Mercenary Force (1990)

 

For some reason, Meldac decided the mercenaries needed to look like firefighters.

In the early 80's, as Atari VCS/2600 units were flying off store shelves, a lot of companies jumped on the video game publishing bandwagon. The glut of terrible software in 1982 and early 1983 created a situation where too much supply met waning demand, and the North American video game market bubble burst. In reviving the market during the mid-late 80's, Nintendo was careful to try and exercise better control over publishers, to ensure that the software met at least some bare minimum standard before it could be licensed for the console. While the rest of the world had no such "crash" regarding video game sales and their viability as a vertical market, a lot of Japanese companies tried their hand at video game publishing, to expand their portfolio. Some flirted with the idea briefly, others went all in, and managed to create another business line for themselves.

Meldac was sort of an example of the former, entering the video game market in 1990, and exiting promptly by 1994. The company was also a music publishing outfit, and when they decided to get out of the business of video games, they stuck to music publishing, and have since worked with a number of notable artists. They published a small handful of video games via their North American division. Of those titles, one is a more mainstream title, that being US Championship V'Ball in 1989 on the NES. Their other notable NES game is the rather odd shooter Zombie Nation, which is getting a revival shortly, thanks to Japanese publisher City Connection. They also published a pair of Game Boy titles, one of them being the very unique Mercenary Force, which was developed by Lenar and Live Planning.

This is how you do a title screen! Show me ninjas, samurai, 

and monsters, and I'll press Start on that screen quickly.

The game has the usual setup, with a twist: instead of a ragtag group of mercenaries going off to fight aliens or military, your Shogun-era fighters must confront the myriad foes controlled by the "Dark Lord" to fend off their advance upon the Japanese countryside. Apparently, famine, plagues, and pestilence are not good things. Shogun Tokugawa has a vision of mighty warriors rising up against the evil, which is where you come in. You'll select from a batch of 5 mercenaries to team up and take on the minions of darkness, and rid the land of their foul presence. You can select up to 4 of these fighters to join your squad.

At its core, this is a side scrolling shoot-em-up, but with people walking along the ground, instead of flying, or piloting some kind of craft. Each mercenary has its own attack style, whether that's forward firing, in a diagonal fashion, or vertical fire. Depending on how you approach a level, and where you feel you need coverage, will determine which mercs you choose, and in what order. Do you opt for a lot of forward firing team members, to create a powerful frontal assault? Or do you mix and match, so you can have a wide ranging attack? In this game, the choice is yours, and it's a big part of what sets this game apart from other shooters.

Choose your team members wisely - you have 5 choices,

but only 4 openings, and a limited amount of Yen to spend.

One of the interesting mechanics in the game is the ability to set up your team into 1 of 4 different formations. There's the Formation of the Wind, which is a loose cluster of people that will make up a diamond shape when you have a full team. Formation of the Forest is similar, but a tighter formation, with more of a square shape, and your mercs closer together. Formation of the Fire creates a bit of a straight line on the horizontal, with the 2 members in the back stacked together, so your formation resembles a flame. Formation of the Mountain puts your team into a vertical line, so you all walk along in a straight line and attack uniformly, but have a lot of exposure to enemy fire. Which formation you use most frequently will depend on your play style somewhat, but generally speaking, you'll want to find a way to balance exposure to enemy attacks, while maximizing your attack power, so a combo of formation choice, along with fighters chosen and their order will help you determine that.

As you fight enemies, they'll drop 10 Yen coins you can collect. These don't stay on screen very long, so you need to be quick about grabbing them. This is a risk/reward scenario of course, because enemy waves often come together in groups, so as soon as you take out a small batch of foes, there's likely to be another just behind it. Merely touching an enemy means the team member who gets hit will take damage, and lose a "strength" point for each contact. Likewise, getting hit by enemy projectiles will cause you to lose a point for each hit sustained. Obviously, care must be taken to balance how aggressive you are with collecting coins, and how many hits you take, so you're not damaging yourself more than you can mitigate later.

Formation of the Wind gives you a balance of power and

size, but it does spread you out enough to make you more

susceptible to enemy attacks than tighter formations.

Along the way, you'll encounter shops in each town where you can power up a bit. You can buy Sushi, which restores a single strength point for each team member, Medicine, which restores 3 strength points for your leader, or Tea, which restores 3 strength points for all members. In a couple of the shops, you'll also have the opportunity to buy Scripture, which has a chance to upgrade your lead party member to a higher class. You'll also encounter a gambling game in stage 2, where you can take a chance and win a potential prize, to be revealed later in the game. There are a couple spots where you can enter a shrine, and be granted extra strength points for your team members to aid you on your journey. And once in the game, you'll encounter the Daibutsu, who you can pay to win a chance to resurrect a fallen warrior. The more you spend, the better your chance, though it's still a crapshoot, since you have to choose a tile after paying. If you have the Mystic in your party, your odds will improve.

Control in the game is basic, but adequate. The B button changes the formation of your party, and A is your attack button. A is also confirms your selection in the shops, and B will cancel out of a shop. As you move around the screen with the d-pad, your lead character will move fastest, and other characters will lag behind a bit, so be aware of that control quirk. Start pauses the game, and starts the next round, after you decide whether or not you want to add another party member to your team. If you press A+B together, you'll activate a transformation, where your lead party member will sacrifice themselves and become a "spirit warrior" version of themselves, which provides temporary invincibility, as well as other benefits, which vary by character, though the Servant has no such ability.

Tea is a great way to quickly boost your team's strength

points up to a high level, so you can take a lot of hits.

Graphically speaking, this is a fairly impressive game for its vintage. Your mercs are easy to identify, and enemy sprites are all fairly distinctive. Character designs on the selection screen are nice, and in game, scenery is generally well rendered. There are a couple places where it's not obvious what you're looking at, but overall, everything looks nice. The shops aren't something I would have expected to be a shop, and I sort of stumbled across them by accident, just by walking into one in the scenery. The shrines are more obvious, as is the Daibutsu. Occasionally, you'll get "stuck" on the scenery a bit, or one of your team members might, and their sprite might jitter a bit until clear of that obstacle, which is a funny consequence of the design. In general, this game looks pretty good throughout, even if the boss designs aren't quite as impressive as the drawings you see in the manual.

Audio is a place where the game falters, somewhat. Sound effects are fine, and get the job done. The music is also solid, with a neat opening tune, and a decent boss fight theme. The stage music is also good, but the problem is, there's not enough of it! There's one, and only one stage song that plays during the whole game. Why the development team felt they could get by with that one theme is beyond me, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a pretty big oversight. The music is good, and has that ancient Japanese kind of feel you want, to help with the atmosphere of the game. But it sure would have been nice if they had given us more music, even if it was just 2 or 3 tracks that would alternate between the game's 6 stages. It would have gone a long way to making the experience less irritating by game's end.

