La vie en vert (GAME BOY thread)

[Alyx]

Might be fun to do a pre-impressions of Kid Dracula, that I can come back to later.
Compare what I expect with what I experience.

Kid Dracula.

A spin-off of Castlevania, a Parodius to Castlevania’s Gradius sort of thing.
You play as Kid Dracula who shoots fireballs instead of having a whip, so it’ll play differently and be an action platformer loosely in the vein of Mega Man but with lots of Konami references and a lot of cute versions of Castlevania stuff.
It’ll be a fairly difficult challenging action platformer.

I’ve technically played both the Famicom and Game Boy Kid Dracula before, but only ever the opening bit very briefly and it didn’t really catch my interest, so I’ll probably play the opening a few times again before really getting into a groove and really starting to play it. I think I’ll like it once I get into it.

[Alyx]

Very initial impressions;

This game is gorgeous.

The first boss fight was genuinely kind of an interesting little joke.

Beating the boss unlocked a new attack, so maybe this will be even more like a Mega Man game than I was expecting.

[hellojed]

I’m into “The frog for whom the bell tolls” pretty deep. It’s funny. It’s not super hard but just hard enough in spots. The game is a mouthful so talking about it at a party is just kind of impossible.

It’s interesting that a lot of the battles are essentially predetermined, so that you finish with like 1 hit left. There’s one screen early on where you barely beat a guy, and there’s 2 more behind him, but they get scared because they think you’re really tough.

I’m also huge into FF Adventure. I didn’t know there was a sequel, so I’ll have to check that out sometime.

[Rudie]

@hellojed

I’m also huge into FF Adventure. I didn’t know there was a sequel, so I’ll have to check that out sometime.

Are you talking about Secret of Mana or?

[hellojed]

this thing

I think I got it mixed up with “Legends” oops

[Rudie]

I meant “has a sequel”. There are two remakes for GBA and strangely like Playstation Mobile?

[daphaknee]

yeah adventure was secret of mana 1 and final fantasy legend 2 was saga 2. green box blue box Gameboy final fantasy

[MintyJuffowup]

The pacing of Bell Frog is so good. I especially like how the plot just strings you along.

[VastleCania]

Game boy games with release dates

I took the wikipedia list of game boy and game boy color games and converted it to a sheet specifically so I could add a column showing the earliest release date. Took about an hour.

This is literally so I could play all the game boy golf games in chronological order. Here’s hoping they all have Golf in the title

EDIT: Oh and anything that was released on “12/31” was very likely just listed with a year and no date, so I just put it at the end of the year (since i’m trying to find the earliest games). But that’s not the real date.

EDIT EDIT: Ideally I would eventually fill out a “Genre” column and I think this would be the best possible list for both systems, but that’s not gonna happen today. That’s a lot of data entry and research…

[MintyJuffowup]

Love to all virtual golfers out there. Everybody loves golf.

[Alyx]

@VastleCania

Golf in the title

There are a few with PGA in the title instead.

[hellojed]

Cave Noire is pretty good, if simple. Very few words describing anything happening in the game, not sure how one levels up or gets gear, but it’s pretty charming.

[hellojed]

I finished The Frog for whom the Frog Frogs. It’s wormed it’s way into my top ten games of all time ™. More games need an ending screen like this where it just goes “The End” and all you can do is shut the console off.

[VastleCania]

Ah fuck

[VastleCania]

I have officially played every golf game I could discover on both the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Writeup incoming tomorrow, probably, maybe.

[Alyx]

Played a little further in Kid Dracula

Mixed impressions.

wasn’t really feeling it. Maybe this isn’t for me?
This complaint could probably be put to a lot of old games but, it doesn’t feel like the game expects you to react.
It feels like you are expected to die the first time and then just remember how to not die for future attempts.

I might still play more. I do love the look of it.
The Jason boss was great. Especially when he busts through the door and retrieves his stuck axe.

