Asteroids (1991)

Image shamelessly stolen from GameFaqs.

As with many Atari 2600 games during the console's heyday, sadly,

this Asteroids artwork looks way cooler than the actual gameplay. Also,

is it just me, or does that ship look suspiciously like a Hoth snowspeeder?

The name Atari doesn't have a lot of currency today, but between 1977, after the launch of Atari's Video Computer System (aka the Atari 2600), and it's downfall in 1983, the Atari name had a lot of clout and recognition in the entertainment industry.  This is due, in part, to Atari's home video game console and its dominance of the home video game market, but a large part of their fame was the popularity, and ubiquity, of Atari's arcade games.  By now, most everyone knows that Atari's Pong was a sensation in 1972, and in the years that followed, they scored several hits with other titles like Night Driver, Breakout, Lunar Lander, Tempest, Centipede, and of course, Asteroids.  Were it not for the glut of bad console games and consumer burnout in late 1982 and early 1983, Atari would likely have been held in much higher regard than they have been in recent years.  Alas, twas not to be.

I wish I would have had an opportunity to play the Team Play and

Competition Play modes, because that would certainly extend the

life of an aging arcade game like this, far more than single player.

But for a short time, Atari were a dominant force in the arcade scene, as well as the home console market, and many of their early games are venerable classics.  Asteroids, released in 1979, was a vector graphics-based game, which means that, instead of what we normally think of with 2-dimensional video game graphics, with flat images full of color from border to border (raster graphics), these graphics were often simple, single-color affairs that consisted of wire-frame images that were merely outlines.  This made them look quite simple, but the reduced aesthetic allowed for the hardware to focus more on the speed and animation of the simple wire-frame images, so as to provide faster action, as well as smooth scrolling and motion.  Later Atari vector graphics titles, like Tempest and Space Duel, incorporated more color, and more sophisticated gameplay, but at the time of its release, Asteroids was a revolutionary experience, and resulted in it becoming Atari's best selling arcade game of all time.

Why your spaceship is thrown into the middle of a random asteroid

field is never explained. I demand answers! I demand justice!

The gameplay of Asteroids is deceptively simple.  You control a small space craft in the middle of an asteroid field, and your job is to destroy the asteroids and stay alive.  This is easier said than done, of course.  Each time you successfully fire upon one of the large space rocks, it breaks down into 2 smaller boulders, each of which will break down again into their own set of 2 smaller hunks of rock.  The game takes place on a single screen, so when the asteroids go off screen, they simply loop back to the opposite side, in a position relative to the one they exited, and continue to travel in the same direction.  Add to that, the alien ships that sometimes brave the asteroid field to try and take out your craft, and you have multiple objects on screen hurtling toward you to cause your imminent doom.

Your options are to turn your ship left or right, fire your cannon, use your thrusters to move forward in the direction your craft is facing.  Unlike the full vacuum of space, however, there is some gravity, which means using the thrusters doesn't mean you'll continue to move in that direction perpetually.  Learning how to manipulate the thrust feature becomes an essential strategy for dodging oncoming debris, as well as maneuvering your ship to better snipe the UFOs and take out the space rocks.  Finally, you have a "warp" button you can use to jump to a random spot on the play field.  The warp feature is handy as well, though it's best to use that as a last resort, as you can just as easily warp away from one certain death scenario right into another, as the warp feature is unpredictable.

Every time you score 10,000 points, you get an extra ship. To

paraphrase Han Solo: "You're gonna need 'em."

With the Game Boy version of Asteroids, the graphics are given the raster treatment, rather than trying to emulate the vector look of the original.  This was a wise move by Accolade, who ported the game, as the original Game Boy hardware might have had a difficult time replicating the smooth scrolling of the arcade hit.  Instead, we get a small, but well rendered ship, nice looking round asteroids with craters and a sense of depth, and a rather obvious flying saucer-style enemy vessel, that gives the game a classic science fiction feel, and is a nod to the source material.  It's all very utilitarian and sparse, but for what it is, it works.  For this kind of game, it's better to keep things simple and uncluttered, and that's just what took place.  The twinkling stars in the background are a nice touch.

Sound design in the game is also very minimalist in nature.  There's a bit of an intro song that plays when the title screen appears, and a little ditty that plays when you lose your last life and get a Game Over screen, but otherwise, it's just basic sounds.  Your ship's fire, the sound of asteroids breaking up, your own ship exploding, and the annoying, high-pitched sounds made when an enemy vessel is flying across the screen are just about the only sound effects in the game, outside of the original game's iconic "heartbeat" thumping that gets progressively faster throughout the level as you take out more asteroids and enemy ships.  It doesn't tax the Game Boy hardware, but it sounds good enough, and does its best to try and replicate the sound design found in the original arcade cabinet.  It gets the job done, and nothing more.

Enemy ships are not immune to the asteroids, as luck would have it.

This UFO is about to meet my friend, "Rocky".

Control is easy, as there are very few options.  You can point the ship by pressing Left or Right on the D-pad, and press Up on the D-pad to use the thrusters to move forward in the direction you're facing.  Hold Up on the D-pad, and your ship progressively gets faster up to a point, so be careful not to hold Up too long, or you'll go careening into one of the many space rocks.  The B button fires your cannon, which is your one and only weapon against the asteroids and enemy spacecraft, and the A button is a "warp" feature, which will send your ship to a random spot in the screen.  There's a definite risk/reward factor to the warp, because you can use it to get out of a sticky situation, but because there's no telling where you'll end up, you could be warping directly to your death.  The Start button pauses the game, and the Select button, as one might expect, does nothing at all.