I'm not entirely sure what a Razor Rat is, but this is apparently it.

One of the things that I found while exploring this game, and while we collectively played it for the RF Generation Shmup Club (shameless plug), is that the methodology the game is going for isn't necessarily the best approach. You have 4 slots to hire mercenaries, and the game expects you to do so, given its design, but you're not require to. Rather, several of us found the most effective way to approach the game is a more minimalist take, where we hire a single Ninja, or perhaps a Ninja and a Monk, so that you have a smaller footprint, and thus, a smaller overall "hit box" for the enemies to exploit. It means you'll probably collect less money, because you'll have to be far more aggressive in taking out enemies in some spots, and way more conservative in others. As you go along, you may hire additional mercs to help, but until you get toward the end of the game, you really can do most, if not all, of the game with a single character. It makes the game feel a bit more like a traditional shmup, but of course, it takes away from the core mechanic that's at work here. Ultimately, the game can be taken on with a team and completed that way, but you'll have a fair bit of trial and error along the way, as you learn which party members serve you best, and which formation(s) will be your best options.

I do have a few minor gripes. First, the game's scoring seems fairly broken. You can have 2 runs where you do roughly the same things, and your scores between the 2 won't really line up. In conjunction with that, the only time you see your score is while you're playing, or briefly when you die. You get no score report at end game. Also, coins don't count toward your score, so if you're playing in a more aggressive manner, your only real reward for collecting Yen is having more at your disposal for hiring mercs or healing. Second, there are no end credits. You get a fun ending screen with animation, but nothing further. And you have to turn off your Game Boy and back on, if you want to play again. Third, there are a few tight areas where you're almost guaranteed to take damage. I realize the game is designed around having hit points, but it's not a welcome mechanic in the shmup world, generally speaking, and it can be a sign that some spots were not as well designed.

It can be easy to get a party member or two caught on

something in the stage, which makes it harder to avoid

enemy projectiles, particularly in the later stages.

One interesting thing of note is that the game has multiple endings. If you beat the game with one or more party members, you'll get the "standard" ending, congratulating you for vanquishing the evil from the land. If you use the level select cheat that you can activate, and beat the game, you will see a variation of that ending with goofy looking monsters and animals in place of the humans in the end screen. And if you can complete the final boss fight with a Mystic in your party, you'll get the best ending, which sees you and your mercenary friends walking off into the sunset to revel in your victory. It's a nice detail, and just enough of a differentiator to give the game a little extra replay value.

All in all, despite my qualms with a few design choices, this is a solid title. It's probably not going to be your favorite shooter, nor do I expect it would even be your favorite shmup on the Game Boy. But it's good enough to be well worth a look. It has enough unique stuff going on, and enough that sets it apart from other games to stand on its own. I definitely had fun with this game, and could see myself fire it up again from time to time, for a quick play session. It works well enough on the hardware, and especially if you have a Game Boy Pocket, the ghosting isn't too bad, because of the relatively slow pace and slow scrolling through each level. This isn't terribly expensive right now either, so it's worth the asking price as of this writing. Recommended.

As an aside, I recently covered this game on my podcast as well, in case you haven't seen or heard. It's called Shoot the Core-cast, and we cover a different shmup each month. If you like shooting games, come check us out, and let us know what you think of the podcast. We'd really appreciate any feedback you could provide. Oh, and if you enjoy playing shooters, join up at RF Generation, and come jump into a play-through with us! We try to host a variety of shooters, so hopefully we'll find one you like, and you can participate with us. Thanks!

Stargate (1994)

Image shamelessly stolen from Retroplace.

Someone hadn't quite figured out Photoshop yet.

I'm pretty sure I've made it clear in my writings and videos that I'm a big fan of science fiction. I grew up loving the Star Wars movies, watched the debut episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with my parents, and watched that series through to completion, and followed that up with both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and caught up on other series when I had the opportunity. My family saw Independence Day on opening weekend, and I managed to purchase the final VHS release of the original Star Wars trilogy, which I still have to this day. One franchise that happened to pass me by early on was Stargate, however. I don't remember going to see it in the theater, which is odd, because I was dating at that point, and would have wanted to go see it. But I somehow didn't see it upon release.

Fast forward a couple years, and I rented it, and immediately enjoyed it. I thought the premise was interesting, the characters were good, and the setting was unique. And when I got the chance to see the follow-up series, Stargate SG-1, I liked that, as well. Several years later, when the TV series exited the premium Showtime network, and finished its 10-year run on the Sci-Fi Network, as well as being in perpetual re-runs on the channel, I became a real fan. My DVD and BluRay copies of the film, DVD of the "Director's Cut" of the TV series pilot episode, all 10 seasons on DVD, and copies of the 2 follow-up films with the SG-1 casts will attest to my fandom. I didn't latch onto Stargate Atalantis in the same way, though I did eventually develop an appreciation for it. I still feel like Stargate Universe was too self-serious, and didn't have the kind of character development necessary to make it a good follow-up, so I wasn't surprised when it was cancelled. Needless to say, I'm a fan.

A simple title screen, but it gets the job done. That font at the bottom, though.

As with most any science fiction franchise, a video game adaptation is inevitable. Several, typically speaking. In the case of Stargate, there was a pair of action platforming games released on the 16-bit consoles. And then there's this oddity: a puzzle game for the Game Boy (and also Sega's Game Gear), based around the idea of the hieroglyphics used as addresses for the Stargate itself. It's an interesting idea, and one that has potential, particularly for a low-power system like the Game Boy. This kind of puzzle game approach is a perfect fit for the hardware, at least on paper. In execution, however, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

The idea is simple: you're presented with a pseudo-3D, wire frame top-down view of a round chamber, and you can control where along the wall of that chamber to move slowly falling shapes that bear the hieroglyphic symbols that make up the addresses used throughout the various Stargates across the universe. The idea is to match up 3 of the same symbol, in a vertical stack, and that will eliminate those pieces from the chamber. If the group of pieces you eliminate matches one of the 7 symbols at the top of the screen, representing a Stargate address destination, that symbol at the top shows as completed. Completing stacks of 3 for symbols not in the address will merely yield points, and the stack will disappear, leaving you more room to create other matches. You can flip the pieces over, to reveal a 2nd symbol on the other side, giving you another matching option. Occasionally, a blank piece will appear. This acts as a wildcard, effectively allowing you to make a match with it, and only 2 of the same symbol, or if you're lucky enough, 1 symbol piece, and 2 successive blank pieces.

The cutscenes in the game's intro, and between levels in the Battle Mode

are quite good, and have really good art in them for the Game Boy hardware.

