't grab a second one with a different name. Pathetic.

At this point, I checked my time and decided to call it. There wasn't much left beyond annihilating everyone with my team of champs. Who can possibly stand against an aerial firesaurus, deepsea fatty snail, and what I can only assume is some kind of grand deity who conveniently fits inside of a 4-inch ball? No one, that's who. No challenge, no need to continue. I retired early and peaced out. I'll probably hack the Hall of Fame later to ensure I still make in there for future trainers to marvel at me. I have Missingno.'s number and he owes me a favor.

So yeah, as expected, I'd probably go on a date with this title again, but I've already dated this one so much that there's no personal need. It's a simple version of the famed gaming series, so I assume you all know it or have played it. Still, you should take this Sprite of Passage for your time reading through this silly writeup. It might change color if you leave it in the freezer!

Ever go on a date with an old friend? It's a little familiar, a little odd, and a little nostalgic, all packed into one. I've just returned from such a date. PRANG gave me the number of my old pal, Final Fantasy Adventure (otherwise known as Seiken Densetsu 1). It's a fun little game by my memory, but let's revisit it once more and see what shenanigans we can have with it!

You start out as some colosseum fighter or somethin', beatin' up feral cats. Actually, this screen is a blast of nostalgia in and of itself for me. Back in the day, we rented games from video stores, and this was one I recall having borrowed. I never really got terribly far, but I remember this cat. It's like the hunchbacked feline is etched into my memory. Kind of odd, but what do you expect from a person writing dumb game reviews to the ether for funsies?

Poor thing needs a ball of yarn...and a chiropractor

So this is an action-RPG game, kinda like if Zelda and Final Fantasy had a kid together out of wedlock and decided a name change was enough to hide it from their parents. You go around beatin' junk up with an array of weapons and upping some stats that affect you in ways I'm still not really sure about. But higher numbers are good, so keep fighting!

Also, all the enemies are adorbs <3

Along the way, you get pulled into all manner of quests, most of which just keep kind of piling on with no real warning. Like, you have to protect the Mana Tree from an evil dork, but then you also have to save this girl. Oh, but to do that, you have to get this potion. Better find some Dwarf to get through that one cave. Got the pot? Oh! But the girl's now gone, better go find her. You got her? Oops, she's stolen again. Now you need a boat? It just keeps piling on, and you just trudge through it all happily.

This about sums up the logic of this game's plot

The translation is alright. It's not the most verbose or expressive game, but what do you expect for a game boy title? Most characters are pretty rigid and ambiguous, which is a feat to have both at the same time. Still, you get the info you need to progress, so that's all that matters.

Though sometimes the banter gives a sensible chuckle. About sums up my views of current politics, too, buddy.

I'm sure she's fine

The story is only one part of the game, though. What about the combat? Well, it's pretty fun. You get a bunch of different weapons, and each has its own strengths. There's magic, too, but unless you focus ONLY on it, it's really only used when an enemy is immune to physical damage. Which, unfortunately, happens a lot. Meh, you can ignore most enemies anyway. The bosses, though, are pretty nice. They're a good balance of challenge and fairness. They're pretty simple, too, but it's ok in my book. And I have a pretty good book, if I do say so myself.

Excuse me, I didn't know we were playing Castlevania again...!

There are puzzle elements with the weapons, too, as they unlock different ways to traverse the world. Axes cut down trees, flails hookshot you across gaps, sickles cut weeds, and other interesting mechanics act as the gates preventing your progress. This is a nice touch, though it's a bit annoying to constantly switch between weapons.

Okay, I should have enough wood to craft a workbench now

One of my major gripes is the inventory system. You only get 16 slots for items. This fills up stupidly quick, and when you need to tote around junk like Mattocks (for destroying walls), keys (for unlocking all doors everywhere?), and other miscellaneous quest items, there's little left for the healing and offensive weapons you gain along the way. I just end up binging on candy and potions like some sugarhigh junkie wizard on Halloween. Like, can't we just have one slot for all potions instead of grouping them up in little batches of 3?

Come ON, Amanda, why you gotta take up so much pocket space? I have more pillows I need to hang onto in case we have a sleepover pillow fight.

I got about a third of the way through the game I guess, which means this game is pretty long! That's not a bad thing, as, despite my bickering, it's actually a lot of fun. I was tempted to play through the whole thing again, but we have other games out there that need dating! I can't just settle on you, Gayle, there a whole sea of fish out there and I need to throw my hook back in there! Or like invest in a net, I guess? Also, are we casting from shore or trawling? What lures do I even have in this dang tacklebox? Man, dating is hard these days.

I think this is the only game I know of that has an entire cave as an NPC. This makes me unspeakably happy.

Well, I'll call it here. Go play this game if you haven't! It's pretty fun and definitely merits a second date. Soak in the crazy laundry list of side quests and all the old time RPG elements for a taste of what 90's gaming has to offer! Let it swirl around in your mouth and savor it. It pairs well with this Sprite of Passage, so take one of those, too!