Because there's no real end to Asteroids, and the game continues to go level after level and just get faster and more frenetic, the whole point of the game is two-fold: survival, and score.  The longer you can stay alive and continue to shoot down the titular asteroids, as well as enemy vessels, the more points you'll score.  For each 10,000 points you amass in this version, you receive an extra life.  The scoring is the same in this version as it is in the arcade original, as near as I can tell.  That means that large asteroids give you 20 points, medium sized rocks are 50 points, and the little pebbles net you 100 points.  The flying saucer enemies give you 200 points, and the tiny ships give you a generous 1,000 points.

Under the right conditions, you'll start seeing smaller, faster enemies

that shoot more accurately and relentlessly at you.  What did I ever

do to them to deserve this kind of maltreatment?

Obviously, shooting down the enemies is where you can earn the most points, but since they don't show up as frequently as the asteroids are plentiful, there's a balance to scoring big points.  One classic strategy is to destroy all but one tiny asteroid, and let it fly around on the screen while you easily dodge it, and pick off enemy ships as they continue to come on screen periodically.  For example, you can score approximately 2,000 points in the first stage by destroying all the asteroids, shooting down a pair of ships, and then maybe picking off a third before you destroy the last rock.  At 200 points per larger flying saucer, if you're patient enough, and skilled enough to avoid both the last asteroid as well as the enemy fire, you can quickly rack up a pretty good score.  Another notable strategy, or perhaps design choice, is that when you fire your cannons, the bullets only reach so far, so you can't just fire away and destroy everything within a few seconds.  However, if you're close to one edge of the screen or another, firing your cannons means those bullets will loop around to the opposite side of the screen, so you can use that to your advantage to destroy rocks as they fly onto the screen from that side.  As you progress, the asteroids begin to fly faster, and there are more of them, so each level gets progressively more difficult and frenetic.  If you want to master Asteroids, the name of the game (literally and figuratively) is practice, and lots of it.

Despite the fact that Asteroids was released in the arcades in 1979, and this conversion was released 12 years later, the ability to truly capture the arcade experience at home hadn't truly been realized yet, and that's especially true of the Game Boy.  This port gives a pretty good approximation of the arcade game, though using raster graphics instead of the original vector approach, despite a few notable differences.  The arcade game can relatively fast paced and frenetic, and because of the vector graphics and low hardware requirements, the movement of your ship and other objects on screen is fast and fluid, and you can pull off some really tricky maneuvers with your craft.  This fluidity doesn't exactly translate to the Game Boy, because the speed of the game can't compare with the original, and with the original DMG model's blurriness happening with any kind of quick motion, it would make the game nigh impossible to truly enjoy if it tried to replicate the speed of the arcade original.  As such, the game feels like the laid back big brother of the original.  He's a bit more stylish, with his 4-shades of green and raster graphics, and slightly more fleshed out aesthetic, but moves slower and isn't in as big a hurry to get somewhere as little brother in the arcade.  On the plus side, the game replicates the "heartbeat" effect, that sort of Jaws-esque harbinger that grows faster and more menacing as more Asteroids are destroyed and more particles fly around on screen, so it really gets that unique element right.  Also, I found the collision detection to be nearly pixel-perfect, so if you get hit by an asteroid flying at you, don't get mad - it was probably your fault.  One odd quirk I found is that, when entering your name on the high score screen, sometimes trying to change the letter using up and down, or choosing a letter with A, or erasing one with B, is less than responsive.  I suspect that may be because of the way the letters are flashing on the screen, and the fact that, perhaps the Game Boy is being taxed a bit, and the commands you're inputting don't always register.  It's a minor issue, but noticeable enough to mention.

If you're a little too happy with the bullets, you'll find yourself totally

overwhelmed by asteroids from all sides. Prepare to die.

At the end of the day, it's somewhat difficult to recommend this port of the game.  Not because it's not functionally a good game, because it is.  It's hard to recommend because, just 4 short years after this cart's release, the game came out again as Arcade Classic No. 1, and that cart contained this conversion of Asteroids, as well as a conversion of the classic Missile Command.  That cart has Super Game Boy compatibility, but also gives a couple notable upgrades to this port of the game: that is, it includes an option to change the button configuration, if you find the default control scheme not to your liking, but more importantly, you can choose to play in the original vector style, though still with the twinkling raster-based stars in the background.  The advantage of this version is both of the 2-player options, so if that's the experience you're looking for, then obviously this 1991 version will be the one to seek out.  For anyone just looking for the single-player experience, the latter release with another game on the cart, including the option for the original vector graphics, would seem to be the no-brainer option.  Either way, you're getting a reasonable facsimile of the original game, but without the ability to have the really fast action that makes the original still attractive to play.  That said, you can do a lot worse for $4 or $5 on the Game Boy, so I'd say if you have any interest in classic arcade games on the go, or Asteroids in general, this might be one to add to your collection.  Tentatively recommended.

Star Wars (1992)

Image shamelessly linked from GameFaqs.
It's Star Wars, and it's a "Million Seller" - how bad can it be?

