Reviews of Namco Gallery 2 (Galaxian, Dig Dug, Tower of Druaga, Famistar 4 Baseball), Doraemon no Study Boy – Gakushuu Kanji Game, Burai Fighter & tips on cleaning buttons.

My name is Ray Larabie, and I’m talking to you from Nagoya, Japan. Welcome to episode 23 of Game Boy Crammer. In this episode, I’ll be reviewing Namco Gallery 2 (this is a cart with a collection of games on it including Galaxian, Dig Dug, Tower of Druaga, and Famistar IV). I’ve got an educational game called Doraemon’s Kanji Quiz, a shooter called Burai Fighter. I got some tips on cleaning buttons, too. Let’s start the show! Namco Gallery Vol. 2 was released in Japan only at the end of 1996. This Game Boy cart came with Galaxian, Dig Dug, Tower of Druaga, and Famistar IV Baseball all in one cart.

This came out before the Game Boy Color, but it has a lot of enhancements for the Super Game Boy. Let’s start with the first game, Galaxian. If you’ll remember, Namco Gallery 1 came with Galaga, while this one comes with Galaxian. This is the very same Galaxian that’s on the Galaga slash Galaxian cartridge.

In the beginning, there was Space Invaders. Then there was Galaxian. Galaxian is basically Space Invaders in color, with some dive bombing. You can only shoot one shot at a time, unlike some shooters where the enemies fall in kind of interesting formations. In Galaxian, they fall in an S-pattern or a C-pattern.

Just like Galaga, you get more points the closer they are to your gun when you shoot them, and you get more points for enemies that are diving than enemies that are in their battle formation. There’s a flagship that’s worth a lot of points, and you’ve probably seen this flagship in a lot of other games.

It actually is one of the prizes in Pac-Man. I’m not a huge Galaxian fan. I never thought it was better than Space Invaders, and Galaga just blew it away. But I actually kind of like this version of Galaxian. One thing I never liked about Galaxian is, because of the starry background, it was a little bit cluttered, and it was a little bit hard to see the bullets coming at you.

This one you have a plain background. Because of the proportions of the screen, everything’s a little bit closer to your ships. You’re not firing a mile away. You know, it’s an actual decent Galaxian. The colors are inverted, so you’re playing on a light background with dark characters. And it’s just practical.

You can’t really play, you know, an original Game Boy in a Game Boy Pocket, you can’t really play a game with a dark background and light characters like that. You just can’t see the projectiles. But when you play this thing on a Super Game Boy, it just looks great. Now you can’t see your score on screen while you’re playing.

It’s not a huge deal, but it takes some of the fun away. This is really a points game. Now the next game is Dig Dug. Dig Dug was an arcade game from 82. It’s kind of a maze game, I guess. You’re digging through the soil, and you have a gun that will inflate enemies, and you can drop rocks on their heads.

You complete a round by eliminating all the enemies, or just letting them run away. In the original game, you could see everything on the screen at the same time, but of course this is the Game Boy, so you can’t really fit everything on the screen. So in this one, the screen scrolls around a bit. All the same elements are there from the original, but something’s missing.

There’s just something wrong with this game. I’ve played a lot of Dig Dug in my life, and it just doesn’t feel right. There’s situations in Dig Dug where you’ve dug through the wall, but not quite all the way through, but you can still fire the pump through. It doesn’t quite work in this game the same way.

A lot of times, I’m sure I could fire the pump through that little sliver of dirt, and it just didn’t go through. And also, there’s a little problem with the movement of the enemies. In Dig Dug, enemies can travel underground. They don’t need to use the tunnels, but when they do, they slow down, and they are represented by a mask.

In the arcade version, if that mask was traveling very close to a tunnel, it would kind of pop in and go back to its regular appearance, and walk through the tunnel. With this one, they can be traveling through the soil, and just be hanging on the edge of the tunnel, and still be hidden. Like they don’t pop into the tunnel.

This is especially important when you’re trying to lure them into getting hit by rocks. One of the big strategies in this game is trying to crush enemies with rocks. But when you can’t get them to pop out of that invisible mode, it’s really hard to lure them under the rocks. And that’s such a major part of the game, it really ruins it for me.