Oof. The perils of blind dating present themselves in the randomness of your match. Sometimes you get a win and hit it off with your date; sometimes, invariably, you get paired with a bad fit. Today's date was a major blast of the latter. But I get ahead of myself. Let's focus on what my date had to offer during our long night together.

Oh, hello there, Race Days! As the name hints, it's a racing game. Now, I'm really not much for racing games. They never clicked with me much, and thus I have little experience with them. Perhaps this title will be the one that changes my mind a bit?

So this game is actually two in one. The first game is 4 Wheel Drive, one of those first-person driving games where 60% of your action space is the dashboard of a car. At least in this game you see the track map, I guess? It's like having an oldschool GPS in your car long before Google Maps was a thing!

17th place. Because we need 18 vehicles in our racing game for some reason? What is even the color of a participation ribbon for that rank?

Well, it starts off rough. Like 4 FPS rough. You slog through the slow-updating track, driving a chunky jeep around 17 other chunky jeeps in an... err... 'adrenaline-pumping' race. Your primary salvation here is that you get on-screen cues for turns. Without that, I probably would have ended up on some toll road without cash, resulting in some passive aggressive bills being sent to me in the mail. Honestly, though, you'll be paying attention to these signals more than the road since the road blends into the offroad area pretty seamlessly. Only the crappy sound effects will tell you that you're off the pavement.

See this? There's only 1 lane here. The rest is dust or something? Good thing they painted divider lines in the desert.

The other jeeps don't present much challenge, though maybe it was because I was playing in easy mode. Hey, don't judge! I know my weaknesses and play around them! Still, they do have weird hit boxes. Or maybe it's YOUR jeep that has a weird hit box? Perhaps this truck I'm in is some weird import made to host a whole party in the back, thus it's much wider in the body. Well, whatever, this party sucks and my jeep needs to go on a diet. I guess it'll be lighter fuel from now on!

You CAN sort of total your jeep if you act like a goon and keep ramming NPCs. Hope you have good insurance!

So that's basically it, I guess. Due to time constraints, I only played one set of tracks. None of them were particularly memorable or fun to drive on. There are no real mechanics that make this game stand out unless you're looking for a racing game with invisible tracks. I did ace the cup, though, so I guess I have a new trophy at my drab-colored ranch house in the 'burbs on Minnesota (or wherever Jeep-owners usually live).

Man, Duke Nukem needs to find a tailor and should look up proper wine-bottle-toting form

Okay! On to game #2! This game is...HUAGH!

I wouldn't flaunt your graphics team here, chaps

Ohhh-kay, so that's a bold choice of visual presentation right off the bat. This beaut is called Dirty Racin', which I assume might be like Dirty Dancing? Probably doesn't have any romance though, unless it's got like Nascar fans severely crushing on Dale Earnhardt the third. Is there a third one? I assume Nascar drivers have titles like the Dread Pirate Roberts or something. Maybe not. (Apologies if I have insulted racing fans somehow; disclaimer: I'm severely out of my element here.)

Does...does the driver lie down in there? How does he even fit inside?

Like in 4 Wheel Drive, you get to choose a difficulty. After the ease of Jeep Racing Simulator 2000, I decided to be adventurous and go with 'Hazardous'. I don't want to disappoint the cool dude on the options screen who is constructed out of straight lines by choosing easy mode. But wow, that guy is entirely made out of straight lines. The art team here clearly earned their keep.

It takes almost a full bottle of gel every morning to get his bangs at perfect angles like that

So what's this racing game about? Overhead racetracks, apparently. It's you and 3 other cars on a bunch of different tracks, trying your best to outmaneuver each other for a coveted first place victory. Unfortunately, there's only 2 lanes of space, though, so you end up colliding with your opposition all over the place.

Luckily for me, the first couple races just require you to not get last place. I hate the controls in games like this, so I am naturally terrible at this game. I pull through and squeak a third place due to dumb luck, though. Then I'm greeted by some amazing sex idol racing queen that is in no way poorly drawn and clearly epitomizes the breast part about racing. I mean best part. Best part! She offers me car upgrades with the coins I found lying along the racetrack. Let's ignore how a speeding car can safely pick up these caches of money.

Uhh, hey pumpkin, can you move your elbow there? What are you even leaning on?

After this, I travel to the next event, which is a series of 3 races. I have to place first overall to win and unlock more tracks on the map. Okay! Let's do this!

Mmyep, I got 4th place each time. Ok, try again!

...Alright, once more! I think I have the hang of things a bit! I got third once!

Nope, this bites

After a series of horrible losses, I tried to back out and see what else I could play. I mean, there was a second direction to go; maybe the other track is better? But no, the game over screen only lets you try the same race again or quit entirely. So you either have to grind it out and win on that specific map or you have to start over from the beginning. Excellent news. Well, I opted to flee and try a lower difficulty. Surely I can make some ground h-

Yeah, screw this game

I gave up after noticing the AI isn't remotely different in the lower difficulty. Moreover, I started fuming and compounding a list of things I hate about this game! What a joy to be spending time with it. Please let me rant and release this pent up anger. It's therapeutic and I need to vent worse than a racecar with an overheating engine.