I am a fan of Star Wars.  I'm a big fan of the original trilogy of movies, I don't completely hate the prequel films, and even got some level of enjoyment (as a kid, anyway) out of the 2 "Ewok Adventure" films, and the short-lived Droids cartoon.  Though I didn't get to go see it right away, I did go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens and enjoyed it very much.  I plan to go see it again, if I have the opportunity before it's out of theaters, and will be purchasing the BluRay once it's available.  I own at least 3 Star Wars-themed t-shirts and a zipper hoodie, and as of this writing, I own 2-dozen video games set within the Star Wars universe.  I have the final VHS release of the original trilogy (before George Lucas began changing subsequent releases with his revisionist history), I own the "special" edition DVD set, and at some point, I hope to own the original trilogy on LaserDisc.  I'm holding out for a BluRay release, hoping that, at some point, Disney will decide it's worth putting out something equivalent to the original theatrical release (or at least the final VHS/LaserDisc version), though that could be a sticky Wicket (see what I did there?), if Lucas made that a stipulation of his $4 billion sale of Lucasfilm to the Disney corporation.  After all, those of us "in the know" won't settle for a cut of the original film where Han Solo didn't shoot Greedo first, right?  Needless to say, I'm a big fan of the Star Wars universe, characters, and mythos.

At least they got this part mostly right...

Shifting gears to the topic at hand, it's no secret that video games based on the Star Wars property have had a rough history.  The original Star Wars arcade title, and it's subsequent sequel, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, were well received and good games, as was the Atari VCS/2600 game based on the 2nd film, but the arcade take on Star Wars: Return of the Jedi was kind of a goofy isometric game that hasn't aged well, and the other Atari games have shared its fate.  As home consoles became more powerful, the promise of a good Star Wars game started to become more of a reality, but during the 8 and 16-bit eras, unfortunately, that promise was left largely unfulfilled.  The Game Boy port of the NES game leaves much to be desired, and when I popped this into my Game Boy to check out, my mind recalled that all-too-famous quote from the original trilogy: "I have a bad feeling about this."

To the developer's credit, they do include dialog from the film in the

game, so at least there's some attempt at following the story.

As with most movie-licensed games, some license is taken (pun intended) with the story, and while the game pulls bits from the movie plot, nearly verbatim, the actual scenarios play out totally unlike the film.  For example, Luke's landspeeder is in the film a few times, but this game starts out with a whole section of speeding around the Jundland Wastes, trying to avoid randomly placed blaster cannons, laser-firing probe droids, and some sort of large animals, perhaps Krayt Dragons.  However, within the first 2 seconds, you immediately get thrust into a cave where you jump around, as Luke Skywalker, from platform to platform, for some unknown reason.  You're equipped with a blaster, but it's a pea-shooter, and takes multiple shots to down most enemies.  After you get through the first cave, you find that you can travel around a section of Tatooine in the landspeeder to find R2-D2, as well as, inexplicably, find shielding upgrades for the Millennium Falcon, which you haven't encountered as of yet, throughout the various caves.  Once you reach the Jawa sand crawler, you can go inside and find R2, and then you can find the "exit" point on the map that will take you to the wretched hive of scum and villainy, erm, Mos Eisley.

The graphics here are pretty decent, conveying the desolate

landscape of Tatooine fairly well for the hardware limitations.

Once you've reached Mos Eisley, you have to locate Han Solo, and can search for additional shield upgrades.  You'll find the Cantina to be a treacherous place indeed, as you'll find Greedo (or several aliens like him) roaming around, as well as an alien that shoots a very powerful, short-range laser out of its blaster.  With your blaster being so weak, it's best to just jump over most enemies, though if you located Luke's light saber beforehand, you'll be able to slice through enemies like a Tauntaun.  You'll have to navigate through a number of areas to reach none other than docking bay 94, where the Millennium Falcon is located.  Once you're out in the spaceport, you'll be facing primarily Stormtroopers.  If you're not careful, you'll find they have better aim than those in the movie.

I don't recall any "Space Prawns" in the film, unless they were edited out...

Once you reach the Falcon and take off, the view switches to a first person, and you navigate an asteroid field for several minutes.  If you picked up the shield upgrades, you probably won't have much trouble, though if not, I suspect it may be a bit harder to wade through.  Then you go into the Death Star, and run around looking for the tractor beam station to blow it up.  Again, it's not Obi Wan doing it this time, but either Luke or Han, depending on which character you chose to do that.  It makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but it feels a little off.  This is handled in the same side-scrolling platform style as the cave levels, Cantina, and Mos Eisley locations on Tatooine.  You then locate Princess Leia, and once you've liberated the Falcon, you're treated to another 1st person view mission, this time to ward off the Tie Fighters.  I seem to recall only 3 in the film, but it seems like well over a dozen you fight here.  Then it's off to Yavin IV to scramble the X-Wings and do a top down, shoot-em-up style level for the Death Star trench approach.  Oddly, the thermal exhaust port is MUCH larger in the game than in the movie.  It's more like Luke is going to bullseye a Bantha, versus a Womp Rat.  But then, they had to make the final task in the game easy enough so that you don't have to fly the trench 12 times to get it done, right?

If this is the famed "Womp Rat" I've waited all these years to finally

behold, I must say, I'm sorely disappointed. However, I can see

where Luke *could* bullseye them with his T-16.  Back home.