I’m going to file this as barely playable, and the music is terrible. The sound effects are wrong. It’s just not good. When you start this game, you have a choice of Dig Dug or New Dig Dug. And New Dig Dug is pretty good. I like it. There are a whole bunch of different elements in this game now. Now you have a doorway that you have to exit, and in each round it’s placed in a different spot.

You have some unbreakable blocks, which look like metal, but enemies can go through them when they’re in their subterranean digging mode. You collect the keys, and then you can open the door. You can see how many keys you have left to collect by how open the door is. If the door is partially open, it means you need to go find more keys.

There are the usual rocks, but also there’s a ball, and this ball will roll around. It’ll actually, you know, do a little Indiana Jones, use a little strategy, make a little path for it, and have it roll down. And you can use your pump against it, too, you can actually pump that thing to kill it. And there’s also a bomb.

It’s the same as dropping a rock, except with this one, when it hits the bottom, it blows up in a 3×3 square pattern, so you can take out a whole bunch of enemies that way. Another element is the 16-ton weight. It says 16T on it, and when you drop that one, it’s immovable, so a lot of times that’s a puzzle element in the level.

In between levels, you have a cute little cartoon, and if you get a game over, you can retry, keep going. I really like this. In fact, I like it better than Dig Dug. It has a lot more elements to it, and it still feels like Dig Dug. It’s a lot more Dig Dug than Dig Dug 2 was. The next game we have, Tower of Druaga.

The Tower of Druaga was an action RPG that was released in the arcades in 1984. It’s kind of a proto-Zelda type of game. You know, this was an action RPG before there were action RPGs. You play Gilgamesh, and you have to rescue Maiden Kai from the evil Druaga. And to do that, you have to get through 60 floors of this giant tower.

You’ve got a sword and a shield. The shield can block magic attacks, and the monsters get harder and harder as the game goes on. The mazes are kind of random. They’re not technically random. There are a few different patterns that show up, but it’s not the same every time you play it. You’re looking for a key and a door and treasures, but they’re always in different locations.

Now, compared to the arcade version, it’s a pretty good port. It looks almost exactly like the original Tower of Druaga, and it plays pretty much the same. You have a password system that will let you save your spot. It’s different from the main password in the Namco collection system, which saves your rankings a high score.

This will actually let you save your score, what level you’re on, and your health and stuff like that. So you can use your A button or your B button to use your item. The regular weapon is a sword. You might be used to games like Zelda, where you want to keep whacking the button. This one, you just keep the button pressed and hold your sword out, and then just walk into stuff.

The shield is automatic, so if you’re not using the sword, the shield is up. Let’s say a wizard is shooting magic at you. You just have to make sure you’re facing that wizard. Use an axe item. If you pick one of those up, you can use A or B to chop your way through walls. You have 50 health points when you start, and when you touch someone, your health goes down.

So you don’t die instantly. But if your health goes down to zero, it’s game over. After you finish the level, your health will go up a little bit. If you don’t take too much damage, you can actually recover your health. Every 10 floors, you get a mini boss, and if you defeat that enemy, you get some health, or sometimes you get a power-up or something.

If you hit the select button, you can see your inventory. Now, there are lots of secrets that happen when you kill certain enemies. For example, when you start the game on the first floor, if you kill the white slimes, you’ll get a pickaxe. But you can only use it a couple of times, and it’ll disappear and you’ve got no pickaxe.

Apparently, to finish the game, you will need a pickaxe, so you want to make sure you don’t use them all up before you get to the end of the game. On the second floor, you kill two of the black slimes, and you’ll get a treasure chest. If you open that up, you get boots that make you go faster. And et cetera, et cetera.

There’s stuff like this for every floor. Just keep killing stuff until you get to floor 60. There are different endings to the game, depending on how you played it. I think if you play it with no continues or something, you get a different ending. It’s a pretty deep game for 1984. It doesn’t have the depth of, let’s say, something like Final Fantasy, but for an arcade game, there’s a lot to it.

And that’s Tower of Draga. Next, we have Famistar IV. Famistar was a baseball game series that was released by Namco in the 90s. And after the first couple, there’s not really any difference except for the names of the players and the stats and stuff like that. Now, as you know, I hate sports, but I know a little bit about baseball.