There's also a special piece that has 2 separate functions. On one side is a harpoon symbol. Drop that piece on the top of any stack, and it will eliminate the entire stack of pieces. Flip that piece over, and it is a pyramid symbol. When you drop that on the board, whichever symbol it lands on, every piece in the chamber bearing that symbol will be eliminated. Obviously these 2 options are very handy, particularly if you have a tall stack of misplaced pieces, or just a full board, so you can make more room. Fail to strategically employ these items when they appear, and the chamber may fill up. If a stack reaches the top of the chamber, it's game over.

This leads to the game's 2 main modes: Skill Mode, and Battle Mode. Skill Mode is a single-player experience, giving you the chamber, a gate address at the top, and just lets you have a go at matching the symbol pieces together. If you manage to get a full address, you're presented with another, and the game just keeps going, until you fill the chamber to the top with a single stack. Once you game over, you're presented with a screen that calculates all the bonuses you received, based on how many matches you made, the number of bonus tiles you successfully utilized, and the number of completed Stargate addresses you had, at varying levels of difficulty. It functions quite similar to the endless modes in the various games in the Columns series, and serves somewhat as a practice mode for the real game.

This is the initial screen you'll see when you start Battle Mode. The spaces

that are unavailable are always randomized, as is where Ra starts off.

Battle Mode pits you against one of Ra's minions, and you're both attempting to gain control of a particular Stargate. As you make matches, much like Puyo Puyo or Columns, you create additional pieces in your opponent's chamber. As the CPU makes matches, likewise, your chamber will receive extra pieces, usually in a stack. If the pieces they drop match what you already have on the board, they will sometimes eliminate, depending on the order dropped, but usually, they just create a taller stack, and put you that much closer to losing. Your goal in Battle Mode is less clear, as you don't always have the opportunity to complete a full gate address during a match, and even when you do, that doesn't always trigger a win condition in a particular battle. If you manage to win a gate, you'll see the letter "D" pop up on a grid screen, indicating you won that round. Ra's minion always gets to choose the first gate, and if he wins, he will choose subsequent games, until you win a match, Likewise, if you win a particular gate, you'll get to choose which area to battle for next. If you win a match next to a gate marked with an "R" that Ra controls, it will flip the adjacent gates to your control, similar to pieces on an Othello board. If you can manage to flip enough of Ra's pieces to your control, or simply win enough matches to gain the majority of the board, so that Ra can't flip enough of your pieces to have a majority, you'll win Battle Mode, and then your score will tally in similar fashion to what you see in Skill Mode.

Control is simple. Press right on the D-pad to move your pieces clockwise, or left on the D-pad to move your pieces counter-clockwise. Press A on the controller to flip your piece over, to see the alternate symbol, and if you press and hold the B button, the current piece will fall quickly toward the chamber floor. Pressing down on the D-pad will advance the tile 1 space further down the chamber. And of course, the Start button pauses the game. There's nothing else to it, other than remembering that you can continue to press right or left to rotate the currently falling piece around the chamber as much as you want. It might sound un-intuitive at first, but it works, and you should adapt quickly.

This is the view you'll be looking at the most. The wire frame is very helpful,

and a good design choice, to ensure players can successfully place tiles.

Graphically, the game is an interesting contrast. The bulk of the game has very simplistic graphics, though they get the job done, despite the low resolution. As mentioned before, sometimes the patterns can be hard to make out once a piece falls a couple levels down, but you'll learn to identify each one over time. However, because the Battle Mode serves as the story mode of the game, you'll get brief cutscenes with dialogue that have relatively nice renditions of Daniel Jackson and Colonel Jack O'Neil, as well as Ra and a couple of his minions. The map screen that displays between levels in Battle Mode is nicely rendered, and the starfield effect on the title screen is understated, but works for what it does. So while the game's visuals won't win any awards, they're serviceable enough for the most part, and even well done in spots. At least the tile flip animation is convincing.

The sound department is where the game doesn't fare quite as well. The game only has a small handful of tunes to play during matches, and while they change up between Battle Mode segments, in Skill Mode, you're locked into just the one song. Thankfully, you can turn the music off, if it gets to be annoying. Even so, the tunes themselves aren't bad, and have that vaguely chiptune take on a sort of Egyptian themed atmosphere. You probably won't be humming them for hours after you turn offf your Game Boy, but they do provide that necessary accompaniment to the action on screen. Sound effects barely register, on the other hand. There's very little in the way of other sound, and you probably won't notice it much, other than the little "shuffle" noise the tile makes when it's being flipped. In total, the sound is a bit forgettable, but not awful.

Make sure to watch for the "harpoon" piece - especially if you have a tall

stack of tiles you need to clear out, because this will accomplish it for you.

This all sounds interesting in theory, but the execution is where things get dicey. The top-down view makes it difficult to see the symbols very clearly, once they fall down more than one or two levels, which adds to the challenge, but not in a very appealing way. Because the pieces generate randomly, there will be times when you're given every piece but the one you need to make a match, and you end up either having to cover up the spot you've been saving for matches, or hope for a harpoon to clear out a stack. The game doesn't move that quickly, but if you have a stack that's one piece away from being at the top, you will have barely any time to react to either drop a matching piece, harpoon, or blank piece on the top of that stack. That also means you have to rotate your piece the other way around the chamber, which can make it harder to get the piece where you want to go.

My other big frustration is with the Battle Mode, and is twofold. Firstly, the win conditions aren't that clear from battle to battle, other than making enough matches to fill up the opponent's chamber. Some matches appear to be incredibly short, so either the CPU gives Ra's minion all matching pieces, and your chamber fills up to the top very quickly, or a match can drag on, seemingly forever, while you and your opponent keep dropping pieces into one another's chambers, neither quite able to clinch the win. There were a couple instances, while I played, that I was able to complete a full gate address, and be presented with another, during Battle Mode. I would have assumed that to be a win condition, but it's not. Because you can't see the opposing chamber, you have no way of knowing how well your opponent is doing, so it's just a matter of doing the best you can, and hoping for the best, or that the AI will make a mistake, and fill up a column.

As you complete matches of the hieroglyphics at the top of the screen,

you can see them grayed out. Once you complete a full 7-character

gate address, you'll be given a new one for which to make matches.

My second big gripe is also with Battle Mode. The Othello concept is kinda neat, but it's not clear to me, as of this writing, what determines which pieces adjacent to yours will turn over, or how many. I thought perhaps it was like Othello directly, where a line in both directions would flip, but it's not. It appears to be adjacent pieces, but sometimes it seems like it flips over more than that. I may have been misreading the board, but it appeared inconsistent. Is it based on how many open gates there still are? If so, and you can win back more enemy-controlled gates that way, it feels like an odd way to do it. Either way, it was an odd system to use, even though it sort of mirrors how the gates all connect to one another within the Stargate lore.

