Reviews of Penguin Wars, Quarth, Side Pocket & tips on cleaning the cartridge slot.

Episode 3 of Game Boy Crammer. I’ll be reviewing Penguin Wars, Quarth, and Side Pocket. Also a hardware section on cleaning the cartridge slot. First up, Penguin Wars. Penguin Wars, also known as King of the Zoo in Europe, and Penguin and Coon Wars Versus in Japan.

It came out in 1990 by ASCII Corporation. It doesn’t matter if you get the Japanese or English version, it’s all the same. What the game is about is you have a table, you have two animals throwing balls at each other, and the person that gets hit by the most balls loses. That’s it, I mean, it’s, uh, you really are just throwing balls at another character.

That’s the appeal, it’s just so simple. The controls are very simple, you move left and right, and you use the A button to pick up a ball, and hit it again to throw the ball at the opponent. If you hold the button down, it’ll kind of charge up and blast. You can block by throwing balls at other balls.

And it’s set up like a typical kind of sports game. You’re playing in sets, you can have ties, and there’s a time limit. Whoever has the most points, uh, will win. When you start to go overtime, you get these weird little things, like characters will come out and interrupt the game, which just kind of makes it interesting.

It seems like a little drunk character comes out drinking a bottle and wandering across the court, and there’s like a weird little spinning disc that if you hit it, it just kind of shoots the ball off in a random direction. I think that makes it more interesting. I think a lot more sports would be more fun if random drunks walked out in the middle of the field during the middle of the game.

Obviously, I’m not a sports guy, but hey, if there were wandering drunks, I’d probably watch a lot more sports. If you can finish the set by having all the balls off your side, so you have none on your side and they’re all on the opponent’s side, you will get a bonus game where you get to just throw as many balls as you can in 30 seconds.

Now, each animal isn’t just a cosmetic choice. You’re actually, they actually have different attributes. For example, a penguin is kind of a balanced character. You’ve got like a bunny that’s really strong but takes a long time to recover, and you’ve got a cow that’s really slow but can, does that charge shot really hard.

So that makes the game a little more interesting, just having different attributes to these different characters. Now, this game is very unfair. When you get hit by a ball, you take a while to recover, but in that, it’s not like one of these games where you’re immune for a few seconds and your character starts flashing.

You can get hit one, two, three, four, five times in a row and you’re out. But that unfairness is kind of fun because you get to do that to the opponent too. Sometimes you can just nail the opponent down and just pummel him with these balls, and it’s very satisfying. I never had a younger brother, but I imagine it’s like that.

He just gets it. He just gets to be the bully. The other thing about that charge shot is when you, when you charge up the ball and fire it, your opponent stays knocked out a lot longer. So if you kind of fire one hard shot and you get it, you can just fire a whole bunch of regular shots and sometimes just finish him off just like that.

But it depends who you’re playing against and who you’re playing as, the kind of strategy you have. It seems like such a simple, boring game, but so much fun. I don’t think you can sit down and play this thing for 12 hours, but it’s one of those games like Tetris or Dr. Mario that you can just pop in and play for a few minutes, and that’s what the Game Boy is all about.

You know, being somewhere and wanting to kill a few minutes and play a game. This one is really great. Apparently there was an arcade version that came out in 1985, and it actually came out in the U.S. And I’m just surprised there’s never been more versions of this game. I mean, it’s so simple, but it’s the kind of thing that anybody can pick up and play, but I’m having trouble getting too far into it, but I plan to keep playing this one a long time and getting really good at it.

And there’s a little cheat. You can choose whatever stage you want. You go on the character select screen, move the cursor over to your character, hold left and B, then press A, and you can change the level number with up and down. The only people that might not like this game is Pedda, because you are pummeling animals with spheres.

Hopefully they’ll eventually make a version where it’s just vegetables throwing balls at each other. So I highly recommend that you go get Penguin Wars. Search for DMG-PW. Next to a big review! Quarth. Q-U-A-R-T-H. Quarth. Also known as Block Hole. Outside of Japan, it’s called Block Hole. There’s like a European Konami Game Boy Collection Volume 4.