You know, I used to play softball when I was a kid. I would sit in the outfield with a home box and just listen to ACDC and hope the ball never came near me. And our team always lost, probably because of me. But I did play baseball on the Odyssey 2, Magnavox Odyssey 2, and I also played on the Radio Shack Color computer, so I have a little bit of experience with video game baseball.

And if I can figure this one out, anybody can. When you start the game, you pick what type of game you want. You can do, like, a full series, I guess, or just a regular game. So I just picked Taisen, regular game, battle. OK, and I see a bunch of teams there. They’re all Japanese baseball teams. I’ll pick the Choonichi Dragons.

That’s our local team here in Nagoya. So choose your teams. You choose… I’m going to play against the Giants. OK, and then you’re going to choose how many innings you want to do. I’m going to choose five. OK. And then you can look through the stats of your players and whether or not they’re left-handed or right-handed, and then you’re playing the game.

Oh, yeah, you choose a stadium, too. You can choose, like, a big stadium or a little stadium. I think it makes it easier to get a home run if you get a little stadium. OK, so you start off… OK, so I’m a batter. I’m going to press the button to hit the ball. That’s pretty easy. And then I automatically run to the next base. Great.

I can move my position back and forth and center myself where I think the ball is going to hit. And that’s pretty easy to figure out. I can actually tap the button if I want to do a bunt. And I can steal bases, too. If you hit B in the D-pad, you can steal a base. Then you hit A and the direction to run back to that base.

So, OK, so when you’re playing the other side… OK, so when you’re throwing the ball, or as they call it, pitching, it’s a technical term in the world of baseball, you hit A to pitch the ball, and then you hit the control pad after to change the ball’s direction. And you can actually, before you pitch, you can kind of move around on the pitching mound a little bit, change your position.

And when the ball’s in the air and you’re trying to catch it, you kind of… everybody moves at the same time, you know how these old baseball games were. And then you can hit A and up, and you’re going to jump to catch the ball. If you hit A and any other direction, you’ll dive to catch it. And then you hit A and the direction to throw the ball.

And you can actually run around with the ball. You can chase the guy. So if you hit B, you don’t do this in outfield, but you do this if you’re on a base and you want to run after. You can hit B and you can actually run with the ball in your hand to try to put someone out. I have yet to actually have that work.

And that’s it. What I liked about this one, compared to some other ones I tried, I think I tried RBI on the Genesis and something on the Xbox. Those games, to me, have just too many different controls. This is really simple. There’s two buttons and it’s all pretty intuitive. Whatever you think is going to be the move, that’s probably the button you’re going to hit, and it’ll be right.

If a guy like me can figure this game out, anybody can figure this game out. And that’s it for Namco Gallery Vol. 2. It really shines on the Super Game Boy, you know, it’s worth it just for that. And, you know, it’s a little bit more expensive than a regular cart, but that other version of Dig Dug is really nice.

The new Dig Dug and Tower of Draga is kind of fun. And, you know, it’s not that expensive compared to buying those games separately. Oh, and another neat thing, before you start the game, just don’t touch anything and just watch the little animation at the beginning. It’s really cute. Like, all the characters come out and do something.

Like, even the baseball players and Dig Dug will come out and do something with the Tower of Draga guy. It’s a lot of fun to watch. If you want to get this game, look for DMG-AN2J-JPM. Doraemon No Study Boy Gakushuu Kanji Game Next to a game review! Doraemon No Study Boy Gakushuu Kanji Game This was released in Japan in January 2001.

It’s a color Game Boy game made by Epoch. If you remember my other Doraemon reviews, Epoch always ends up making Doraemon games on Game Boy. This isn’t really a game game, it’s a study game. In Japan, Game Boy educational software was a big thing. We never really had that. It showed up a little bit on the DS.

There were some educational games in English. In fact, when I first started learning Japanese, I used my Japanese coach on the DS, which is very buggy and kind of terrible, but I’m not going to talk about that. This is designed for kids to learn kanji. It goes from grade 1 to grade 6 kanji, and if you’ve never studied kanji before, that’s enough kanji to get you by.