Graphically, the game is comparable to its NES counterpart, sans color.  However, everything is zoomed in, as is often the case with NES to Game Boy ports, and as a result, everything looks somewhat larger and closer than it ought to be.  But the main character sprites are decently drawn, and reasonably well animated, given the layout.  Some of the backgrounds are also fairly detailed, and the set pieces generally resemble the film locations as much as one might expect on the platform.  Stormtroopers look like Stormtroopers, and though some elements look a bit different (blaster shots are super wide, for example), anyone familiar with the film will see the similarities where they exist.  The animation is also fairly smooth, which is good, because the game moves at a decent clip.  Graphically, there's not much to complain about, because it all looks relatively good.

I don't recall Luke going into the Jawa sand crawler at any point

during the movie. Is it just me, or does his sprite look like the

generic protagonist sprite from the NES Journey to Silius game?

In the sound department, it's not half bad.  There's a decent rendition of the main theme, and a bouncy rendition of the original "Cantina Band" music, along with what you might call some "re imaginings" of some of John Williams' other pieces throughout the movie.  They had good source material, and it sounds okay here, but it's a little basic.  Given the iconic nature of the music, it probably would have been wise for the sound design team to do just a bit more with it.  Sound effects are okay - explosions sound like they should, blaster fire is good, though, oddly, the sound they use when you drop proton charges in the X-Wing is exactly the same as the blaster sound.  I guess they couldn't be bothered to come up with anything new.  Overall, the sound is fine, but nothing overly memorable, aside from the familiar themes.  Thankfully, none of the sound effects made me want to pull a Wookie's hair out.

You mean, I have a screen that tells me how much of this detritus

I must still endure to reach the end? Fantastic. I'll just go poke

my eyes out with a fully armed, and operational light saber.

When it comes to the gameplay, here's where things really start to take a swan dive down the proverbial Sarlac Pit.  I mentioned before that the graphics were "zoomed in" as compared to the NES game.  They are, and that presents the first big problem during the platforming sections: blind jumps.  Because everything is larger on screen, you can't fit as much, so when there's more room between platforms than is visible on screen, or the next platform over is actually below where you can see, you just have to take a literal leap of faith (Use the Force!) and go for it.  The problem is, you don't know if you'll fall 3 levels and take damage, or fall directly onto a floor of spikes and die within 2 seconds.  Problem number 2 presents as related to that: because you can't see far in front of you, you'll likely run into enemies when you first encounter them, and because Luke apparently has paper-thin skin, you take big damage and die very quickly.  That's like 2 problems in one, isn't it?  Next up, the overhead sections with the landspeeder suffer from the same issue, so be careful not to fly too fast, or you'll go careening directly into a blaster or probe droid.  Oh, and because the game employs a knock-back feature, but no temporary invincibility after the fact, prepare to get bumped/kicked by enemies once or twice until you die.  Or in a couple spots, you can get stuck in between 2 enemies and get juggled back and forth between them until you die.  Neat!  There's also the expectation that you make insane jumps from conveyor belts, and these weird "lift" deals, so that you can practically catapult yourself, martial arts movie style, into the air and hope you land on the right platform or floor.  While playing this game, you better hope the Force is with you, otherwise, you're going to die a lot, and you're not always going to know why or when it's your fault.

Luke is about to get juggled to death. What a way to go. At least he

has Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes to serenade him into oblivion.

If only one or two of the above flaws were present, they might be a bit more forgivable, and something one can overlook.  But all of the flaws combined make this game a hard sell, even to the most loyal Star Wars fan out there.  The game controls well enough, though the jumping can get a little floaty, but the good graphics, decent sound, and decent control can't save it from being a mediocre title, at best.  At worst, it's a lackluster "action/adventure" game that had ambitions and source material far greater than it could hope to live up to.  With all the exploration you'll be doing to find the right path in each of the platform levels, you'll find yourself getting stuck and having to backtrack a number of times to find the right platform to jump on, the right blind jump to take, or the right "lift" to get you to an upper level that might have a door, elevator, or jump you need to reach.  It can get frustrating quickly, especially when you practically have to memorize each enemy location exactly so you can either time a jump over them, or use your light saber (or later, Han's blaster) to dispatch them.  I realize that a lot of action games use this kind of strategy, but when touching an enemy twice can result in near instantaneous death due to the combination of knock-back and zero recovery time, you can lose a life before you literally knew what hit you.

I'm glad the Cantina is so obviously labeled, although the saloon-style

doors are a pretty dead giveaway that I'm about to step into the fray.

Curiously, I did a little checking into the developer, NMS Software LTD, and was astonished to find out some of the other games they designed.  That same year, they released Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Off Road for the NES, a rather solid and playable port of the arcade hit. Just 2 years later, they developed 2 heavy hitters for the Sega Genesis: Cool Spot, and the major hit Disney's Aladdin.  They went on to do a small handful of PC games, a SNES Pinocchio, and a Sega Saturn game called Mass Destruction, that looks like a 32-bit tank combat game, like an updated version of the venerable Atari 2600 game, Combat.  It's interesting how many quality titles they have on their small resume, and yet this licensed game ended up being likely the worst of their output.

So what's the bottom line?  Does this game deserve your attention, or should it be banished to the spice mines on Kessel?  If you're a true Star Wars devotee like myself, it's easy to be drawn in by the game, but don't let that fool you.  It's not the worst action game you'll play on the Game Boy, but the force is not with this one.  I think I paid $8 for it, and that was too much.  If you spend more than $5, consider yourself swindled by a Watto-like creature, but don't come crying to me.  I can't, in good conscience, recommend this to anyone but die hard fans, collectors like myself, or those who have play every other good game out there, and now want to start tackling the bottom tier stuff.  In that case, you can rest assured that this slimy piece of worm-ridden filth will fulfill that quota.  Not recommended.

Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle (1990)

Image shamelessly linked from GameFAQS. I'm not seeing much that

screams "castle" here, save for the faux family crest with carrots on 

it.  And never once does Yosemite Sam fire a gun in the game.

Not once. False advertising, or just paying homage to a lovable,

idiosyncratic cartoon character from a bygone era? You decide.

Licensed properties can be a tricky beast.  If you pay for licensing rights to a property, chances are, you're not going to have exclusive rights to that property, or your rights won't cross all borders.  Your licensing rights will expire at some point, and you'll have to weigh the pros and cons of paying to continue those rights, or let them lapse.  Sometimes, the window of opportunity for a licensed property is relatively small, and you are forced to come up with a product based upon that property, in a rather short time frame.  Sometimes, the results can be less than stellar.  Such is the case with Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.

What happened to the 'Crazy Castle' part of the name on the box?

Let me clarify - I'm not saying Kemco-Seika had a limited amount of time to develop the game because their rights to the Bugs Bunny license were under the gun.  No, I'm saying, due to the resurgence of the popularity of the Looney Tunes franchise during the mid-late 80's, there wasn't a lot of time to waste in maximizing that potential before the 'tude explosion of the 90's came about.  Not that Kemco could have seen that coming, but a sense of urgency should be a factor in developing a game with any licensed property, because you really never know whether something is going to be popular next year or not.  The prevailing thought is, strike while the iron is hot.  In Kemco's favor, they did.  On the downside, they should have taken more time with this game's development.

Before each stage, you get a quick check on where you're at,

and it tells you which stage, how many lives you have, and your score.

By now, most people who are more than casually familiar with retro gaming should be familiar with the Angry Video Game Nerd, and his feud with Bugs Bunny.  Many have seen the video where he incredulously plays 5 games in the Crazy Castle series, to some disgust and frustration, followed by several sequences of the Nerd, and Bugs Bunny, duking it out in the most awkwardly hilarious choreographed fight sequence this side of 90's late night TV.  What some might not know, however, is that the Crazy Castle games are an interesting case of licensed property usage, and how that translates across different regions.  The original Famicom game was called Roger Rabbit, and starred the titular character from the movie.  However, Capcom had the rights to all the Disney franchises in North America, so it came to the US as Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.  When the game was ported to the Game Boy, Kemco of Japan had already lost the licensing rights to Roger, but they still had Disney rights in Japan, so the game came to the Game Boy as Mickey Mouse.  However, in the US, Kemco still had the rights to the character, so the North American Game Boy release was also titled Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.  Funny how that stuff works, right?  In any event, the Game Boy game was pretty much a straight port of the NES game, with a graphical downgrade, but retaining the same level design and music.

"Oh my stars, look at all the carrots! Ripe for the picking!"

Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle is a puzzle platformer.  You walk up and down staircases, crawl through pipes, and go up and down stairs through various doors, to reach multiple levels within each stage so you can collect carrots.  Along the way, you have to avoid one of several "enemies" within the game: Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, and for some reason, multiple Sylvester the Cat instances.  One touch, and it's curtains for Rocky, erm, I mean Bugs.  You do have a limited ability to attack, either by picking up a single-use boxing glove you can throw at a foe, or by pushing one of several stationary objects into an enemy.  These include wooden boxes, buckets, a 10-ton weight, and of course, ACME safes.  Each object has different weights, meaning when you kick them, they'll move different distances, based on their weight.  In other words, kicking the bucket makes it go very far, the wooden box less far, and the 10-ton weight the shortest distance.  Some levels also have a bottle of "invisible ink", but instead of just making you invisible, it also makes you invincible for a short time, so any enemy you touch in the limited time it's active, will instantly die and go "poof!"  Once you obtain all the carrots within a level, you receive a 1-up and advance to the next level.  After each level, you're given a 4-character password so you can continue where you left off.  That password is strictly to reach that stage, however - it will not record your score, or the number of lives you have.

"Nyeaaaaah, I better hurry before that stupid cat catches me!"

In terms of the game's visual aesthetics, they're okay.  Bugs, as well as his foils, all look recognizable, and they animate decently as well.  The death animation for Bugs is amusing, and seeing each of his nemeses fall on their back as they're defeated is satisfying.  The game does mix up locations a bit, sometimes incorporating stairs, sometimes incorporating pipes, an occasionally both, but the design is quite minimal, which is reminiscent of Super Mario Land, and other early platformers on the Game Boy.  The backgrounds are totally devoid of any level of detail, so the focus is on the platforms, pipes, objects, and enemies on display.  It's nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.  Everything is rendered well enough so as to be recognizable.  Unfortunately, there's a fair bit of sprite flicker going on.  Sometimes Bugs will flicker, sometimes the enemies, and sometimes the objects you can kick, or the carrots will flash.  What's really odd is that, if you're standing in just the right spot, those objects will flicker perpetually until you move again.

I think Bugs is just a LITTLE too excited about collecting all the carrots.