It’s called Block Game. So if you have that, you already have it. I believe you can get it on 3DS Virtual Console. At least I think you can in Japan, but I’m not sure if you can get it everywhere. This is kind of like Tetris meets Space Invaders. So you’re at the bottom of the screen with a shooter that moves left and right, and then blocks are falling. You have to complete Quadrilateral.

So you have to make boxes, and once you complete a box, it’ll clear off the screen. So imagine an L from Tetris is coming down at you. You can shoot a few blocks to fill it in. That’s going to make a box. Once it becomes a box, it counts up the points and clears it away. So these things are always falling. It’s different shapes that are falling.

You can pick a different shooter, but it’s mostly an aesthetic difference. I don’t think it affects the gameplay in any way. When the blocks reach the bottom, that’s the end. You get crushed at the bottom of the screen. And it’s kind of, oh, it’s really unfair in a way, because even if you’ve cleared some blocks, if they’re still scrolling down and the points haven’t been tallied up yet, that still counts as hitting your ship. Cruel, cruel game.

It’s like Tetris in a way in that it just gets faster and faster until you die. However, you can still clear levels. And the other big difference between this and Tetris is you can memorize the levels. This thing comes with three levels with nine stages each. So let’s say you pick level one, the easiest level.

You can pick nine stages or you can pick random, which is basically a never-ending falling random blocks. You know, you can play either way. And I find like even level one, nine is pretty hard, but it doesn’t take much practice before you can clear that. And then it gets pretty ridiculous. But that way you don’t have, there’s no save game in this, and you don’t need level skips because you can just skip and play any level you want.

When you clear stage nine of each level, you get a cute little cinematic scene. I won’t tell you what happens. Keep your expectations low, but it’s nice to get something, you know? I find, like Tetris, it’s not really what I’d call a Tetris clone, but it’s definitely on the same, in the same category.

What I like about it is, like Tetris, it’s a really good pick up and play it for a few minutes kind of game. This is the kind of game where you can just turn it on, play whatever level you want within seconds, and you’re killing off a few minutes. You’re probably not going to last that long, especially in the random mode and level three.

It goes pretty quick. You’ll be amazed at how precisely you can shoot these blocks. At first I was like, there’s no way anyone can possibly do this. Play it for a few hours, a couple of days later, and I can tap out exactly four, four, four, four, or do a row of one, one, one, one. The controls on it are very, very simple, and it’s very easy to get what you want.

You’re very rarely having to fight with the controls. It’s more like, if you can’t keep up with this game, it’s your fault, not the game’s fault, which always is a great feeling. It’s not nice when you play a game, and it’s like you feel like the game is not on your side. This thing is just really nicely designed, so simple, and I buy these random mystery packs from my local retro game shop, where you pay six bucks, 600 yen, and you get ten games.

All mystery games, most of them terrible, but you almost always get a copy of Quarth, and I’ve seen Quarth for 100 yen, a buck. So it’s kind of like Tetris is in Canada, where it’s very, very common. I guess everybody bought it when it came out. It must have been like Tetris over here. There’s so many copies of Quarth everywhere.

I would say it’s a must-have if you collect any kind of block puzzle games. You’re going to want to have Tetris. You’re going to want to have Kirby Star Stacker, and you’re going to want to have Quarth as your basic block games on the Game Boy. If you haven’t tried Quarth before, it’s like a whole category of game you’ve never tried before.

It’s just so wonderful. I’m just surprised there haven’t been more Quarth clones, because we certainly have enough Tetris copies. Let’s do some Quarth copies. It’s kind of a forgotten game. I don’t know if it’s forgotten, but it’s one that I’ve never heard of until I just found it in this collection.

It’s so addictive and fun. So go get it, Quarth or Blockhole. Shooting Puzzle Game Quarth is on sale. Konami Game Boy Software K-Boys are coming one after another. Konami. Next to an 8-review. Side Pocket, the pool slash billiards game. It came out in 1990 everywhere. It’s actually out on a virtual console, so you can play this on the 3DS if you like.

It’s a top-down pool game, so you can play 9-ball, which you play by yourself. There’s no opponent. You’re just trying to hit the ball in order. Hit 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. In Pocket mode, you have a limited number of shots, so you try to clear the table, but once in a while you get a star in one of the pockets, so then if you can hit a ball in there, you get more shots available to finish the table.