All opponents have better handling and stats than you. You need to upgrade your car to even be at the same level as them.

All bumps, be they into walls or other cars, up your damage meter; more damage means a malfunctioning car. You CAN get damage fixed after a race for cash, but doing so pretty much depletes your funds and you get no upgrades. Which means you're STILL at a disadvantage over your opponents.

You always start at fourth place. This means you have to contend with 3 other cars hogging the road space, blocking you and making it hard to get a foothold.

You can't replay levels you beat. This means no grinding for coins or leveling up.

There are only two single races available at the start, both of which have the low bar of making third or higher. After doing those, you MUST do a 'win 1st place in these three races' level to progress.

You can activate nitro for a quick boost, but it's pretty useless since the AI almost immediately activates their own and overtakes you with their better handling and blocking.

Opponents seem to gain higher speed if they're behind you. Like, their non-nitro max speed actually increases, so they easily overtake you.

You can bump into special flashing walls for powerups, but some of them are useless. The best one gives you superspeed for the rest of the match, but it's so fast I can't control it well. I just ended up bumping into walls like mad and upping my damage, all the while having the AI overtake me anyway.

Whew. So there's that embarrassment. I'm sure some of you are laughing at me since this game is probably child's play, but I just can't do it. The GameFAQs guide even says that all difficulty modes are super-easy, so it must just be me. I never got higher than third place. In the end, this was a steaming pile of garbage for me that I wouldn't date again if it was the last form of entertainment left in the world. Not even Upgrade Lady can sway my decision to let this one die forever in a horrible roadside crash. (Okay, so that definitely offended some of you; apologies again!) Take this Sprite of Passage and forget about this game forever. Don't worry, it deserves it.

Boy, I am WIPED after my date last night. It all started out as it usually does -- a quick visit to PRANG for an introduction to my next potential video game suitor. Who could have guessed that I would served up 4 dates! They all came together at once under the guise of Konami GB Collection Vol. 3.

I was greeted at first by an anime schoolgirl with a huge hand and quite possibly a contender for the weirdest hairstyles I've seen in a while. What is that, a grass-inspired mohawk laid over top a normal haircut?

Is this what the cows that make cowlicks eat?

What happened next was an eventful set of speed dates. This onslaught left me with no down time, thus the exhaustion. However, I did end up meeting some nice games. I'll speed through them each quick-like to keep this from being overly long. Luckily each of the games are pretty short (as expected from Game Boy games)!

First up is Gradius II! Now, I've never actually played a Gradius game, so I can't say if this is a port, some reconfigured version of Gradius II, or what. What I CAN say is that it has tight controls, beautiful graphics, interesting bosses, and some fun gameplay.

Looks like a rocky magic 8 ball

You start off hangin' out with what I assume are your dad and mom starships. Aww, family time! Soon, however, someone decks your old man and blasts your momma fulla lasers. Obviously disturbed, you fly forward and get chased by the perpetrator through a buncha rocks until you escape.

Good thing this guy doesn't feel like firing at me for whatever reason

...Except you kind of don't? You end up going through a bunch of planetary landscapes, shootin' dudes and grabbin' powerups that let you fire lasers and stuff. Pew pew! You eventually get captured, break out, and summarily fly through a ship, an asteroid belt, and I think some alien's guts? I'm not sure; I never went to med school for interplanetary digestive systems. Bosses fight you at every turn, and they are so sweet. Like, I don't always know what I'm attacking, but it just looks so cool that I really don't care!

Ever want to fight a kneeling, fanged alien stuck in a wall with detachable mouthy-brains? Yeah, well now you do, obviously!

In the end you find the enemy ship that assassinated your nuclear family with nuclear weapons, commit your own brand of galactic revenge, and I assume go on with your day in a half-arsed way, never addressing the journey you just went through for fear of sparking up some majorly weird PTSD.

Next up is some Castlevania game! It claims to be Castlevania II, but don't think it's Simon's Quest since it doesn't have slow-scrolling text boxes telling me that night is a poor time to explore the world when suffering from a magical adversary's angry sentiments. Instead, you just go about whippin' junk. Alright, I can be a lion tamer for the undead.

Why do cultists always gotta wear hoods? Can't they wear like a polo and some comfy slacks?

So in this installment, you can apparently shoot fireballs from a fully-upgraded whip, so it's instantly MUCH easier than most Castelvania games. The list of enemies is kind of lacking, but it was enough to feel competent. The level design was pretty spot-on, which is par for the course, though for some reason this game has a love affair with ropes? They're EVERYWHERE, but there's enough variation in the levels to give them pass. For example, some areas have auto-directional-pulling ropes, some ropes are spider webs made by enemies, some require quick sliding to avoid obstacles, etc.

You gotta wonder, does the guy living here have to go through all these traps every day just to get his mail? And how does he carry groceries back to his (probably rope-decorated) kitchen?