In the audio department, the game takes a pretty minimalist approach.  There are a small handful of music tracks in the game, that rotate between levels.  I do like that they didn't stick with a single track for a large batch of levels (Nail 'n Scale, I'm looking at you), but it would have been nice to have a few more tracks to help break up the monotony a bit.  Still, the music itself is bouncy and fun, and is fitting for the game.  Speaking of monotony, the sound effects available here are pretty sparse as well.  There's no sound when Bugs goes through a pipe, and only basic sounds when you use the boxing glove, knock an object on the floor, pick up a carrot, or kick something into an enemy.  Whomever at Kemco did the sound design for this game, kind of phoned it in.

You can escape a situation like this by going down the pipe, but

watch out - the Sylvester cats can, and often will, follow you through.

As for the gameplay, this is where things start to get dicey.  Controlling Bugs takes some getting used to.  The chief complaint leveled against this game is that you're controlling Bugs Bunny, but you can't jump.  For those who bought the game new in 1990, and didn't know it was a port of a Mickey Mouse game (which meant 99% of buyers), the prevailing though would have been that a game starring a rabbit who couldn't jump was just broken.  Once you get past that notion, other problems begin to emerge.  The enemy AI is highly unpredictable at times, so sometimes you'll get through a level with very little danger, and other times, you'll be bombarded from all sides, and may seem to beat a level purely through dumb luck.  Some things are consistent, such as Sylvester being the only enemy that will go through pipes, Daffy Duck using stairs, and both Yosemite Sam and Wile E. Coyote being stuck to the level/layer they're on, but otherwise, the enemy patterns aren't very obvious.  You can find yourself cornered very quickly, with no recourse except to die and start the level over.

One really nice feature of this game is the password system. The game's

4-character passwords may be the shortest in video game history.

In the larger levels, with long staircases or pipes that span a greater distance than the size of the screen, taking those paths becomes a crap-shoot each time.  It makes perfect sense that once you enter a pipe, you continue through it until you reach the other side, but not so much with stairs.  Once you get started up or down a flight of stairs, you're committed to that action, and if you run into an enemy, tough luck.  You have to watch the enemies closely, and time your pipe and stair traversal specifically, hoping beyond hope that the enemy doesn't suddenly turn around and greet you at your destination for instant death.  The other frustration with the controls is, when you have a flight of stairs going down, and another flight going up, both within a few pixels of one another, the only way to ensure you're going up is to stop pressing the direction on the D-pad you want to go (i.e. left or right), and start holding Up on the D-pad to guarantee you'll go up the stairs.  The Castlevania games work the same way, but it's implemented a bit more cleanly there.  Here, it feels clumsy and half-baked, when coupled with the flaw that you can't stop on the stairs and turn around.  Had they tightened that up, it would have made the game less frustrating.

All I have to do is wait for Yosemite Sam to pass by, and I can sneak

down and get that carrot. What a maroon! What an imbecile!

Not that the frustration means much, aside from the obvious fact that, when playing through this game, Bugs Bunny is going to die.  In fact, Bugs is going to die A LOT.  If you're playing strictly to play through and win each level, it's not a lengthy experience.  Sure, there are 80 levels to play, but with a password for each level, combined with unlimited continues, you can keep hammering away at a level until you figure it out, or are lucky enough with the enemy AI that you can sneak past them to get that last, hard to reach carrot.  The real problem is, since design elements in this game hearken back to design concepts from classic, single-screen puzzle platform arcade games, playing for score is next to impossible because the enemy patterns are hard to pin down.  Some levels I blew through in a single try, but a few of the levels took me 10 or more tries, and a fair number of those were levels with a lot of opportunities for cheap deaths.  Combine cheap deaths, less than stellar control, and other issues, and you have a game that isn't doing itself any favors in the fun department.

Where did Bugs go? Oh wait, it's that horrible sprite flicker you see

when you grab the bottle of invisible ink, that's all that's going on.

Despite all of its flaws, Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle can be a fun game, as long as you take its flaws into account, and understand that playing strictly for score is a losing proposition.  I had fun throughout the 5-6 total hours of gameplay I had to dedicate to completing the game, and if you're a fan of puzzle platformers, or old school single-screen arcade games, you might get a kick out of this as well.  I wouldn't recommend it if you're trying to find the "cream of the crop" of Game Boy titles, but it's good for a few laughs.  I picked my loose cart up for $4.95, which, for the limited amount of gameplay available, might be slightly on the high side.  Still, you can spend $4 or more on much worse titles in the Game Boy library.  Ultimately, I would say if you have a friend or relative with a copy of this, try before you buy.

Play Action Football (1990)

Image shamelessly linked from Adventure Amigos.

"I choose" the realistic offensive strategies, but the defensive strategies

are tough - does that mean they're not realistic? Or are they both
tough AND realistic? Can the game possibly live up to this box art?

I must begin this review with a bit of history, nostalgia, and a confession.  As I write this, I'm reeling from the news that the Kansas City Royals, long the proverbial butt of many a baseball joke, have won the World Series against the New York Mets.  Though I don't consider myself a sports fan, I got a little bit of whiplash with that announcement, and had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't 1985 again.  I was a fan of baseball for many years, as a kid, until the player strike brought the ugly realization that athletes can often be petty, whining oafs that are just money hungry.  Granted, they're not all like that, but the strike certainly gave me a new perspective on things.  So while my love for baseball lasted a number of years, my interest in professional football was relatively short-lived.  In 1985 and 1986, I fancied myself a pro football fan, if only to impress my classmates and the neighbor kids, who all thought I was a giant dork (spoiler alert: I was).  I told people I was into the Dolphins and the Bengals, and that Dan Marino was pretty much the best quarterback on the planet.  Of course, I never really watched any football games, because we had 1 TV in the house, my parents weren't into pro football, and none of my friends invited me over to watch with them.  Subsequently, my neighborhood kids (and kids at school) saw through my petty charade.  Yes, I was destined to be a nerd.

