Reviews of Cyriad (Bakuretsu Senshi Warrior), Pac-Man & Adventure Island as well as a couple of quick Game Boy book reviews.
Welcome to another episode of Game Boy Crammer. Today we’ve got Cyraid, Pac-Man, and Adventure Island. But before we get to that, I’m gonna do some book reviews. I went to a site called BetterWorldBooks.com. When you buy a book, they give another book to charity.
And I got How to Win at Game Boy Games by Jeff Rovin, and Game Boy Secret Codes by Brady Games. Now, the Jeff Rovin book, this is How to Win at Game Boy Games. There have been sequels to it. This is the first book. It came out in 1991. There weren’t a lot of games out at that time for Game Boy, so it doesn’t cover a lot of games.
It’s very detailed and seems well written, but there were a lot of pretty lousy games in the first couple years, and so if you actually count the good games in here, it just doesn’t add up to much. But it says on the cover, you asked for it, you got it. Includes the Game Boy version of Dr. Mario. Wow. Pick this up if you’re a Game Boy ephemera collector, but otherwise, I would skip this.
It has a special section with tips on winning at the Atari Lynx system. OK, Game Boy Secret Codes. This is version one, and it came out in 1999. So this covers all the classic games. I find it’s pretty useful, actually. Since I bought this thing, I’ve been picking it up a lot. Just, you know, it’s faster than picking up the iPad and looking up game FAQs or whatever.
Also, if you’re traveling, you got your Game Boy with you, and you need codes and stuff like that, it’s got them. For some of the games, they don’t have all the codes for all the levels, but they’ll have a few so you can hop through the game when you get stuck. It’s not really like a walkthrough or tips.
These are all cheat codes, level skip codes, stuff like that. I’m sure the sequels are even better because they’ll have… they’ll be a little bit more complete. I think the last one came out in 2001. So Game Boy Secret Codes by Brady Games. So I say to her, I says, hey, is that Bob? Wow, he looks great.
You know, one of the disadvantages of having a podcast is it doesn’t really rank high on Google. Like, you know, if you write a blog or something like that, people do this SEO optimization kind of stuff. Well, the podcast, all you have is my voice and a quick little blurb explaining what the episode is.
If you can help me out by letting people know about this podcast, it would really help out and get some more people listening. One thing you can do is if you’re on Pinterest or Twitter or whatever, go to Game Boy Crammer, click on one of the shows, scroll down to the bottom. There’s like a Pinterest link there and Google+, Facebook and Twitter links so you can tweet.
Like, the Pinterest link is cool because you can post one of the pictures that’s on the page. It’ll automatically put it on your Pinterest page. And hey, you know, Pinterest, I know it’s for grannies and stuff like that. I finally got on there. You know what? Years ago, guys didn’t have purses and I’d look at purses and say, wow, you know, it really would be handy to be able to throw a camera in a bag and stuff like that and walk around with it.
But I wasn’t gonna be the first guy to wear a purse, no way. But then, you know, other guys started carrying man purses. That’s what Pinterest is all about. So that’s why I’m on there now. So look up Plywood747 if you like and you can follow my retro video game nerd fever. Look, I’m a total noob at Pinterest.
I just joined it today. So I really don’t know what I’m doing. Okay, let’s get with the game reviews. Let’s do a game review. Cyraid is also known as Bakuretsu Senshi Warrior. This game came out in Japan in 1990 and the U.S. in 1991. It’s an action puzzle game with the whole puzzle on one screen. So you’re not scrolling around.
Everything’s very tiny. Characters are tiny, the enemies are tiny, the little ladders and platforms are tiny. These platforms are made of blocks. Some of them are unbreakable. Your goal is to break boxes that have an E on them and you get a little capsule that comes out of that. The order in which you do it doesn’t matter.
There’s not necessarily one way to finish the level. And you get lots of different power-ups that help you along your way. If you get a certain power-up, you can shortcut part of the puzzle. A lot of ways you can finish these levels. There are 40 levels and you start off on a fairly easy one. It’s pretty challenging though, but it gives you a good idea of what’s to come.
Then once in a while, you’re gonna get a boss to fight. There’s things that make the whole floor explode and drop down on an enemy. There are one-ups all over the place, which you’ll need because it gets pretty tough. The first couple of levels aren’t so bad, but then there’s some head-scratchers later on.
You get these shoes that’ll speed you up. You can get a skull that’ll slow you down. You don’t wanna get those. There’s sort of numbered power-ups. If you get a three, you can smash the heart, unbreakable blocks. Four gives you a jump. There’s a lot of puzzle stuff you have to do, but you get the jump, you can kind of jump across something or jump over an enemy and stuff like that.