The boss fights were definitely memorable. Some of their designs were flat-out brilliant, and they were all pretty fun! Your sub-weapons weren't really that useful here, but that's fine. The bosses, too, were made a little easier with the projectile whip, but the designers struck a good balance between fun and hard.

These guys shoot out vertebrae in an arc, transferring them from one head to the other. I don't have a quip here, it was just a stupidly awesome designed boss that I wanted to gush about for a bit!

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. The bosses were all fun except for the last 3 in the game. Allow me to whine and complain about them for a bit, if you will! The first was a tunneling snake on a forced scrolling screen that made you take damage unless you memorized where he was going to surface next (I HATE memorization-by-death gameplay). The next was a fellow Belmont who would relentlessly whip the crap outta you, throw swords all over the screen, and would probably be nigh impossible if I didn't have Holy Water. The final was Dracula, who I suppose gets a pass for being hard since he was the final boss...but he, too, was pretty much a memorization-by-death fight, too. The dude has 6 orbs revolving around him that spread out, essentially making 85% of the screen unsafe. Unless you know the specific spot to crouch down for the given position he's in, you get hurt, and you get hurt pretty badly. Oh, and you can really only hit him once per attack, so you'd better learn the safe spots for all 8 of his attack spots and hope you can hurt him and get into your safe position before taking damage.

ouch ouch ouch OUCH

In the end, it was overall a pretty fun time. Konami definitely knows how to make a good sidescrolling action game, which is probably why they're half of the name of the 'Metroidvania' genre. Go team Belmont!

Next up: Yie Ar Kung~Fu! What is this? I've never heard of it. It's a simple fighting game where you face off against 5 fighters, each with their own weapons and special moves. You play as a normal weaponless guy who can only kick and punch, because that's fair? Regardless, you must persevere through 4 rounds of these 5 fights, each time with your foes getting slightly harder.

Mmyep, this is fair.

My trademark fighting game strategy of sweeping seems to work for the most part, though as the difficulty ramps up, the other fighters move with ridiculous speed between attacks. Eventually, the game just becomes 100% about approaching a foe with more range than you, which obviously is the main focus of fighting games. What's that? Combos? Pffft, those are lame, just have the enemies fly across the ring like a sugar-high Jack Russel Terrier.

So this guy's power is to propel himself like a missile and look like an absolute goon while doing so

There's also a mini-game where you hit things thrown at you, but like they show up so quickly and your animation speed is so slow that it's impossible to do very well. It was an okay game overall, though, but I can sort of see why it isn't as well-known as Gradius or Castlevania.

Last game: Antarctic Adventure! It's a penguin-based racing game! I think? Does this count as a racing game? Well, you race against the clock, so sure. You gotta move at top speed through an icy wasteland, avoiding sea lions and holes in the ice.

I like how this sea lion looks after getting plastered in the face by a penguin moving at ~120 km/hr. Is he in shock? Is he alive? Should I notify his next of kin?

The lore is actually pretty deep in this game. The world has fallen into ruin due to global warming, and the glacier sheets on Antarctica are slowly melting away. As a penguin trained in espionage and terrorism, you must travel to the different embassies that many countries have propped up in an attempt to stake a claim in possibly the only livable area in the near future.

The french are planning to build replicas of their famous landmarks here, like the Ice-full Tower and Arctic de Triomphe.

You're not exactly racing as much as you are keeping ahead of the authorities pursuing you for planting bombs in the embassies. If you successfully plant your payloads in all of the embassies across all of Antarctica, you destroy their chances of bringing cultural imperialism to the local wildlife. Your customs are at stake! You must cast your empathy aside for the greater good of penguin-kind!

Also, you can sometimes turn into a helicopter? Not sure what that was about.

Okay, okay, yeah, I may have embellished a bit there. No, it's not as cool as that. You just run from one place to the next and heck if I'll ever find out why miscellaneous countries happen to have little castles in a barren arctic wasteland. People's taxes at work, I guess!

Oh right, there's also a fifth option on the main menu. It's Ms. O.C. Anime Girl explaining things about the games to you. I can't read anything she's saying, though, so I can only imagine the shady koala statue in the back has some relevance to her dialogue.

So that ends an exhausting series of dates. Whew! Glad you toughed it out with me. As I've completed all of the games this time, I didn't think another date was warranted. However, Gradius and Castlevania were fun enough to say that sure, I guess, it's worth going on another date in the future. Maybe it'd be better to find the original games, though, instead of this particular port. I can only assume the extra screen real estate, better sound effects, and greater ROM size would only enhance their experiences. And speaking of experiences, grab a Sprite of Passage from the jar over there on your way out! It's mint-flavored and can double as a water purification tab if you're ever stuck somewhere in the wilderness!

Ever jump right in the middle of a series and wonder if you missed some vital information from prior entries? I mean, not like Star Wars, 'cos they kind of went all over the place with the ordering of those. But imagine you popped into the second Lord of the Rings book. How lost would you feel? Why is everyone going bananas over a piece of jewelry? Who the heck is this 'Strider' guy? Why is there a gigantic eyeball tower that's apparently like some sort of god? Don't even get me started on the mainstream acceptability and observation of second breakfast. Well, I found myself in potential territory like that when PRANG, my Pseudo-Random-Activity Number Generator, set me up with Ultima: the Runes of Virtue II.