At the end of the day, what do we make of Stargate on the Game Boy? I'm not sure how to even quantify that. What you have here is an odd combination of Block-Out and Columns, with some Othello thrown in for good measure. I assume that Battle Mode is more fun in a 2-player setting, though naturally, I wasn't able to test that. On its own, the Skill Mode is fun enough for a little while, and is good practice to get a feel for the flow. The real meat of the game is Battle Mode, but unless you really get a kick out of falling block games and match 3 puzzles, I don't know how heartily I can recommend this. I had some fun with it, and I can kind of see the appeal, but I think it's limited. If you see it dirt cheap, it might be worth checking out. As of this writing, a loose cart is hovering just below $7. I can't advise anyone pay more than that, because I think the game ends up being a bit less than the sum of its parts. That's a shame, because there's a good game buried in here somewhere; it just doesn't do enough to elevate itself beyond the mediocrity that many of the handheld's puzzle games often do. For puzzle game die-hard fans, and Stargate aficionado's primarily, if not only.

Update - This Blog Isn't Dead!

Like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, the Game Boy Guru blog is back! Or, at least, I'm hoping it's back. Things have been busy the last couple years. I started up the RF Generation Shmup Club, where we play a different shooting game each month, and that's been going on since June of 2018. In January 2019, I started streaming over on Twitch, quite often playing through the Shmup Club game of the month, among other things. I haven't streamed a ton of Game Boy stuff, though I did do a full play-through of Metroid II last year, among other things. Give me a follow over there, if you're so inclined. And my podcast, Shoot the Core-cast, has been taking up a lot of my time. Again, that covers the Shmup Club game of the month, and we've played a lot of great shooters, and had some great discussion, as well as some fun special guests on some episodes. Oh, and last July, I moved, so I've been a busy guy, not to mention the global pandemic that caused most of the world to shut down for a little while. Needless to say, I've kept myself occupied.

I shifted my focus to streaming, even doing less on my YouTube channel, because it's easy to start up a stream after I get off work and get things settled at home. Writing game reviews requires more than just playing for an hour or so a night. I have to capture clean footage that's not streamed, so I can then also get clean screenshots, compile my thoughts, sit down to write it all out, and edit it when I'm done. Ideally, I can use the captured footage as the basis for turning that into a Dramatic Readings video on my YouTube channel as well. As you can imagine, game reviews are not a short process, even in the best of circumstances.

However, looking at the date of my previous post, I realize it's been nearly 2 years since I put up my last review. I apologize for neglecting this blog, but honestly, I didn't think it ever got much traffic, and it had kind of become a launching pad for what I would eventually turn into a video review, anyway, because more people are watching YouTube game reviews than actually reading them these days, even for retro stuff. That said, it's still important for me to keep working on this blog, both as a way to document my progress with the Game Boy library, but also because it keeps me actively working on the games.

With that said, I'm preparing to write my first Game Boy review in 2 years. It's of the licensed puzzle game Stargate, based on the film of the same name. I'm hoping to have it ready to go in a few days. Once that's up, I plan on trying to squeeze in some time with other Game Boy titles, and begin to get a rhythm going. I'm not going to set a schedule, or hold to anything specific, but I do hope to at least make a concerted effort over the next few weeks to get some content going again. I'll then be getting back to doing videos of the games as well, since I should begin to have some time back after this month is over. Thank you to everyone who has read the reviews, and watched my videos. Hopefully, I'll be able to have more content for you before long.

R-Type (1991)

Box art shamelessly stolen from The Game Boy Database.

Even when it's rendered in a slightly less menacing art style,

the Dobkeratops boss is nearly always awesome and scary looking.

If I haven't made it abundantly clear on this blog, or on my YouTube channel, I love shmups. You know, shoot-em-ups. Shooters. STG's. Scrolling shooters. Space shooters. Pick your term, whichever you like - I could care less. What I do care about? Shooter games. And no, not those first-person games, where you run around, toting a gun, shooting anything that moves. I'm talking about the kind of shooter where you fly a plane, spaceship, or similar craft, and blast everything that moves with an assortment of fantastical weaponry. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good FPS game now and again, but my heart is with the classic scrolling shooter.

The alternate logo, used in a lot of arcade posters, and some ports,
looks awesome here, atop a rendering of the Dobkeratops.

I don't wish to belabor the point, but for the uninitiated, a brief treatise on the genre's origins: Space Invaders is where the shoot-em-up was born, followed by Galaxian, Gorf, Galaga, and many other "G" games, but it was potentially Konami's Scramble that defined the shooting game as it would come to be known, in that, it wasn't just a ship that could move along a single axis, firing at incoming enemies, but one that could move along both axes, while the screen scrolled to reveal more enemies and changing terrain. This innovation was quickly followed up by multiple developers, namely Sega with Zaxxon and Namco with Xevious, and the modern shoot-em-up was born. These early examples brought different innovations with them, and helped solidify some genre conventions, but the still rudimentary graphics meant that some of the elements didn't quite have the same kind of effect. In 1985, Konami followed their initial scrolling shooter game with a spiritual successor, the legendary Gradius. Not only did this game give birth to the modern shooter, but it also brought additional innovations and improvements to the genre. Irem brought their own shmup innovation to arcades just 2 years later, with R-Type.

Yep. Still awesome and scary looking, even on the tiny Game Boy screen.

It's not a stretch to say that R-Type was a unique beast, back when it was released. Up to that point, most shooter craft had little in the way of protection, other than the player's own skill and dexterity in dodging oncoming fire. Gradius introduced a front-facing shield power-up, that allowed the Vic Viper to withstand a handful of shots directly to the nose, which offered a much needed respite to the hail of bullets that often occurred. With R-Type, however, the R-9 was equipped with the Force Bit, a new innovation made possible by harnessing the flesh of one of the Bydo's own bio-mechanical menaces, that would not only provide shielding from enemy fire, but also absorb that fire indefinitely. The Force Bit could also be upgraded with one of 3 different weapons, up to two levels, and even thrown at enemies and used as a destructive weapon itself. Plus, the Force Bit could be coupled to the ship either in front, or in the rear. Needless to say, this innovation was quite forward thinking, and proved to be the unique element that catapulted the game to success.

Stage 2's alien graveyard and "intestines in giant test tubes" motif

just might be the most impressive thing, graphically speaking, in the game.

Naturally, when an arcade game became a hit in the 80's, it was almost inevitable that it had to be ported to some kind of home computer or game console. In the case of R-Type, it went everywhere. From the woefully under powered ZX Spectrum, to the fledgling TurboGrafx 16, many gaming platforms received a port of the game. Irem's little shooting game wonder didn't see release until mid-1991 on Nintendo's monochromatic handheld wonder. The port was handled by BITS Studio, who did a number of Game Boy conversions during that period, and is an admirable attempt at trying to bring the arcade experience to the platform, despite its limitations.

Unless you're a shoot-em-up wunderkind, expect to see this screen

quite a bit, like I did. It's okay, though; you have unlimited continues.