So it gives you a little shortcut. If you get a five, it incapacitates all the enemies for a certain amount of time. And movement is very simple. B to jump, A to shoot. The A button also lets you kick the ladder from the left to the right. So you kind of hit A in the direction, it’ll kick the ladder.
And if you do need to commit suicide, you often do select and hit B because sometimes you can kind of make the level uncompletable. They give you some passwords too. So you don’t have to play all the levels again. If you like puzzle platformers, this game is for you. I mean, I really enjoy it. It’s definitely one I’ll keep and go back to time and again.
Now this game lets you skip levels by entering passwords. However, you can save yourself a lot of time. All you need is one password. E-P-O-S-A-S. Eposas. You enter that password at the beginning, then you hold A and then hit select. You can just skip through any levels you want. That way you don’t have to write down your passwords in a little notebook or something like that.
And there’s another cheat I found online. There’s something called Muteki, M-U-T-E-K-I. And then you’ll start the game invincible. But you know what? It still doesn’t help you pass all the levels. There’s still a lot of puzzle elements you have to deal with. At least then you can kind of walk through enemies.
But I like the level skip just because I don’t have to play the first two or three levels to get to the ones I want to get to. I often see this one on sale. It’s not an expensive game. So I definitely recommend getting it. It’s gonna be one of my favorites. Now, a little bit later in the 90s, in 1999, on Game Boy Color, they basically took this same game, changed the characters a little bit, and called it Ohastar Yamachan and Raymundo.
So you can probably get that one or get the original, whatever’s cheaper because it looks like the same game. Although it’s for Game Boy Color, so it might be a little more colorful. In fact, if I see it, I’ll probably pick it up. The bottom line is, if you like Lode Runner, you’ll probably like this.
And I would say it’s better than the Game Boy version of Lode Runner. So go pick up Siren. Oh, I must have those power pellets! Go buy me the power pellet bonus! Pac-Man! Pac-Man is one of the most iconic video games of all time. If you haven’t played Pac-Man before, I don’t think you should start with this Game Boy version.
In fact, it’s one of the worst Pac-Man ports I’ve ever played. This thing came out in 1990 in Japan and then 1991 everywhere else. It’s made by Namco, the originators of Pac-Man. And, uh, do I have to explain what Pac-Man is? It’s a top-down maze game where you eat dots, ghosts, and stuff like that. It’s a top-down maze game where you eat dots, ghosts chase you, and if you eat one of the four magical power dots, you can eat the ghosts for a short period of time.
They regenerate, and you have to eat all the dots to clear the maze, and then you go to the next level, etc. What makes Pac-Man great is the subtleties, the, you know, running for that last pellet, and while all the ghosts are down on you and you just get it at the last second, you know, it’s all in the things that happen while you’re playing.
There’s nothing really special happens while you’re playing. It’s basically what I described over and over again. However, this version of Pac-Man eliminates the joy, any kind of fun you’d have playing it. First of all, in the regular mode, you have to scroll around so you don’t see the whole screen at the same time.
It’s hard enough to play Pac-Man with a full screen, but when you can’t tell which dots are left, what the ghosts are up to, it just makes it really, really hard. Now, generally in Pac-Man, half asleep, I could play to level 10, but with this one, you know, the first time I played it, I died on the first level, and the second time I died on the third level, and I really tried hard to get to the fifth.
I just find it so difficult because you’re fighting against the game itself. One example of a really frustrating thing is, you know, when you… you have to keep track of all the dots you’ve eaten. Sometimes you’ll leave one dot somewhere in the corner of the screen. Well, if you can’t see it, you might have a situation where you think you’re running for the last dot.
All the ghosts are following you, the red ghost does its little pincer move, and you die because there was another dot somewhere in the corner of the screen that you couldn’t see. That’s really frustrating. It doesn’t look great, especially in the Game Boy Color. Maybe in the original Game Boy, it’s okay, but having inverse colors just doesn’t look like Pac-Man.
There’s just not a lot of fun to be had. Especially nowadays, you can play Pac-Man on all kinds of stuff. Why would you play an inferior version of Pac-Man on the Game Boy? And here’s the worst part. They have another mode. If you hit right before you hit start, you can play the game in half-size modes.
You can actually see the full screen, and you’ve got the score on the side. However, the dots are one single pixel each. They could have exaggerated them and made them a little bigger. Big, fat dots would have looked strange, but at least it would have been more functional. It’s very easy to miss a single dot.