There’s a lot more than that, but if you learn up to grade 6 kanji, you can do a lot. There is a battery in this game, there is a save game, and it saves automatically, so you will have to replace the battery. I would think by 2001, it’s probably dead. When you start the game, it gives you three save slots.

So pick the first one, and then you have a bunch of doko demo doors, the red doors that Doraemon can go into. The first one is the settings. So you’re going to go into that one first, and then you can turn on which grades you want to study. So for me, I picked one, two, and three. Unless you’ve really been studying Japanese, you better start with the first one.

So once you’ve done that, you go to the bottom right where it says, Deguchi, exit. Go to the second door, and then you’re presented with a sign post. The first one is Yomi, reading. The second one is Kaki, writing. Third one is Yomi, Kaki, that’s both, and then Modoru, exit. So pick the first one, Yomi.

Then you have a choice of 10 questions, 20 questions, or Marathon. Now when you start, you’re gonna see some kanji, and then you’re gonna see Doraemon on the left playing golf. Now it’s gonna ask you if you know it or not. So if you know it, you pick the top one. If you don’t know it, you pick the bottom one.

You have to just be honest, you know? Do you really know what this is? And then if you are right, it’s gonna show you the answer. If you were correct, then Doraemon is gonna shoot a hole in one. And if you’re wrong, he will miss the ball. That is it. Basically, it’s gonna rank you from 10 tries. The writing section is the same thing, but it’s the opposite.

It’s gonna give you the hiragana, and then you’re gonna have to know what the kanji is. You can write it down. I think you’re supposed to write it down. That’s the whole point, it’s writing, right? I just try to know what they are. If I reasonably know what they are, then that’s good enough for me. And you know, it’s on the honor system.

Okay, let’s get to the games. Back in that main screen, put Doraemon over the third door, where it says game, and you have baseball. Now the baseball one’s kind of fun. Jyan is gonna be throwing baseballs at you. I’m sorry, pitching, I guess, is what they call it in the sports world. And you have to hit the correct hiragana symbols.

Push left or right to hit left or right, and then up and down is just your timing. So if you hit it a little early, it’s gonna go high. If you hit it late, it’s gonna go low. And there’s a timer. The puzzle is, you just have to, it’s a four tile puzzle. You just have to shift them around and make the kanji.

It’s not really that hard, but it helps you remember them. The mouse thing, you’re presented with a kanji. Three mice will hold up hiragana symbols. You have to shoot the right ones, otherwise it throws a bomb at you, and there’s a time limit. If you go back to that main screen, there’s also a dictionary, so you can look up kanji and study, but you’re probably gonna study them somewhere else.

All in all, I really enjoyed this. Actually, even though I’ve been studying for years, I still use this to brush up. No matter how much Japanese you learn, you can still forget a lot of the different readings for the different kanji. Most kanji have several different ways of saying the same word, depending on the context.

So you can play this thing for years. So far, this is my favorite Japanese learning game on any system, even better than anything on the iPad, which either means it’s really great or it’s really slim pickings for Japanese learning games. I really like that the save is automatic, so I can just play it for a little bit and then shut it off, come back, and everything’s still where I left it.

It’s a little hard to track down. I always find these to rhyme on learning games everywhere, but I never see the kanji one on a shelf. I actually ordered this one from France, but I have seen it on Yahoo Auctions, so it’s a little tough to track down. And beware, there is a Game Boy kanji study thing that I haven’t actually tried yet, so I can only recommend this one.

Do a search for cgb-bgkj-jpn, and you’ll probably find it. Next to a big review. Budai Senshi Deluxe was released in Japan in the summer of 1990. In January 1991, it was released in the U.S. and Europe, but there it was called Budai Fighter Deluxe. Now, even though in Japan it’s officially Budai Senshi Deluxe, there’s some kanji on the label.

It still says in English, Budai Fighter Deluxe, right on the label. While everything’s in English in this game, there is a difference between the Japanese version and the English version. The English version has a multiplayer option that the Japanese version does not have. And the passwords are different, so if you’re looking at passwords online and cheats, those cheats don’t work for the Japanese version.

This is a side-scrolling shooter, but unlike most side-scrolling shooters, you’re not flying a spaceship, you’re flying a mech suit, like a Gundam. And instead of just firing from right to left, you can fire in any direction. You just point any direction you want and hold your fire button down, the B, and you’ll lock in that direction.