The general story is, the bio-mechanical Bydo creatures, and their conquering empire, have attacked humanity, and it's up to you, and your trusty R-9 ship, to repel the attack. As previously mentioned, you stand a better chance in a "one ship versus the whole armada" scenario than you might otherwise, because you have the Force Bit, an interesting invention that combines technology with some actual fleshy material from a Bydo creature. This gives the R-9 additional firepower, shielding from some enemy fire, and additional offensive capabilities, since the Force Bit can be hurtled from the ship's front or rear, directly into enemies. Using the R-9, the Force Bit, and some combination of the 3 weapons available in the game, it falls to you to defeat the Bydo menace. What's a space pilot to do, other than the task set before them?

Stage 2's snake enemy has far fewer segments, which is to be

expected, given the small screen size and sprite limitations.

The game scrolls horizontally, and you'll notice from the outset that the R-9 is a rather sluggish craft. You'll need to watch out for "S" power-ups, which will increase your speed. As for weapon power-ups, there are 3 types: the helix laser, the reflect laser, and the crawling ground laser. In the arcade original, these were represented with red, blue, and yellow power-up icons. Here, of course, that had to change to accommodate the Game Boy's lack of a color palette. The icon with a "1" in the center is the angled laser, that with a "2" is the helix laser, and the "3" is the wall crawling flame. When collecting an initial power-up, the R-9 is granted the Force Bit, and subsequent power-up icons either grant level 1 of a power-up, or level 2, if your ship is already powered up. Also available is the Round Bit, which auto-equips to float above your ship upon initial pickup, and acts as a shield against enemy fire and collision. Much like the Force Bit, this can also be used to damage enemies. If a second Round Bit is collected, it will equip to a similar position below the R-9. Round Bits will also fire single shots of the R-9's main cannon. Conspicuously missing from this port is the Missile power-up, which auto-fires missiles from the R-9 in the arcade port.

"Shot through the heart, and you're to blame,

You give aliens a bad name!"

The R-9 has full 8-way movement via the D-pad, as one would expect. Pressing the "B" button will fire a shot from the main cannon, and rapid pressing will yield a fast succession of bullets. Press and hold the "B" button to charge up the cannon, indicated by the gauge at the bottom of the screen, and when you release it, will let loose a powerful blast that does far more damage than any normal shot, or even any of the lasers. The "A" button acts as your Force Bit control. If the Force Bit is docked with your ship, press "A" to release it, which will send it shooting out in whichever direction corresponds with which side of the ship it's docked. If the Force Bit is undocked, pressing "A" will call it back to the ship. The Start button pauses, naturally. Select is only used at the title screen, to bring up a handful of options, including a difficulty selection, between "Easy" and "Hard" modes.

The battleship of Stage 3 can seem a bit tricky at first, but if you can see

how I have my ship positioned, versus where the Force Bit is sitting,

you can see that this version of the game gives you a way to complete

cheese the central core, allowing you to defeat it with zero risk.

With most shoot-em-ups, you need fast reflexes, good hand/eye coordination, and a knack for interpreting on-screen events, so you can adjust what you're doing, in order to best power up and survive. These are all useful things in R-Type, but the key to success in this game, and indeed, its successors, comes down to memorization. If you know the layout of a level, which enemy waves are coming and where, which power-ups are where, and which weapons work best in a given area, you will stand a much better chance of success. Developing a pathway through each level, so you can position the ship where it makes the most sense, in terms of being reasonably safe from enemy fire or obstacles, and also allowing you to maximize enemy destruction, is essential for survival. This made R-Type somewhat unique for its time, because most other games in the genre allowed you to get by mostly on twitch reflexes and good power-up management. Irem had other plans for this game, however, because you can't just fudge your way through; you need to know where you're going, what you're doing, and which weapon you need at various junctions, because otherwise, you're not going to get very far.

Unfortunately, your high score in this version of the game is kind of a

moot point; at no point does the high score table ever display again,

and you can't even see your final score when you opt not to continue.

Visually, this port looks pretty good. The R-9 is recognizable, the switch to a numbered power-up system works, and most of the enemy sprites and level designs match their arcade counterparts pretty well. Most of the levels have very little in the background, but what's there works well to accent the foreground graphics, so it's not overdone. Animation is sparse, but it works well enough, despite a fairly high degree of sprite flicker, due to the number of sprites on screen sometimes, or the way the weapon power-ups are rendered. The BITS team should be commended for capturing, as well as could be expected, the look and feel of the arcade game.

In the absence of the original Stage 4 from the arcade, what was

Stage 6 becomes the de facto difficult level in the Game Boy port.

The audio department takes a bit of a hit, unfortunately. I'm not sure if it was a ROM size limitation, or what the reason was, but there are only 2 primary stage music tracks in the game that just repeat every other stage. Stages 1, 3, and 5 use the music from Stage 1, and Stages 2, 4, and 6, use that of Stage 2. The boss encounter music remains the same, and there's a separate ending theme, but the music selection in the game is quite sparse. Thankfully, what's here is at least translated reasonably well to the Game Boy's sound hardware. Sound effects are roughly what one would expect. They work for the port, and aren't annoying or offensive, but nothing stood out to me as being either particularly noteworthy, or specifically bad. They're merely utilitarian in that respect. The one exception is the sound effect that plays at the end of a stage, as your bonus score is being tallied. For a game that doesn't show your score when you die, it's a rather grating sound effect to count down that point bonus.

This spot tripped me up many times, having to try and navigate between 2

descending, basically indestructible enemies, and it's easy to crash into one.

As you might expect, concessions had to be made to fit this arcade game onto the Game Boy. I previously mentioned that the missiles were omitted from the weapon set. This isn't a big loss, since the strategic advantage they gave you in the original is mostly gone, given the more compressed level layouts and smaller enemy count. Rather than the original arcade game's 8 levels, the Game Boy port is comprised of only 6, cutting out stages 4 and 5. This was necessary due to the nature of those 2 areas. Stage 4 had enemies flying onto the screen that left obstacle trails you had to shoot through, and the sheer number of sprites and on-screen objects would have been overwhelming for the handheld. The same goes for Stage 5, which saw you pitted against giant robot snakes that split off into multiple sections when the head is destroyed. The Stage 5 boss would be too sprite-heavy as well. These necessary omissions make the game quite a bit easier as a result, especially since Stage 4 is generally considered the hardest area in the game.

Thankfully, the checkpoint in Stage 4 isn't too far from the boss, and you

at least get an opportunity to power up with a Force Bit & weapon beforehand.