One of the things that makes this a little hard is the balls are not different colors, obviously because it’s the Game Boy, so it’s hard to tell which one you’re supposed to hit, but the balls are replaced by numbers when you’re looking at the table, so it’s kind of weird that they don’t look like balls sometimes.

They just turn into numbers, and it’s kind of hard to figure out. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out your strategy, especially if you have two balls near the hole. You’re not sure which one is more advantageous, because one of them’s a 1 and one of them’s a 9 or something like that, you know? So sometimes it’s hard to tell, especially with the 7.

It’s hard to tell where the edge of the ball would be. The control is kind of clunky, because it’s not very accurate. I find with this control system, it’s very vague. You know, it would be nice if they could switch to a mode where you’re kind of looking down the table, and you could line up your shot, and kind of imagine where it’s going to go, but you get this kind of clunky little line that shoots out from, not even a line, just a row of dots that shoots out from your cue ball.

You can aim that wherever you want. You can kind of see where it will reflect to, so it kind of cheats, you can kind of bank a shot, and at least it gives you that to help you with the lack of accuracy. You can hit the side of the ball, you can get it to draw back, but it doesn’t really work that well.

It doesn’t feel like real pool. I don’t expect it to that much on the Game Boy, I guess, but it’s pretty, pretty far off. And I played some games, even on the old TRS-80 Radio Shack, that probably had less memory than Game Boy, but it still managed to make a fairly realistic simulation of pool. Overall, I’d say Side Pocket is generally lousy.

You know, the music is kind of irritating. It just doesn’t offer anything fun. Like, most of the frustration is in the lack of realism, in the lack of control. And if you’re going to play a pool game, that’s what it’s all about. It’s like playing a pinball game, where it doesn’t feel like a pinball game, and you don’t feel like you’re in control.

That’s the thing about Side Pocket, you just never feel like the effort you put into lining up a shot pays off, because you’re not really sure if you’re aiming it right. The controls are just so coarse, it takes away all the fun. The longer you take to line up a shot, the more frustrated you are that you didn’t go anywhere near where you wanted it to go.

Oh, and the worst part is the breaks. There’s no way you can do a good break on this table. Oh, if you’re lucky, you can get the two far away balls to shoot out to the corners. That’s about all you can do. You slam into that stack as hard as you can, and everything just kind of bumps around a little bit.

The physics are terrible. You never feel like the energy is being transferred from ball to ball. It just feels like the balls are made of plastic or something. They just don’t react properly. The Japanese version, there’s no reason not to get the Japanese version if you really want it. It’s all in English anyway.

If you’re looking for the Japanese version, the Japanese version is DMG-SWA, but honestly, save your money. This one is not worth it. Your Game Boy is filthy. It’s filthy because you’re taking cartridges that are dusty and grime-filled and full of puke and et cetera, usually, and you’re shoving them into your sweet, clean Game Boy.

But maybe the problem is your Game Boy is dirty. So how do you clean a Game Boy cartridge slot? It’s very easy. You buy a Game Boy cleaning cartridge, but let’s say it’s the future, and you can’t even get those anymore. I don’t know if you can. I never even looked. Here’s what you do. Okay, this is how you can make your own Game Boy slot cleaning device.

Take a cereal box, cut a strip that’s exactly the width of the circuit board inside a Game Boy cartridge. So you’re going to look at it inside the cartridge. You see the little circuit board. You’re going to cut a strip that width. It can be a little bit wider, but not wider than the cartridge, for sure.

Do that the whole length of the cereal box. Okay, and then take that. So take the, obviously, you don’t want the shiny side touching your Game Boy. So white side out. You’re going to fold that in half lengthwise. So you have basically a cleaning cartridge. So soak that thing with alcohol. Put it in just like you would a cartridge.

And you’re going to see filth come off. You’re going to see little stripes. And that’s the oxidization and dirt on the contacts inside your cartridge. You’re not supposed to blow into your cartridge, but you probably have been. So there’s probably lots of spit, drool, and, of course, usually puke. And that’s how you make a cleaning cart.

You can also use computer spray to spray out some of the dust. That’s how you do it.