If you've been following
'A Child's First' for the past couple of weeks you probably started
to notice a pattern. I had a lot of Nintendo growing up.
Nintendo was a big part
of a lot of gamers lives from the NES and onward and dominated the
handheld scene from the start.
Nintendo is like the
Disney of video games. We all loved them as a kid and harp on them
as we get older. I wonder if that would make the Wii U the Disney's channel?
Some times during the
late nineties or early two-thousands I was given a yellow Game Boy
Color modeled after Pokemon. The Game Boy came with Super Mario Land
and Pokemon Yellow.
Before that I only had a
couple of tiger handhelds. The Game Boy Color was my first legitimate
handheld system after only having a Nintendo 64 and PlayStation up
to that point.
Basically
this.
Ah, Pokemon
Yellow. I have many fond memories of this game. I was introduced to
Pokemon through the TV show so I was the most familiar with it
through that and Pokemon Yellow came out at just the right time for
me.
I spent
hours playing that game, hanging out with Pikachu and collecting as
many Pokemon as possible. I ended up wasting the Master Ball because
I was afraid I would mess up and not catch Zapdos.
Having
Jesse and James in the game was great, too. Team Rocket feels so
empty in Red and Blue.
Super Mario
Land is a little more of an acquired taste. Given the limitations of
the Game Boy it's only natural that the game is NOTHING like the
Mario games for NES and SNES.
I still got
plenty of enjoyment out of it and it was the first 2D Mario game I
played after my brother sold the NES. I didn't understand what the
hell was going on, but that's pretty much my reaction to any Mario
game.
Pokemon
outweighed all the other Game Boy games I had. In addition to Yellow
there was Red, Blue, Gold, Silver, and Crystal. Crystal was the
first Pokemon game that let you play as a girl and the Second
Generation was responsible for a lot of the staples that carried over
to future titles.
I had to
buy doubles of Red, Blue, and Yellow, since my mom played the games,
beat them, and maxed out every Pokemon to level 100. Yeah, you heard
that right, my mom is a Pokemon Master.
Outside of
Pokemon there were a couple of Zelda games, the re-release of the
first Mario game, and the more obscure Buffy the Vampire Slayer
game. I owned Oracle of Ages and Seasons on the Zelda front and
enjoyed them both.
The Mario
game was a lot of fun too and something I still go back to to this
day. The feature to play as Luigi with the push of a button was a
nice addition since he was always my favorite Mario brother.
The Buffy
game had no connection to the one from Xbox and takes place during
Season 4 using comic box artwork for the cut-scenes and gameplay. A
lot of fun, but one of the more challenging Buffy games to play.
Mainly because it only had seven levels, and I beat them all!
These
weren't the only games for the Game Boy I played, though. A friend of
mine had Super Mario Land 2 and I would play that a bit while
hanging out. I don't remember much about it except that it was heads
over heels better than the first game.
I also got
to play Link's Awakening and Mortal Kombat II on the Game Boy through
my cousin's Super Game Boy that connected to the Super Nintendo.
Yeah, Mortal Kombat II for the Game Boy. That was about as bad as
you'd expect it to be.
I
admittedly didn't play too much of Link's Awakening, but what little
I did play left an impression on me. I even bought a digital copy of
it for my 3DS so I can play it anytime I want.
Recently I
got a new Game Boy game called Kirby's Dream Land. My first Kirby
game, believe it or not. He's pretty white on cover and could pass
for a ghost if it wasn't for the feet. The game was a lot of fun and
it's crazy all the things you can do to enemies.
Before there was the Game
Boy Player for the Nintendo GameCube, we had the transfer pak we
could attach to our N64 controller that let us played Game Boy
games, except that was limited to Pokemon games since it came with
Pokemon Stadium.
The first game permitted
you to play the first gen games, while the second let you play the
second gen games. Not a bad way to go if you have no other way to
play Game Boy games on the big screen.
However, the best thing
about these were of course the ability to take them anywhere. To
school, outside, on the road, and to be able to hook up to your
friends' Game Boy to play with them.
I can still remember a
couple of long road trips where I had some Game Boy games to play and
they were the greatest. I lucked out considering I started with the
Game Boy Color and the screen was a little easier to see than the
original green and black screen, but man does that change when you
enter a tunnel. Good thing to have on hand during a power outage,
too.
Long story short, the
Game Boy was a great invention and paved the way for the Game Gear,
the PSP, and the mobile games that are all the rage these days.
Without it Tiger handheld might have been the beginning and end of
handhelds, which would have meant we missed out on so many great
titles over the years. This is ToriJ, with another blast from the
past, signing off.
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