R-Type has always been challenging, but while this version is no pushover, it is considerably easier than its original arcade incarnation. As previously mentioned, 2 levels are missing, so that cuts out a fourth of the game you need to memorize and learn. Also, there's a strategy you can use to more easily beat some bosses, whereby you throw the Force Bit at a boss, then move your ship out of reach enough that when you press "A" to call the device back to your ship, it instead will find the weak spot. Case in point: the Stage 2 boss can be easily defeated by throwing the Force Bit toward the right side of the screen, then moving the R-9 to the lower-left, and calling the bit back. Instead of traveling over top of the boss, it will go right to the center of the top of the boss, which is its vulnerable area. A similar strategy can be employed in Stage 3 at the end of the battleship. Needless to say, while you likely won't beat this game on a single credit your first time through, it shouldn't provide too much trouble, even in the game's second loop.

Just for the sake of contrast, you can see how much better R-Type DX

looks from this one screenshot. Imagine how much better the rest of the

game looks. It also sounds much better, with enhanced music & effects.

Though this is a reasonably solid conversion of the arcade hit, it's difficult to recommend it. Not because it's not a good game, but because it has been supplanted by R-Type DX on the Game Boy Color. It collects both this game, and the Game Boy port of R-Type II, which we didn't get in the US, and offers both the original black & white versions, as well as colorized versions that are enhanced on the Game Boy Color and Advance systems. In addition, the "DX" mode is a mix of levels from both games, which changes the experience enough to add additional replay value. As of the time of this writing, the original R-Type on Game Boy is going for around $10, which is probably close to what I paid for it. R-Type DX, on the other hand, is only going for around $12 loose, which is a much better deal, considering all the extra content. I consider myself lucky to have held onto my copy of the DX version which I bought as a new release, so my only interest in picking up the original port is as a Game Boy collector and reviewer, and ultimately, to see if there were any differences between the 2 versions that would make for an interesting discussion. There aren't any notable changes, to speak of, so unless, like me, you're a hardcore collector or shmup fan, and have to have them all, this is one I'd consider passing up, in favor of its Game Boy Color iteration. Either way, this is an easy game to recommend checking out, if you're a fan of the original, or the genre.


PS - As an aside, R-Type was the first game I chose for a new shoot-em-up club I've started at RF Generation, where I'm a monthly contributor, and staff member. The RF Generation Shmup Club looks at one shmup every month, and we all pick the version/port we want to play, try for good high scores, and see how far we can get in the game. For each monthly game, there's a discussion thread, where we talk about the game, share scores, strategies, and just discuss the game in general. If you like classic shooters, or even modern shoot-em-up games, consider checking it out. Head over to RF Generation, go to the forums, and you'll find the threads in the Community Playthrough section. New members are always welcome, so if you're reading this, I hope to see you there as well!

Metroid II: Return Of Samus (1991)

Box art shamelessly stolen from GiantBomb. There's an old saying that

I will paraphrase here: "The suit makes the man." What about the woman?

In the annals of video game history, some games don't quite get their due.  For every Super Mario Bros. that gets duly recognized for its greatness, there's bound to be a couple games that, while perhaps not as ubiquitous, or universally appealing, are nearly as well-designed and realized.  While commercial fortunes may elude said games, sometimes their critical acclaim transcends the almighty dollar, and a game's fortunes can be won more organically, through the slow burn that comes from word of mouth.  When this kind of grassroots movement starts to take hold, it's only a matter of time before someone takes notice.

Nintendo needed to do little more than put the logo on the screen with

"II" behind it to elicit screams of geek joy all around the world.

Such is the case with the original Metroid, which was of particular interest to the youth in North America.  Much like it's adventure game forbear, The Legend of Zelda, which released a mere month prior in the US, Metroid became the talk of school playgrounds across the country.  Kids were talking about the exploration, the cool main character, and how hard the game was, because there was nothing telling you where to go, or what to do.  There was an air of mystery surrounding the character of Samus, and a sense of loneliness that comes from a game with no humanoid enemies, and only a scant few alien foes to dispatch here and there, with no clear indication of why you should do so, if only because they will hurt you otherwise.  It was as if the Wild West had been recreated on an alien planet, and Samus was the lone homesteader, trying to get lay of the land.

Samus has a very cool looking spaceship. It reminds me of the cool ship

from the "Flight of the Navigator" movie, only with windows. And cannons.

Metroid was a revelation in console game design.  While The Legend of Zelda had a sprawling map and immediate sense of adventure, with its jaunty overworld theme and colorful graphics, Metroid immediately set out on a different path, with a darker overall feel, and elements heavily inspired by artist H.R. Giger and the Alien film by Ridley Scott.  Samus, the game's protagonist, was alone on an alien world, with a limited arsenal of weaponry to defend herself from a myriad of threats.  The stark, black background and unfamiliar terrain helped to define the game's atmosphere, which gave the original Metroid a sense of identity.  This identity paved the way for a series of games that, while having achieved notoriety, hasn't quite received the accolades it deserves.

I'm not sure what that thing over my head is, but it kind of looks like a

sort of flying chainsaw drill thing. The stuff of nightmares. Thanks, Nintendo.

After the modest success of the original game, Nintendo followed it up with a sequel in an unlikely place, on their handheld Game Boy system.  After the very open, exploratory nature of Metroid graced the Famicom and NES, Gunpei Yokoi and a small development team were given the opportunity to create a follow-up.  What we got in the sequel was a bit more straightforward than its predecessor, with less backtracking, more combat, and a few elements that have since become staples of the franchise.  How this sequel stacks up against its predecessor, and the games that followed, is up for debate.

These save stands will quickly become your friend on this lonely world.

Actually, they're your only friend here on Planet SR388. Forever alone...

The short version of the story synopsis is, after defeating the Mother Brain in the first game, the Galactic Federation sends Samus on a mission to the Metroid life form's home world, designated SR388, to wipe out the species.  After landing on the planet, Samus must set out to find, and destroy, all remaining Metroids.  Along the way, she discovers that this life form has various states of evolution, and some of the more evolved forms are particularly nasty, and difficult to dispatch.  Once she has successfully expunged all the Metroids from SR388, she must then face off with the Metroid Queen.  Assuming she can take out the mother of all Metroids, Samus can consider it a day's work, and return home.

When you see one of these busted egg pod things, you know a Metroid

is close by, so make sure to watch for one, so you're not caught off guard!

There are a number of changes to the Metroid formula that are obvious here, such as the move from console to handheld, the necessary change to 4-monochrome shades instead of color, and the zoomed in perspective, complete with large Samus sprite, because of the small screen size and lower resolution of the Game Boy.  Some changes are only obvious once you begin to play the game.  This is a more linear affair than the original game.  Sure, you can backtrack as far as you want or need, but unless you miss a path, don't follow a path completely, or want to go back to save your game or replenish health or missiles, it's not nearly as essential to revisit the areas you've explored before.  Also, unlike the original, this time Samus starts out with some abilities already enabled, such as the Morph Ball.  She also starts out with a stock of missiles, which are necessary to kill the Metroids.

You'll find a few of these spots in the game, where you can fully refill your

health with the glowing ball, & your missiles with the, you know, missile tank.