It sounded like an RPG, and the first thing I'm given after choosing a new game confirmed this a bit more: a hero selection screen! You can choose one of the 4 standard fantasy-type classes: a Knight, a Mage, an Archer, and...what is that, a Hatchet Wizard? I don't know that prestige class, but I do know one thing: archers are usually the best choice in these kinds of games. This game's version has additional perks like having the best beard, a dumb name that looks like someone trying to make their license plate hard to read, and a hearty bowl of soup. Also 6 ankhs? Dunno what that's about, but we'll go with him because Egyptian mythology is awesome.

Mariah looks way too sassy to control. Mages, man!

So, with this being an RPG, which are typically known for having intricate storylines, I started sweating hoping I wouldn't have missed much from the first game. Perhaps it could instead be like Final Fantasy, where the sequels really have nothing to do with the games before them, each being its own world. Maybe it'll be like Zelda, where there IS some central, unifying world and plotline, but each entry holds as its own full story. I was praying there wasn't some huge ordeal affecting this fantasy land that I'm going in blind to face.

Oh, whew, it's just a dumb bad guy who's being a jerk because he's bored

He's got the ability to create 'Moon Gates', essentially letting him warp all over the land at a whim. So what does he do with this power? Apparently the answer is kidnap a bunch of local politicians and put them in nearby caves. If only I could have this power...

This lady is reacting to being at swordpoint the same way I expect most Russian grandmothers to react.

So then, you get summoned by the king from Freecell to come and save the day! Except apparently you're also the Avatar, which I guess means you can bend all the elements as well? Or does it mean that you have little tentacle things that you can insert into local flora and fauna? I don't know, there are too many pop culture Avatars. The only fancy thing I noticed my guy could do was throw a hatchet and shoot a bow at the same time. Or does he shoot the hatchet from his bow? That would be rad!

Yeah, go tell him 'cos I can't be arsed to do anything but sit on this throne all day

So the base game is a topdown adventure game, very similar to Zelda. You explore caverns, which are this game's dungeons, solve puzzles, and find new weapons/items. There are not really bosses to speak of, but the aforementioned puzzles were pleasantly good. I had to look up what to do on a couple, I'm sad to say, but that's because I had apparently done the caverns out of order. I can't blame myself, though, as instead of interesting names like 'Tail Cave' and 'Bottle Grotto', they're all named 'Cavern of Hatred', 'Cavern of Greed', 'Cavern of Some Other Generic Negative Adjective'. Regardless, there were vital hints on how to use certain items and stuff in prior caves that would have made the headscratching puzzles fair.

Man, I hope these guys weren't setting up for a birthday party when I swung by and destroyed them

The combat is a little stiff, especially using the shield. You'll need that shield, too, as some foes shoot at you like mad and you need to do a little slow-as-mud projectile exchange. The shield sticks out for a given period of time when you use it unless it gets hit I think? Or sometimes it still stays out until you let go of the button. I don't know, I got hit maybe 20% of the time I used it unless I got into a groove of exchanging pleasantries. Most of the time you just have 2 ranged weapons equipped and spam the buttons until everything stops moving anyway.

We can't stop here. It's bat country!

There are kind of neat cutscenes (for a Game Boy game) when you enter caverns and rescue bureaucrats, too. This is a welcome addition since the rest of the game is pretty simplistic graphics-wise. Not that I mind, but you'll have to use your imagination to get a good fantasy feeling for some of these areas.

I'm pretty sure the hero throws out candy here and is followed by a bunch of wizards riding shriner cars

On another note (pun intended?), there's kind of no music at all, which was a bummer. You get an occasional 10-second ditty in town, but for the most part you just get 8-bit sound effects. The silence sort of helps with enemy attacks, but it's odd to only hear dedicated sounds for a clock's 'tick-tock', a fire crackling, and whatever the heck the one moving thing is in shops.

You can almost guarantee this is some developer's kid, forever immortalized as that trombone kid in Silence: the Game!

I cleared three caverns until I was assigned to go to some island. Unfortunately, I did not have a boat and have no idea where to procure one. The King's advisors were unhelpful in this regard. Most of the towns are barebones and have maybe 2 people to speak to. Even the shops are kind of empty, with little signs out telling you the costs of items. C'mon, shopkeeps! At least hire some poor helper knave to lower the unemployment rate!

It's like when those houses leave the bowl of candy on the porch at Halloween, except with implements of war

So that ended my adventures in Ultima II. I could have found a boat using a walkthrough, but I ran out of time as well. Regardless, I'd probably go on a second date, I guess. All in all it wasn't a bad game. I was having fun acquiring more strength, speed, and items, and the challenge level was just right. The story wasn't very gripping for an RPG-ish title, but I do have a soft spot for the really stupid kind of game dialogue the Black Knight seems to excel at. Kind of like the really stupid kind of game reviews I write up! Speaking of which, you ought to put this Sprite of Passage into your inventory for tagging along on this date with me. Who knows -- maybe it will come in handy in the future when all currency is replaced by 4-bit images?