If you’ve missed one pellet, you get the same situation where all the ghosts are bearing down on you. You think you’re eating the last dot, and there’s one single pixel you didn’t see in the corner of the screen. To make matters worse, playing this game, I found many times I was trying to eat a ghost while it’s turned blue.
I’ve got my power pellet. I’m ready to eat a ghost, and I go right through it. At first, I thought, well, this will never happen again. This is just some weird, obscure bug. No, it happens several times in one game. I’ve just run through a bunch of ghosts, and it’s like one of them survived. This only happens in the half-size mode.
The sounds are okay, but overall, there’s really no reason for this game to exist. Except that the cartridge looks kind of cool. You’ve got a little Pac-Man wearing Walkman headphones on the cover. I’ve got to say, the artwork on the cover is the best part. Don’t pay a lot of money for Pac-Man. If you see it for 50 cents or something, grab it. Otherwise, completely ignore it.
Someday, I’ll get my hands on the Game Boy Color Pac-Man, which comes with a puzzle game as well. Maybe they’ve made some improvements. I’ve seen some screenshots of it, and at least they have the black background, which will look a lot better on Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Color. Avoid this terrible game at all costs.
Oh, Pac-Man, I’m beat. And I’m hungry. Thank goodness for new Pac-Man pasta from Chef Boyardee. New Pac-Man pasta? Little spaghetti shaped like us. Delicious. And of course, Chef Boyardee’s pasta. Goodness, it’s great when we have to eat and run. New Pac-Man pasta from Chef Boyardee. With meatballs? Without meatballs?
Or chicken flavor? Thank goodness for new Pac-Man pasta. Thank goodness for Chef Boyardee. Let’s do a dish review. Adventure Island is by Hudson, so you know it’s going to be good. Hudson Soft always makes weird, interesting Game Boy titles. They’re not all the best, but they’re always going to be interesting.
Adventure Island in Japan, this is the version I have, it’s called Takahashi Meijin no Bokken Jima. Takahashi’s Adventure Island. This was a game that came out on the MSX, it was on the Famicom, it came out on the Super Nintendo later. It’s a bit complicated because there was originally a game called Wonder Boy, published by Sega.
There was a licensing confusion that what happened was they basically had to change all the graphics and the name, and call it something else. If you’ve ever played the old version on the Sega Master System of Wonder Boy, or if you’ve played maybe on MAME or Arcade, Wonder Boy, you basically, that’s why it looks so familiar, Wonder Boy and Adventure Island are almost the same thing.
Now Adventure Island for the Game Boy is not the same as Adventure Island on the NES. The NES version of Adventure Island 2 was ported and called Adventure Island on the Game Boy. Adventure Island 3 was ported as Adventure Island 2 on the Game Boy. So I’m going to deal with Adventure Island 2 some other time.
But for now, Adventure Island. This is a wonderful game. It is like a Mario type of game. That is to say, it is a platformer. Side scrolling platformer. The storyline is basically a princess has been kidnapped. You have different weapons, you can ride different creatures, which is kind of fun. You can ride a skateboard, which is very cool.
It doesn’t really make sense because you’re jumping off trees and stuff with a skateboard, but I guess you can do that in real life. And the enemies are… what you’d expect. They’re spiders and bats and stuff like that. Snakes. And they’re a boss as every few levels. There’s no save game in this, but they’re very generous with the continues.
You can continue as much as you want, and there’s a little cheat menu so you can start on any level you want. So it’s not really super frustrating. You don’t have to keep playing the first level over and over, and if you want to, you can go practice all the levels with the game level skip, and then you can just blast through the whole game in one shot.
It’s a good long-term player. It’s not something you just clear in the first day. Probably. At least if you’re at my skill level, you’re not clearing in the first day. Now, the control of the character is very good. It’s not really frustrating, although… Eh, eh, sometimes. But it’s pretty forgiving.
The best thing that can happen to you is you find the Stone Hammer. The Stone Hammer is the basic weapon in the game. When you don’t have it, it’s horrible. It’s wonderful. You pretty much have to keep firing hammers, because there’s a lot of secrets around the game that you can’t really find unless you kind of shoot random places.
So, uh, you’ll find yourself whipping hammers a lot. Uh, sometimes you find a little power-up, which looks like a playing card. They’re inside eggs. Did I mention that? There are eggs everywhere in this game. Eggs, eggs, eggs. And you crack the eggs, and there are prizes inside. If you crack an egg open and there’s a card inside, you’re going to get some kind of crazy dinosaur to ride.