Compared to the title screens for Baseball and Tennis, both Nintendo

launch titles, this is just lazy. There's not even a football to look at!

I'm not totally devoid of football knowledge, however.  I watched college football with my parents; specifically, the Nebraska Cornhuskers.  Yes, the Huskers are (in 2015) having what is possibly the worst season in the history of the football program, but in the mid-late 80's and early 90's, the Huskers were a staple of Saturday college football games, and I watched intently with my parents, despite not having a deep understanding of the game, the plays, or the rules.  I don't catch every game now, though I still try to do so when I can, and root for the Huskers when I do get to watch or listen to a game.  I even casually live-Tweet during games.  Having said that, my knowledge of the game of football is still very limited, and I'm saying that to help set up this review, and perhaps give some perspective as to my feelings on this game.

Play selection is relatively easy, though a touch clunky. I occasionally

found myself kicking a field goal on 2nd down because my instinct

was to push down on the D-pad to change pages, instead of the A

button, as is the default. I had a few failed 70-yard "attempts".

The other thing I'll say is that, as most gamers of my generation know, while Tecmo Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System was a pretty good football game for its time, the ball didn't really get rolling (pun intended) with video football games until the 16-bit era, when you had Joe Montana Football, and of course, the kingpin itself, John Madden Football.  That didn't stop every game console from receiving some sort of football title, and the Game Boy certainly saw a handful of pigskin games.  By my count, there are 11 total football titles on the venerable handheld, though 2 of those are combination baseball/football titles.  Part of me is dreading having to review those carts.  Cramming 2 fully realized sports games into a single Game Boy cartridge (in the early 1990's) would have been a feat unto itself, but also require real thought and design.  I guess I just don't have much faith in licensed titles from that era, which can be attributed to the low number of them that actually turned out to be good games.

Team Captain: "Stay in formation....stay in formation!"
Player: "Loosen up!"

Play Action Football, the first pigskin game for the venerable handheld, is a pretty simple affair.  There are 8 teams in the game, all from major cities across the US, though, conspicuously, devoid of actual NFL names, due to the game's lack of NFL license.  The manual makes no mention of differences between the teams, and I was not able to really gauge any kind of discernible difference in team or player stats and abilities (more on that later).  There are 4 modes to play: a 1-player against the CPU mode, which is a single game, a 1-player against the CPU "championship" mode, where you play 7 games against the other teams (with a password system for saving progress), a 2-player mode where you play against one another in a single game, and a 2-player against the CPU mode (also a single game, from what I gleaned from the game's menu).  There are 4 difficulty levels to play against the CPU, and, like the 2 Nintendo sports launch games, they range from moderately difficult to insanely hard.  I will readily admit, as a sports video game beginner, I stayed at the "Level 1" difficulty the whole time, as my experience with that proved to be challenging enough for my rather weak skills.

Pat is good? Okay, that's good to know, thanks for filling me in.

Play calling is relatively simple.  At the play screen, you press one of 4 directions on the D-pad to select a play, depending on which directional arrow you see next to the play you want to run.  If you press the A button, you can move to a 2nd, or sometimes even a 3rd screen of available plays.  If you want to call a Timeout, press Select at the play selection screen.  Once you're on the field, you'll "hut" until you press A to hike the ball.  Then, depending on your play, you can either run the ball, or press the B button in conjunction with a direction (left or right), to throw the ball.  One thing to keep in mind is, as soon as you throw the ball, the player selection switches immediately to the receiver, so don't forget to move them into position based on the arrows that display on screen, indicating where the pass is being thrown.  Also, you can press A several times per play to either break a tackle, or get a speed boost.  While running the ball, you can press B to dive, and usually pick up another 2-3 yards on a play.  On defense, you also have the speed boost available for each player, and you can press the Select button to switch to whichever teammate is closest to the ball.  Again, you can dive to try and tackle the runner, by pressing the B button.  When you're kicking the ball, you have an arrow that moves left and right, and that determines the direction of the ball when you press A.  Then a 2nd meter will go up and down, and when you press A again, that determines how hard you kick, and thus, the distance the ball travels.

The stats screen that shows at halftime and at the end of the game

is easy to read, and shows a lot of good, relevant info, especially if

you're into that kind of statistical stuff, you football nerd, you.

The game doesn't have a lot of visual appeal, and is somewhat simplistic.  The overhead view works well for basic play execution, though sometimes, when you or your opponent are running the ball, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and have no idea where the ball is.  There's not much detail on the field, but that's a blessing, given the business of the two teams clashing, especially during running plays.  When performing a long pass, or a kickoff, the screen will switch to an even less detailed overhead view that shows more of the field, and players represented by little dots, and then will zoom in again to the standard view, once the ball is close to the receiver.  If you score a touchdown, or make a successful P.A.T. or Field Goal, you're treated to a 2 or 3 frame animation, and you get a basic, 2-frame animation of a referee signaling when you've achieved a first down, scored a touchdown, and either made, or missed, a kick attempt.  You also see an easy to read stat and score breakdown at halftime, and after each game, complete with each team's "logo".  Oh, and one nice touch is when you get close to a first down, the referees will come out with the poles and chain, to "measure" the distance, and you can see the animation of the chain going by the ball to show if you made the first down or not.