The A button will trigger a bomb, which you have to collect. This is a one-hit kill game. You die in one hit. However, there is a shield. It actually looks like one of the enemy’s bullets, but a little bit bigger. Grab one of those when you see it, and it’ll whirl around your ship in typical shoot-em-up-shield style.

But don’t worry about touching the sides. You can touch the sides with the environment of this game. In fact, you kinda need to to find some of the secret areas. This game doesn’t just scroll from left to right. It actually changes directions, sometimes it scrolls up and down. It’ll even backtrack you through some of the levels.

You have to kinda just follow along where it leads you. And you do have to be careful because sometimes you can get trapped. So if there’s a little bit of a learning curve there, you do have to kind of explore some of these areas, and sometimes it looks like you’re trapped that you can escape right through the wall.

Now, the reason for finding these little secret rooms is power-ups. There’s a power-up that looks like three stars on a little canister. That’ll give you an extra life. Then there’s an L for lasers, M for missiles, and R for rings. As you pick up these power-ups, that power-up will go up a level. So you’ll see at the bottom of the screen next to your score, it indicates laser, missile, and ring, and it’ll tell you what level you have.

So it can go up to 10. Now, the laser weapon, at first, is just a laser. It just gives you more firepower. At the maximum level, it actually shoots out in all diagonal directions as you’re firing. The missile, missile’s not as handy as some of the other weapons. It shoots a missile from left to right.

You can’t get it to shoot back. It basically always shoots in that direction. I mean, you can still fire your normal weapon in any direction. Your missile will keep firing to the right. Not that useful. However, when you do get it powered up, it’ll shoot in all the cardinal directions, up, down, left, right.

The rings are the most useful weapon. These rings are just kind of an energy weapon, but the trick with these is they go through walls. And when you get this thing powered up, it makes a Contra-style spread shot also and fires one shot behind you, so it’s very versatile. And shooting through walls is very critical in some of the later levels.

You need all the help you can get. When you die, whatever weapon you have loses its power. So let’s say you’ve built all your weapons up to level 10 and you die with a laser. That laser becomes zero when you start all over again, but the other weapons stay powered up. So it’s like you want to die with the worst weapon.

Enemies are pretty much all the same. They fly around. There are some walking enemies and they’re like a little chicken and there are lots of turrets to shoot. There are also platforms that fall. Now, if you have a Game Boy Color, you can kind of cheat because you can see these platforms are a different color.

And once you’ve memorized them, they’re no problem. You kind of know they’re coming. You can get out of the way. There are several skill levels when you start the game. You have a choice of three skill levels and if you beat the highest skill level, you get an extreme level that you can beat. I found there’s not a huge difference between the skill levels.

You have unlimited continues and you can save your game with a password. There are five stages in this game and so fun to play, you can kind of forgive the brevity. The bosses are pretty easy to figure out. They’re not super challenging, but it’s more exciting than just shooting an enemy a hundred times like some of these games.

This game actually came out in the NES a couple of years earlier and it’s a pretty accurate port. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s pretty much the same enemy placement and same levels. It’s just your character’s a little bigger compared to the size of the screen in this version. I really got into this game.

I really got hooked and I ended up playing every difficulty level and the end of the game was one of the funniest game endings I’ve ever seen. It just shows on the screen, you have earned my respect. A little chicken comes out. It’s just, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m just so pleased that I have this game’s respect.

To make this game a little less frustrating, there’s a 99 lives cheat because, I mean, you have infinite continues, but it puts you all the way back to the beginning of the level. Stages four and five are pretty difficult, so if you want a little less frustration, try the 99 lives cheat, but I don’t know if you’ll earn the game’s respect by using it.

In the American version, it’s H-G-D-M. In the Japanese version, it’s H-I-D-E. Do get this game. Search for DMG-BUA for the Japanese version, DMG-BU for the European and US version. In the summer of 1999, there was a color version of this game released called Burai Fighter Color, which is exactly the same game, but with color, and it was released in the US as Space Marauder a year later.