I know there's some adage where ladies like a man in uniform. Typically, this is said about some member of the military, as their dress uniforms or whatever somehow increase their level of attractiveness I guess? Regardless of how ladies perceive crew cuts and camo, G.I. Joe set the de facto standard of soldiers for kid's media, of which Game Boy games fall into. So, let's take a wonder trip down the rough and rugged world of Choplifter III!

So you can basically tell what you're in for with the realistic helicopter that chops upward to our title. YEAH! Warzones! Brothers in arms! Bulletholes, helmets, and those sandbag barriers that look like a royal pain to move around! This feeling gets reinforced with the level splash screens, which are more pixelated photo war-type scenes that don't actually reflect the kind of hell that real wars are. Forget corpses and destroyed livelihoods; we're heroes here! With helicopters!

Guy looks like he's waiting for his takeout to arrive

So in this game, you're a helicopter pilot who must fly into warzones and rescue hostages. Hostages can easily be seen meandering around on the ground, waving their arms and stuff. Not sure what the strategy is for my adversaries, giving hostages free roaming rights. Whatever, I’ll take it! Luckily your weapons don't phase them at all or I would probably have murdered an entire platoon by accident.

Hey guys! Catch!

The enemy forces will stop at nothing to shoot you down, using turrets, planes, submarines, and more to pump your little copter fulla lead. Luckily, things aren't as realistic as in real life and you have a health bar to allow you to sustain more than one hit, though most hardware thrown at you will do like 70% of your HP. You can lose HP by running into walls and stuff too. There are health powerups, though, so it's pretty fair.

Good thing that bomb apparently has the explosion range of about how far a toddler can kick a ball

You have many tools at your disposal to fight these forces. You start with a missile-like 'G' weapon. You can unlock other alphabet letters to give you more options, but really, I never used most of them. Part of this was because I had no idea what most did since they were all just a single letter. Like, you have a 16-pixel sprite to work with, just draw a picture of what the weapon might be or something! A couple were essential to use, though. One was a flamethrower that apparently has unlimited ammo until you hit a tree with it. While it makes for a neat progression gate on a level, I can only imagine the canonical reason why this happens. Maybe the tree somehow tosses some sap up in the flame nozzle during the inferno, gunking it up to the point of uselessness? You're probably not supposed to think too hard about that, though. Sort of like real soldiers getting orders!

The war between Veteran’s Day and Arbor Day ends in a dramatic fashion here

Anyway, the default weapon is surprisingly versatile and a lot of fun to control. By default, it has a very slight downward arc, but you can make it fire a bit higher and lower by firing while moving; backwards raises the front of the helicopter, making it fire upwards and forwards lowers the front, doing the opposite. This helps a lot when attempting to annihilate the local fauna.

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE RULER OF THE SKIES, AVIAN DIRTBAG!

You can also turn sideways, allowing you to drop shots straight down or at a downward arc while moving left or right. The enemy placement is actually very well done, requiring switching up between all of these maneuvers. It takes a bit to get used to the trajectories, but you’ll reach a point where it’s all second nature. Good job, programmers!

Take that! I'm bombing your WiFi next, you war-mongering jerkwads!

Anyway, you fly around 5 different-themed areas, including a naval battle, jungle, and typical warzones. The variety is nice and the enemies vary from area to area, so it stirs thing up. You even get tiny little guerilla guys throwing junk into the air at you! The weirdest sight is the final area, which is some odd attempt at making an isometric city. It kind of doesn't make sense visually, as you'll see tanks and cars in what seems like it should be air. Am I actually in the air? Yeah? Then why does every building that looks far away still hurt me when I fly into it? It's just confusin'.

Ugh, I hate fighting in M.C. Escher World

Anyway, after beating 15 levels and rescuing all of your indestructible squadmates, you beat the game! I mean, I guess the war ended or something? I dunno, maybe you just need to do these last jobs before you can retire and collect that sweet military pension. The ending screen certainly makes your pilot look like he needs a break. Maybe just some meds to stop the demons wreaking havoc in his chopper-filled noggin.

Good job, USA! Now please stop backing the military industrial complex and let this guy get some rest!

In the end, you get to put your name into a high-score list for whatever reason. I love when games with clear completion goals still have scores, like you're playing the game only for points or something. Plus, I'm sure this is like Tetris where the game pak doesn't even save the scores. By the way, note the replacement of all vowels on the name input screen with numbers. This is not something I've seen elsewhere and I have no idea why it was done. The default names on the high score list all have vowels, so like...why?

B1d d2c3s34ns w2r2 m1d2.

