1989
The three games that jump out at me from the launch year are Super Mario Land, Alleyway, and Tetris.
Super Mario Land is Gunpei’s take on Mario.
The sprites are super tiny. The physics are different!
After his jump arc Mario will drop like a stone!
If you jump on a turtle it turns into a little bomb that explodes shortly afterward.
Mario is going on sort of a world tour visiting Ancient China, Easter Island, and Egypt.
There are shooter levels with different theming: Mario uses a submarine and a plane.
I’m convinced the ‘power ball’ thing that replaces the fireball was probably loosely inspired by pachinko, but I don’t know why I’m convinced that’s the case.
It’s a great Mario. I grew up with it. I love it.
Alleyway succeeds where a surprising number of Arkanoid ports did not by making a paddle game that is actually playable on a d-pad. Still not as fun as Arkanoid with a paddle though.
Tetris! Tetris could be it’s own thread.
Tetris is my favorite game in the action-puzzle genre commonly called ‘puzzle’ games.
It’s almost everyone’s! My Mom likes it!
The Gameboy version of Tetris is a great version of Tetris, especially aesthetically.
A lot of care went into the look of this version. Except for the long piece every tetromino can be seen to visually be made up of little squares, but not just squares. There are squares with little squares inside them and squares with big squares inside them. Every tetrominio looks different and distinct from the others but never in a way that visually clashes (which can not be said of all or even most versions of Tetris).
There are also curiously two brick walls on either side of the playfield, so I guess the developers took the idea of Tetris being ‘in a well’ very literally.
The HUD on the right of the playfield is simple and easy to read.
There are two cute little endings if your score is high enough.
Down + Start on the title “1 player / 2 player” screen gets you the heart mode.
I probably have, but I don’t really remember it. Maybe I’ll revisit it sometime this week when I get a chance.
Slightly jelly that you actually played shooters on the Gameboy as a kid.
I had a Gameboy as a kid but discovered shooters later on.