I haven’t actually tried this game, but from everything I’ve seen, every screenshot and every video, it looks exactly the same. I think they just colorized it. Hardware! Hard, hard, hard, hardware! Hardware! Your Game Boy is filthy and disgusting. I’m talking about the buttons. Now, I don’t have to tell you how to clean the outside of your Game Boy.

I think you know how to use a cloth and Windex, but as far as the inside goes, well, that’s a different story. We gotta get inside the Game Boy. This project will work on any type of Game Boy, except you don’t wanna be going inside a DS because they’re like, it’s like opening up a laptop. It’s very complicated, and you really need to have a teardown guide.

But basically, this is a way you can clean your Game Boy. In fact, you can clean your game controllers as well. The best bet is to go online and try to find pictures of someone actually opening up the same model that you have because there might be some special considerations. I’ll tell you a little bit more about cleaning the Game Boy Color because it’s pretty simple.

But when in doubt, take a lot of photos. If you have a digital camera sitting right beside you, why not take a picture of what’s going on while you’re taking it apart? Because if you get stuck and you’re not sure where something goes, you can just go back and look at the pictures. You’ll probably never need them, but then you don’t have to worry about it.

The first thing you’re gonna need to do is get a Tri-Wing screwdriver. If you don’t have one of these things, go online and get one. They’re a couple of bucks. It won’t cost you more than 10 bucks with shipping to get a Tri-Wing screwdriver. Don’t even try this if you don’t have a Tri-Wing screwdriver because you ain’t getting inside your Nintendo Game Boy.

You got your Tri-Wing screwdriver? You got a clean working surface? Open that thing up. Obviously, I’m not responsible if you destroy your Game Boy, but just be careful and watch where everything goes. Try not to pull out any ribbon cables. There’s a ribbon cable connecting the screen. You don’t want to mess with that.

Be gentle. You can actually pop that ribbon cable out, but I don’t recommend it. You don’t need to, okay? And once you flip it upside down, you’re going to find that there are some rubbery things where the buttons are. You don’t really have to keep track of which way the buttons go because they only fit in a certain way.

The B button and the A button have little grooves, so you’re not going to get those the wrong way. You got to clean two things. You got to clean the buttons and you got to clean the circuit board. So obviously, the plastic part of the buttons, you can take those out and watch where they go back in, see?

You take those out and clean them however you want. You can wash them in soapy water. Doesn’t matter. Get that filth off. The circuit board takes some little Q-tip in rubbing alcohol and cleaning it as good as you can. I’ve seen some that were very, very oxidized and worn and I had to kind of dig at it with a white eraser to get some of the gunk off it.

But generally, a quick swab with a cotton swab and some alcohol will do the trick. Now, the rubber parts, the silicone parts, those are very tricky. You have to be very careful because you can see there are some little black contact pads on there. Those black contact pads are very delicate. If you wreck those, there’s nothing you can do.

So you do not want to wreck those things. Be very gentle with them. Try not to put your fingers on them because that is the difference between Mario jumping and not jumping, okay? And you’ll always be wondering, did I lose that game because I left a fingerprint on the stupid black contact on the controller?

You’ll never know. For that part, you take water and a Q-tip and gently wipe it. You really don’t need to do much scrubbing or anything. A little bit of black will come off it. That’s okay. But you don’t keep digging at the black until there’s no black left because you’ll have no contact on your buttons and that’s bad, bad news.

Once everything’s dried out, you can start putting it all back together and it should be pretty obvious how it goes together because you just took it apart and hopefully you took pictures if you really messed up. I’m not sure about other models, but in the Game Boy Color, there’s some cool little guides to help you guide the buttons back in.

Game Boy Advance SP is a little more tricky as it’s a little harder to put together. There’s a lot more… It’s more complicated because of the hinge situation, but it’s not too bad. I’ve seen some Game Boys where there’s some obviously goop spilled inside and you have to get a little more serious and clean it.

As long as you just don’t get water or alcohol on the screen part because it can kind of soak into the screen and get between the layers and it’ll really mess things up. Any of the other stuff you can pretty much clean with alcohol and a Q-tip, it’s probably not going to wreck anything. You know, just be reasonable.

It depends how filthy it is, right? Clean that filthy, filthy Game Boy.