That about wraps this game up. I got through the whole thing, so I really don't need a second date, but man, I would go on another date later anyway. It was just a joy to play! Maybe there's truth to that attraction of a man in uniform after all. I'd love to see how Choplifters I and II pan out! Although all of these titles might want to be a little more subtle, as I've seen in multiple places that Choplifters get prosecuted to the full extent of the law. No way I want to get tangled up in that jazz. I only like empty extents of the law. You could probably insert some political dig here on rich vs. poor folks, but instead I'm gonna subtly slide this Sprite of Passage to you both as a distraction and as a final token of getting through this date with me. Enjoy it heartily and throw it in a shadowbox with your other war medals and stuff!

Tonight's date was an interesting one to say the least. It was with Pac-Man, the iconic game character from Namco that helped build video games as a mainstream activity! The only issue was that it wasn't...JUST Pac-Man. No, it was a pun and a spinoff all in one. It was... Pac In Time!

Soak in the colors, 'cos from here out we're mostly back to 4-color palettes.

I've seen some of the other Pac-Man spinoffs before and they just never felt right. There was some dumb point-and-click game on the SNES where Pac-Man clearly had a lobotomy, some pinball game, and that one where he was fighting a bunch of nerds on some floating platform called 'final destination' or whatever. So yeah, they're typically lame attempts to make a buck based on the identity of one of gaming's most well-known IPs. I didn't expect much, then, going in. It was a bit bias of me, sure, but I was still willing to give it a chance. The first thing I was presented with was a super-long, slow-scrolling wall of text with absolutely no music or sound throughout the whole thing. Brilliant first impression, that.

'Crazy events' here means 'binge eating countless unmarked medications within the confines of a series of neon-infused tubes with occasional spontaneous manifestations of fruit and/or keys'.

Okay, okay, sure. Some ghost witch sends Pac-Man back in time and now he has to travel through different zones to find a way back to the present. That could have been summed up much more succinctly; in fact, I basically relayed all the information you need to know right there. It also really doesn't matter at all in the long run, so my heart reaches out to the poor writer whose hopes were squandered when Pac in Time didn't end up being their gateway to better writing gigs. What matters isn't the story here, it's the gameplay! So what do we have?

It's a platformer. A pretty floaty one at that. You always slide all over, with momentum that takes a bunch of effort to dissipate. Jumping follows the Mario 64 school of gaining height in each successive jump, but it really doesn't seem necessary. It's quite bad and takes some getting used to. There's an additional aspect to the game that helps bring puzzle aspects to it: powerups. You're given a few in each level that give you different abilities and can sometime pick up (or lose!) them along the way as well. They don't really seem to fit into the typical Pac-Man lore, though. Unless there's some fanfic where Pac-Man can shoot fireballs and swing around like Spiderman?

Yes, that is a screenshot of Pac-Man shooting a Kamehameha at a shark. This is fine.

Some levels are pretty interesting, but a lot of them are short and kind of dull. Most of the time you don't even end up using half of the powerups they give you. I will say, though, that the grappling hook was well-programmed and a lot of fun to mess around with. Sometimes there are issues canceling grappling momentum when an enemy is right in front of you, but otherwise it's liberating to swing like a monkey through a level in mere seconds.

Wheeeeee!

Somewhere around world 3, though, things start to take a turn for the worse. For the most part, enemies are tame and take a major backseat to the puzzles and powerup adventuring. In the jungle world, you start to see some annoying and poorly-programmed enemies marring your fun. Some foes relentlessly track you down, some change their velocity in unpredictable ways, some blast into the center of the screen as soon as you approach, and more. It starts feeling more like I Wanna Be the Guy, a game I loathe not for its toughness, but for it's cheap death tricks and poor design. Games like that aren't about skill as much as they are about rote memorization. That's...not fun to me. Make the obstacles visible, not surprises. I'd rather spend time memorizing something useful.  Although apparently my brain seems to define 'useful' as being able to list the first 386 pokemon and recalling room layouts for a mall that has been dead and destroyed for like 15 years?

I suddenly have flashbacks to Super Meat Boy, although that game was fair and up front with its obstacles. This buzzsaw popped outta nowhere, which I guess is standard in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

I had to look up a walkthrough on a certain level, too, where the only way to progress was apparently to walk off a cliff into a pool of lava. Then, an invisible air stream carries you across the lava to safety. Jumping the gap kills you and does not reveal an air stream, there are no indicators that walking off is a good idea, nothing. Just know the trick or be stuck. Great. The walkthrough on GameFAQs even says that the walkthrough's writer was stuck on this level until someone gave them a tip. That's...not exactly a good sign of game design. There were other annoyances, like teleporters teleporting stones higher than you: if you walk into one too quickly after pushing a stone into it, the stone appears above you and crushes you to death. Also, many levels host a plethora of arrow signs that don't make lick of sense.

Right, right...I get it now. It's all so clear where I have to go!

I got through world 4, and looking up a gameplay video reveals there are 4 more worlds to go, but I had my fill. This date isn't going anywhere I want to be. So yeah! No second date here. I've also found via the comments of that video that the game is actually a reskin of another game on DOS called 'Fury of the Furries'. They basically just turned the main character into Pac-Man and made some lame music tracks that sound like the one ditty from the arcade game. Even the enemies and final boss are the same. Boo! Get some originality or keep the Furries! I mean I know the internet in general has some hangups with them, but I've never had a bad experience with a Furry myself, let alone felt their Fury! Although if the world followed this game's lead, all furry conventions would turn into massive Pac-Man cosplay events, and I would definitely pay to go see that.