As you make your way through the game, you quickly find the Spider Ball power-up, which allows you to make the Morph Ball form adhere to any surface, as if by using some kind of sticky substance.  This is essential for traversing various areas, and for reaching the locations of some power-ups, and Metroids.  In addition, you'll locate missile upgrades, each increasing the maximum number of missiles you can carry by 5.  You'll find the familiar Ice Beam and Wave Beam part of the way through, but you'll also discover the new Spazer Beam and Plasma Beam, both of which return later in Super Metroid.  As with the original game, you can find the Varia Suit to cut the damage Samus takes in half, as well as obtain the Screw Attack, which allows Samus to cause damage to enemies when jumping into them in a spinning motion.  New to this outing are the High Jump Boots, which allow Samus to jump far higher than normal, as well as the Space Jump, which allows Samus to essentially spin jump infinitely, assuming subsequent jumps are executed properly (more on that later).  There's also a Spring Ball power-up, obtained by conquering a creature known as an Arachnus, that allows Samus to jump while in Morph Ball form.

The blue stuff that looks like water? Yeah, that's acid, and if you touch it,

you lose health. Also, I'm not sure why fish have mo-hawks on SR388.

Items that are essential to the completion of the game are the Spider Ball, the Ice Beam, and the Space Jump.  To make life easier, the Screw Attack is really helpful, and of course, locating as many Energy Tanks (to increase Samus' total health points) and Missile Tanks as possible, so you have enough ammo to take out the more highly evolved Metroids.  You also probably won't get too far if you don't upgrade to a more powerful gun, such as the Plasma Beam, at some point during the adventure.  Because this is a more linear affair, chances are, you'll likely discover most of the upgrades with minimal exploration and effort, as nothing in the game is too far off the beaten path.  It's just a matter of looking at the fairly obvious tells for where to bomb or shoot to break a path through a wall or floor, and you'll find what you're looking for.

Like the first game, there's knockback, as well as no grace period after

taking damage before you will take more, so watch your energy closely.

Graphically, this game is really on point.  The Samus sprite is large and detailed, and despite limited frames of animation, looks great while running and performing various movements.  All the areas are nicely drawn, with interesting use of different patterns and motifs that tie together fairly well, without being too repetitive.  Enemies all look good, though most aren't really animated.  It's a bit odd, as most enemy sprites just move on screen, but don't have separate frames of animation.  One particular enemy that does has a weird effect that accompanies the animation.  I don't know if this was a conscious decision, to help minimize screen blurring, or to keep the focus on Samus' animation, but it's an interesting side note.

They're not as prevalent here as on Zebes, but there are a handful of doors

that require the requisite 5 missiles to open the first time you encounter them.

Of particular interest is the colorization option available, when playing the game on newer hardware.  Starting with the Super Game Boy, and going all the way up through the Game Boy Advance, and Game Boy Player, each official way to play the Metroid II cartridge was programmed with a specific color palette for the game that gave Samus her iconic red and yellow suit, and colorizes backgrounds and foreground elements in various ways.  I know there's some hardware trickery that can be used to sort of get around the 4-shade limitation with this special palette, though I'm not entirely sure how Nintendo pulled it off.  I think the palette was tweaked after the Super Game Boy for the Game Boy Color, and for the Game Boy Advance and Super Game Boy.  Playing on 2 CRT TV's, the SGB palette looks brighter and more limited, in terms of colors used, whereas playing on the Game Boy Player (which I did for my full play-through), it seems there's a wider array of color choices used, suggesting that Nintendo purposely used some additional GBC/GBA magic to accomplish that.

You know you've hit pay-dirt when you've found a room with a large statue,

holding a power-up in its hand, waiting for you to shoot it and claim it.

"Take the bombs, Samus, for you are the Chozo-en one."

In the audio department, the game is pretty much what you would expect, and that's mostly a good thing.  The music in game is a mixture of slightly bouncy, hopeful sci-fi adventure music, ambient sounds, and a couple tunes that are less hopeful, and more foreboding, though nothing quite as atmospheric as the follow-up game would have, save, perhaps, for the title screen theme, with its contrasting harsh, high-pitched tones and somber melody.  The iconic jingle that plays when you find an upgrade is here, complete with a couple nice percussive flourishes, for effect.  The theme that plays during the final face-off with the Metroid Queen is sufficiently dark and unique as well.  Sound effects are mostly good, with cool explosion effects, good weapon noises, and a scant few enemy sounds.  The one area of sound that I take issue with is the annoying alarm that plays constantly when you get low on health.  It's kind of cool that it changes a little bit, depending on how close you are to death, or to restoring your health, but it's still annoying.  It's not quite as grating as that of most of the Legend of Zelda series games, and yet, remains a nuisance.

Lots of fun places like this to sneak through walls and find hidden areas.

Going into this game expecting an experience like the original game is a mistake, so if, perchance, you haven't played this game yet, understand that it takes a different approach.  The goal here is to kill all 39 Metroid creatures on SR388, and then take out the queen.  As I mentioned earlier, this is a far more linear affair.  When you pause the game, you see a number in the lower-right corner, which indicates the number of Metroids you have to kill within the general area.  Once that counter reaches zero, you experience a mild earthquake, and the acid that blocks your path to lower areas of the planet gets reduced, which then allows you to go deeper into SR388 to find and destroy more Metroids.  After this acid reduction takes place and you move to the next area, you can pause the game, and again, see how many Metroids are in the area that you need to dispatch.

Finding all the Energy Tanks in the game is essential, so make sure to

seek them all out. You'll need that extra health to face the queen.

Unlike the original game, which saw you exploring large areas with no major threats, save for a few pesky enemies here and there, this game has what boils down to a succession of mini-boss fights, with many of the lower-tiered Metroids.  This approach quickly become full-on boss fights, as you face off with some of the more evolved forms that take more of a pelting to down, and are trickier to defeat.  A quick search of the web will reveal the strategy for fighting the queen, but if you go in blind, like I did, you may be a little stumped as to how to take her down, even with full health and missiles.  After defeating the queen, instead of having to quickly escape, you can sort of leisurely stroll out of her chamber, and jump your way up and through the catacombs to reach the surface again, so you can get back to your ship.  As you do so, you'll encounter an egg, which hatches, and reveals a baby Metroid that follows you.  As you're escaping, this baby Metroid will clear a path for you through certain obstacles that Samus cannot shoot through, either with a laser weapon, or with missiles.  This, of course, sets the stage for the iconic Super Metroid intro, with it's famous line, "The last Metroid is in captivity; the galaxy is at peace."  So unlike the Legend of Zelda franchise, which has rarely received a direct sequel from one game to another, the stories of the first 3 games in this series are all interconnected, and flow relatively well from the first through the third.

The Spider Ball is a pretty fun power-up to use, because Samus can literally

stick to any surface or wall that doesn't cause her or her suit any damage.