What kind of dinosaur? Oh, well, if you pick up the heart, you get this kind of light-colored dinosaur with an electric bolt that shoots out his tail. And it can blow up rocks and boulders. And, uh, there’s a really, really high jump. And I think he can walk on ice. Then you have the diamond card. So you get another kind of dinosaur, and it can go underwater. It’s like a Loch Ness Monster kind of dinosaur.
He doesn’t really have his own attack, but you can still fire hammers while you’re riding him. And then if you get the club, you get, like, a pterodactyl. So he flies. But you don’t find these very often, but they’re kind of cool. And they drop bombs or rocks or something. And then you have the spade. Now, the spade card, you get this dark dinosaur with, like, a really long shooting fireball. It can also jump really high.
And I think he can walk on fire or something, too. So those are really handy to get. And some other power-ups you’re going to get, you get a skateboard. I mentioned that. There’s a, uh, a fairy. It’s kind of like the star in Super Mario. It protects you for a little while, but it goes, it’s really short. It seems very short.
Um, so you can just run through enemies. You get different fruits. Now, here’s the thing about fruits. You are like this hypo or hyperglycemic, I’m not sure. Um, you basically need fruit to survive. If you don’t get enough sugar, you die. This is, uh, our little hero is a diabetic. It’s true. So you’ve got to constantly be munching on fruit, or you just drop dead. Even if nothing’s attacking you, you will die if you run out of fruit power. Just like real life.
Um, there’s a bottle of milk that you find once in a while. That’s going to give you a full health. Um, and a whole bunch of points. There are keys inside some eggs. And these keys hold wonders. Um, these eggs tend to be dropped by things, or they’re not just lying on the ground usually, or you find them by throwing random hammers everywhere.
You’ll see these mysterious magical eggs appear. You hit those, you get the key, and a cloud appears and lets you up to a bonus platform in the sky, or somewhere. And, uh, it’s one of those things where you can kind of shortcut across the top of the level a little bit and collect lots of stuff. Lots of fruit and power-ups and stuff like that.
Sometimes you get a little flying dinosaur up there. As far as the enemies go, they’re all pretty easy to kill. Some of them have really annoying flight patterns, but it’s, compared to, uh, compared to Mega Man, you’re going to have a easy, easy time with this game. You know, most of the, most of the enemies are pretty easy to figure out. There’s a few frustrating points, but, uh, one great thing about this game is the levels are very short.
You don’t have to deal with checkpoints, go a little bit further, and you’ll be at the end of the level, so it’s, you know, it makes the game shorter, I guess. I don’t need to detail the bosses. You can figure out the strategies with these things. They’re not that hard to figure out. Of course, you want to get to the enemies with appropriate dinosaur or weapon. You don’t want to be there empty-handed, but that makes it a little bit easier. The graphics are really plain.
That’s, well, I think, a big advantage, because if you’re playing on a black and white Game Boy, you’ve got a lot of screen blurring and stuff like that. Sometimes a lot of detail maybe looks nice, but it makes it hard to play. This has very, very plain, very simple backgrounds. It’s a little bit like Super Mario Land, where everything’s so very abstract, and that actually helps with the gameplay.
The music is… definitely not up to the, what the Game Boy can do. Um, it’s not, I never find it annoying. I just don’t even notice it, because it’s just kind of lame, but some people, I shouldn’t say it’s lame, because some people may like the orchestral version of this stuff, and maybe it was better on other versions than the Game Boy, but the Game Boy version is not that great.
So go get Adventure Island. It’s not that expensive. I saw one in Canada for eight bucks. In Japan, they tend to go for about the same. Go get Adventure Island. It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming! I’m Takahashi! The famous people are very active on the southern island. This is the rumored Takahashi famous people’s Adventure Island.
Cross the sea and cross the forest and defeat the great demon king. A strange, strange action game. I can’t stop, I don’t want to stop. A fun action game. Takahashi famous people’s Adventure Island. After I recorded that Adventure Island review, I went back to the retro game store, and I saw, oh, Adventure Island 3, the Japanese version, because I had bought the English version of Adventure Island 1 and 2. So I thought, oh cool, the third one. I was just about to buy it, but I thought, better look it up.
So I grabbed my phone, looked it up, and it corresponds with the NES Famicom version. So Adventure Island 2, the Japanese version for Game Boy, corresponds with Adventure Island 2 for NES and Famicom. And then Adventure Island 3. So basically, they have Adventure Island 2 and 3 for Game Boy. And in English, it’s Adventure Island 1 and 2.
There’s only two games. So I save yourself buying the same game twice. I almost bought a second copy of Adventure Island in Japanese.