I found a furry! Except it kind of beat me to a pulp, but I guess I deserve it since I stole his game.

Before I end this, am I crazy or does part of the Beach world theme sound vaguely like some Mega Man track? Listen here and skip the first 50 horrid seconds to get to the part I mean. I swear, it sounds like something I've heard before, but I can't tell which track it was. Mega Man has too many Men to keep their themes straight. Maybe I should invest my useless memorization into Mega Man theme recall instead.

And so ends another date. I'll be looking around for something else, thank you! I will say, though, that today's Sprite of Passage is a keeper. Put this as a war decoration on your uniform and go speak of the fierce battles you went through to earn it! Don't be surprised if no one gives you any sympathy or anything though. They might instead give you the number of a psychiatrist. Maybe that shrink will give you pills and you can lay them out in a maze to eat them or something? Pac it all in!

So, following last week's date, let's revisit the concept of dating a well-known person. This time, though, let's put a spin on it by saying you're dating a famous person's...what, brother or sister? Or would this just be some similarly-named person? I have no idea; there's kind of no need to make some coy introduction to this week's date. It's Donkey Kong Land 2!

The Donkey Kong Country (DKC) games are popular SNES titles. So popular, in fact, they spurred the Donkey Kong Land titles, handheld versions of the same sidescrolling, platforming fun. I had Donkey Kong Land as a kid myself, though I've never played the others. Where the original had new level concepts and enemies, this sequel seems to be more of a port. The levels are thankfully redesigned a bit to take the Game Boy's limited screen real estate into mind, though; the level concepts are the same with different layouts of obstacles and such. As such, it felt kind of like a ROMhack of DKC2.

After playing some of these levels, all I can say is: man, King K.Rool has some really looooong ships

Luckily this game is MUCH more visually clear than its Game Boy predecessor. The prequel tried to wow players with their fancy 3-D graphics so bad that it was impossible to tell the background from the foreground. Having a palette of 4 colors will do that. Here, they usually reserve black for important actors or objects, so everything is easily discernible. The backgrounds are usually only light colors, which is a godsend.

Well, usually

So how was the game, then? Well, it was amazingly fun! I had a leg up since I've played through DKC2 a few times, so the levels' gimmicks were already known to me. However, I very infrequently found things unfair. Hit detection was forgiving, the enemy placement was fine, the platforming was good, and the controls were tight. There were some programming deviations from the original, though, that took some getting used to. I feel like Dixie's ponytail was nerfed a bit, as I swear you used to be able to use it any time you were in the air. Here, you can only use it if you start a jump (not if you fall off a platform). The jumps all seem to have a given height, too, so there's less control over short hops and such.

Do...do you see that face in the background? It stares into my soul....

The bosses were a bit different, which was fine. They seemed just the right level of toughness and killed me a few times getting used to their patterns. They're a bit stiffly-animated, though, probably due to the limited space on the Game Boy carts. Like, you can bust a half-dozen eggs against the one pirate bird and she doesn't flinch. I swear I saw shell shrapnels sticking out of her bulging eyes and the lass just kept truckin'. Or, uhh...pirate shippin’? Guess that's how she became captain.

Can't make an omelette without...sacrificing your own young?

An interesting addition I feel I must mention is the merging of the swamp and lava worlds. I get it -- you had no space for the one boss fight against Capt. Clubface. But why does the seeping lava just kind of turn into a muddy swampland? I don't think that's how Earth Science works? Like according to several crafting games, there should be some obsidian layer or something there.

Yeah, no, the water's all the same color anyway. Stop asking questions.

I got about halfway through, to the spooooky forest world. I had to nip my completionist tendencies in the bud halfway through the second world when I found myself going back into levels to find all the DK coins and secrets. I kept forgetting that I only had one night to play this! But, like, finding the secret objects was fun, so it was a struggle!

Thanks to the Super Game Boy palette, the swamps retain the original barfy green color!

Anyway, that should be a clear indication that I would definitely go on another date with this one. I wasn't sure this would be the case going in with my prior Donkey Kong Land experience, but I was pleasantly surprised by how coherent this title was. I'd be interested what it's like to someone who hadn't played DKC2. Good luck finding someone fitting that bill with how popular DKC2 was, though!

I'm interested in the laws of Kremland here. Are Kremlings forced to attend a schooling system? Do they have vocational school that allow them to become pirates? Must they pay their college loans back with banana coins?

Thus concludes my limited time with one of the classic titles. Thanks for going on this odd new trip down memory lane with me, despite that not making sense! For sticking through, I'll grant you this Sprite of Passage. Use it to get a free college credit at Kong Kollege. Get a second Bachelors of Science degree or somethin'. Then you, too, can exit into the work force with a bunch of BS!