This screen looks just a shade or two more advance that the old

Mattel Electronic Football handheld games that were popular in

the late 1970's and early 80's. This is what you see during a

kickoff, or a similar view when you throw a long pass.

There's very little in the way of music in the game.  You have the title screen theme, and music that plays once the ball is in motion, as well as a different music track that will play when your opponent gets into the red zone and is threatening to score.  Aside from that, there's a short ditty that plays when you score, and another short theme on the score breakdown screen.  Otherwise, it's mostly sound effects.  You have basic sound effects for the "hut", hike, and pitch/throw sounds, and the "alley-oop" sort of sound to denote the ball going up in the air, and coming back down.  The tackle sound is pretty basic, as are most of the other effects.  The game has a bit of rudimentary voice sampling as well, though it's awful scratchy.  There's a voice for "first down" and one for "touchdown", but as you can imagine, they sound so much alike that they're almost indistinguishable.

Whether you're kicking the ball, or your opponent is kicking, and no

matter which team you choose, #7 will be the kicker. Man, that guy

really gets around. He must be a hot commodity!

Playing through a single game, you can almost immediately see the games flaws take center stage.  First and foremost, despite each team having no discernible difference in stats, the CPU team ALWAYS runs the ball faster than you.  If they throw a pass and catch it, your best bet is to switch to the closest player and try to tackle or dive to get them.  Be careful, however, because if you miss, the CPU team will take that ball all the way to the end zone.  Countless times during my experience with this game, I kicked the ball for either a post-TD kickoff, or a punt after a 3-and-out drive, and the opposing team would score a touchdown, simply because I couldn't catch up.  This happens regardless of which team you play against.  I realize the game is trying to offer a challenge, but I would have hoped that whomever was responsible for play-testing the game would have brought this to the design team's attention.  It's terribly unfair when you, as the player, have to waste all your speed boosts to break tackles and fight for 20-25 yards, while the opposing side can score a TD on nearly any kick return if you miss a couple tackles.  Call me crazy, but that sounds like poor design.  Working in your favor sometimes is the goofy detection for P.A.T. and field goal kicks - sometimes, it looks like you missed the space between the goal posts, but the CPU will say your kick was good, while the CPU team kicks the point after attempt, and it looks like it will be called good, only to see that it's no good.

That's me at my 40-yard line, trying to run the ball downfield. Because

the CPU team is so much faster, I'll get about 7 or 8 yards until they

catch up to me. A couple speed boosts and I can break a tackle or

two, but then I'll have to dive if I want to get to, or past, their 45.

The passing also seems weird to me, but maybe I haven't played enough football video games to know any better.  It seems as though I can't land a pass more than 40-50 percent of the time, when performing a Play Action Pass.  With that, I seemed to have way more accuracy passing to my left than to my right, for some strange reason.  I was never once able to land a long pass, and I found short pass plays to be utterly useless, because the opposing team was always able to find a way to get to the receiver before I could gain yardage.  Once I reached the red zone, I found both the "Sweep" and "Dive" plays useful, because I could sometimes muscle my way into the end zone, but just as frequently, I ended up throwing a Play Action Pass to seal the deal.  Maybe it's just because I figured out how to run that play successfully the most, but I thought it was strange that the play the game is named after seemed to be the best way to move the ball downfield.

Wait, first you tell me Pat is good, now you're saying Pat is no good?

Make up your mind, already! Who are you to say, anyway?

At the end of the day, I understand that, because of my limited knowledge of sports, any recommendation (or lack thereof) of a sports game will need to be taken with a rather large grain of salt.  Having said that, I think the major flaws in this game speak for themselves, and it's hard to give the game a thumbs up.  I think I paid $3 for my copy, and while I got enough enjoyment out of it to warrant that, I can't imagine what poor kids got this as their birthday present, and ended up spending far more time on it than the game's design truly warranted, because mom and dad paid $30, and they were going to like it, if it killed them.  I learned enough about how to play the game that I was able to win about 30% of the time, and for a non-sports fan, that's good enough for me.  If you're thinking about spending more than $3 or $4 on this game, take a knee, call a time out, and give it some serious thought.

Playing on the Game Boy Player, via my Game Cube, I found it slightly

amusing that the game had a bit of a color palette interpretation "oops"

with the player's arm after a touchdown. Not only is the end of his sleeve

a totally different color, but you can see the sprite overlap between the

arm and the body, and the color difference just makes it more pronounced.

As an aside, I wanted to mention that I played through the entire 7-game "championship" mode, and purposefully did so, utilizing every means I have to play Game Boy games.  I played game 1 on my Game Boy Advance SP, game 2 on my original Game Boy DMG, game 3 on the Game Boy Pocket, game 4 on the Game Boy Color, game 5 on the Game Boy Player, and Game 6 on the Super Game Boy.  I finished up with game 7 via an emulator on my PC, so I could grab screenshots for this review.  I found it interesting to go back and forth between the different systems, to see how it played, but also get a feel for how good the D-pad is on each of those systems.  Turns out, my Game Boy Color D-pad could use a little TLC, and my SNES controller is in dire need of a cleaning and alcohol bath.  Also, it's really awkward to play with a Game Cube controller (in my case, a WaveBird), because the "Y" button acts as the "Select" button, and it doesn't feel natural to hit that while you're running downfield, trying to catch the other team's runner.