As I write this review, in the fall of 2017, it's interesting that there are now more options than ever to experience the story and game play of Metroid II: Return of Samus.  Not only can you purchase an original cart, and play on some form of Game Boy hardware, but you can also purchase the game on the 3DS e-Shop.  The game never received a Wii, or Wii U Virtual Console release, however.  In August 2016, a fan-made remake was released, known on the web as "AM2R" which stands for "Another Metroid 2 Remake" which was released as a free download for PC.  Within days, Nintendo rightfully filed DMCA take-down requests, to protect the Metroid series as their intellectual property, and the game was subsequently taken down.  This happened after the developer, using the name DoctorM64, had poured years of development time into the project.  Of course, as with anything on the internet these days, once it's out in the wild, and a few people have downloaded it, it's still generally available, though not officially from the AM2R web blog.  Subsequently, DoctorM64 has parlayed his notoriety into a job offer from Moon Studios, who developed Ori and the Blind Forest, so at least the good Doctor landed on two feet after this went down.  In addition, Nintendo has just release an official remake, titled Metroid: Samus Returns.  This remake adds new elements, such as a melee parry ability, which gives you the ability to stun incoming enemies so you can then target them with a new laser sight, and blast away.  I haven't purchased a copy yet, but after playing through the original, it's on my short list to buy and play through soon.

Without getting too far down into the weeds, AM2R is a worthy remake, and definitely worth checking out.  It fixes many of the typically mentioned problems with the original game: it's in full color, the perspective is zoomed out, the control is tighter, the game moves faster, and there's a greater sense of exploration, because some of the new abilities you have to find first, such as the Spider Ball.  I haven't played it through to completion, but I can say that it definitely feels more like Super Metroid, and that's a good thing.  The interpretations of the Metroid II music are all really well done, and worth downloading on their own, as they tend toward the Super Metroid style and overall feel.  Graphically, AM2R is gorgeous, with that Super Nintendo look and feel, and the game is impressive overall.  Yes, you'll need to look a little harder to find a download for it, but it will be worth your time, because it's a stunning game that takes the source material and lovingly updates it to give it more polish.  I can't really recommend it enough, given the fact that it's free.

"Spider Samus, Spider Samus, does whatever a Spider can...mus."

Now that I've sung the praises of a fan remake, how does the original game fare?  Pretty well, all things considered.  The game looks and sounds great.  Metroid II retains some of the lonely feeling of the first game, but without too jarring an effect when you find a Metroid to take out.  Each area where a Metroid is located, you'll see a shattered egg/pod, indicating that there's one close by, so you'll be on heightened alert.  Each time you clear an area of Metroids, it's a very satisfying feeling, knowing you've opened up a whole new area to explore.  The new weapons and items are cool, and you'll definitely have fun with the Spider Ball power-up, scaling walls and going all sorts of places, looking for energy tanks and missile upgrades.  The Metroid encounters, especially the more evolved forms, can get fairly intense, and will raise your heart rate significantly as you rush to pelt them with missiles.

This game isn't without its flaws, however.  The obvious issue of the zoomed in perspective, due to the Game Boy's low resolution, is present here.  It doesn't affect game play too much, but it does hamper the Metroid encounters somewhat, because there's so little room to maneuver, it can feel claustrophobic for some of them.  The Game Boy's processor speed is a factor, because it means the game moves a bit more slowly than its predecessor.  That's not entirely a bad thing, because it makes some of the Metroid encounters a touch easier, but on the flipside, that means the game isn't overly difficult.  As with the first game in the series, Metroid II has no map feature, so you'll either need to draw your own, or in this age of internet, just search for one.  I found one that I liked and used that as my guide throughout the game.  Even though this is a more linear adventure than the original, I still recommend using or creating a map.

"Oh, what a feelin' - I see Samus on the ceiling."

I also rather dislike when games have zero recovery time when you take damage.  Yes, I know that with the energy tanks, it's more forgiving than a game where you get 3 to 5 hits and you're dead, but you can quickly run out of life in some situations.  Add to this, the fact that this game has knockback, and there are a couple spots where you can be juggled to death by a pair of adjacent enemies, with no way to escape.  You can get knocked off a ledge by a Metroid, only to fall into an acid pit or other hazard, and quickly drain all your health.  Metroids can be difficult to kill, because they're only vulnerable in certain spots, and some of the more evolved forms are hard to evade as you're attacking, so you will inevitably take damage, and often be forced to backtrack to find a health refill station before you will feel brave enough to venture to the next Metroid chamber, lest you find a save point before then.  The Metroids toward the end of the game can only be killed by using the Ice Beam to freeze them, and then quickly pelt them with 5 missiles before they thaw out.  If you don't know this, you'll die repeatedly until you figure it out.  And even then, you'll find that, once they get to you and get on to of you, you'll drain of health really fast, and have to flail around frantically to shake them off.  I understand that increases the sense of urgency in dealing with them and taking them out, but when you're so close to the end, it can be very frustrating to be downed so easily by what looks like a flying jellyfish.

And finally, the Space Jump.  I'm not sure if it's just me, but I have a hard time pulling it off in successive jumps.  I don't know if I'm waiting too long, or what my problem is, but in some areas where it's easier and faster to use the Space Jump, or in locations where you have to, because there are hazards that prevent you from using the Spider Ball, I found myself easily frustrated because I couldn't pull it off easily.  I would get it to work 2 or 3 times, only to stop spinning and fall to the ground below.  Or, I would start using it, and try to time it so that I could dodge enemies, and enemy fire, only to plow right into a hazard, and plummet back down below.  It wasn't enough to make me want to rage-quit, but it certainly raised my blood pressure, and put a damper on the overall experience.  I know there are folks who can Space Jump like nobody's business, and kudos to them.  I obviously haven't quite reached the level of Space Jump Zen Master.

"Ice, ice beaming."

When it's all said and done, I believe that Metroid II: Return of Samus is still well worth playing, more than 25 years after its release.  It's still a solid game that holds up well, and won't take an exorbitant amount of time to get through.  The mechanics, graphics, music, sound, and game play all hold up well enough to make it worth going back to.  I will say that, if you are curious about AM2R or Metroid: Samus Returns, I would encourage you to go back and play the original first, even if just briefly through emulation, so that you'll have a greater appreciation for the remake and re-imagining of the game, and also to see that, despite the improvements introduced with these newer iterations, the core game play is essentially the same, and it's still strong all these years later.  Metroid II: Return of Samus remains one of the shining examples of how to take a beloved console game franchise, and shrink it down to a mobile platform, and still make it work in a way that is fun, engaging, and worthwhile.  Despite its flaws, I still had a lot of fun with the game, and would definitely revisit it in its original form, even with the availability of remakes.  Highly recommended, if not downright essential for Game Boy enthusiasts and Metroid fans alike.