[VastleCania]

As promised, in chronological-ish order, every golf game (that I could find) on the GB and GBC:

Game Boy

Golf - 11/28/1989

This is a port of the NES golf game, I believe. It’s pretty good! I have no problems with it at all, although it is (unsurprisingly) fairly by-the-numbers. But given that most of the upcoming golf games continued to use the two-input meter system that this game originated (i think), it’s a pretty remarkable achievement.

Also considering how bad some of the later games would get, that this game is even playable is also pretty remarkable. It’s not bad!!

Many of the later quality of life features are missing though, such as automatic club selection, on-screen information about how far each club will hit, the ability to purposefully put spin on the ball, etc.

It’s so dang cute though!!

Mini-Putt - 4/26/1991

Oof. This is one of just a few mini-golf games we’re going to be playing and boy howdy is it abysmal. It’s ugly as sin, first of all.

It also contains some of the cruelest mini-golf courses I’ve ever seen? And the par is always something like “2” and then I end up taking 25 shots to get in? Also you can hit this ball with enough force to send it rocketing around the course for upwards of 20 seconds.

Like, it’s not horrible I guess but I would 100% not recommend ever playing it, my god.

Konami Golf/Ultra Golf - 11/1/1991

Maybe my favorite golf game on the GB!! It’s the most mechanically rich so far and very few games were able to top how nice and snappy it feels. Also there’s a little man in the meter!!

Aesthetically it’s alright, which is a far cry above some of the later games. It’s just a really solid game that feels good to play - few bells and whistles, just Golf.

I got one birdie:

Namco Classic - 12/3/1991

This was actually one of the last games I played - it doesn’t have Golf, PGA, putt, swing, or any other golf-related word in the title so it was hard to find. I also failed to get the title screen, whoops.

Anyway, it’s pretty good! Unusually the courses are laid out left to right instead of bottom to top, but other than that it’s pretty run-of-the-mill. The caddy that follows you around is cute though:

Jack Nicklaus Golf - 5/1/1992

Fuck this game!! I hate Jack Nicklaus!! He’s the oldest man to ever win the masters…and it shows!!!

Anyway the game is ugly as fuck and impossibly slow. It plays from a “3D” perspective that is “rendered” in “real-time”, but by “real-time” I mean “column by column over the course of 5 seconds”. So every time you turn, it takes 5 seconds to re-render the screen. And every time you hit the ball it takes 5 seconds to load your next shot.

And it looks like this:

And sometimes like this:

Imagine waiting 5 seconds for that to load!! Bad game, plays like shit, delete it from my brain please.

Sports Illustrated: Golf Classic - ??/??/1993

The first of three games developed by Unexpected Developments. All three of these games have music by John C. Loose who, as far as I can tell, is not a musician.

This is the first game with a non-standard input for hitting the ball! That little character in the lower right is all you get.

The trick is to hold A until her club is parallel to the ground, then release A, then tap A again right before the club hits the ball.

It’s a great idea but in practice it kind of sucks. The good thing about the normal input is that you get feedback - usually it leaves a little mark on the meter where you hit the button. You can correct for that later.

This doesn’t give you any feedback except The Ball Went Somewhere Fucked Up. It’s unclear if I released early or late, or tapped early or late. Just gotta…feel it out I guess?

I got okay at it though!

But it was pretty miserable to play so I quit at 9 holes.

The Simpsons: Itchy & Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness - 11/1/1994

I love mini golf and I love the simpsons and y’know what? I don’t love this game! But it’s actually pretty interesting and weird!! I respect it.

First of all, this is not really a minigolf game. See:

This is a platformer. But you also have to bring a ball with you. I think this makes it a puzzle platformer.

It’s alright! Play as Scratchy while Itchy tried to constantly murder you using such fun weapons as:

• A chainsaw
• A baseball bat
• Thrown knives
• Circular saw blades
• Fucking grenades

And turn the tables with powerups. Cut his fucking head off!!

The mini-golf portion is kind of interesting since you have to stop and hit the ball, leaving you vulnerable. There are also some cute puzzles and…yeah, it’s fine! A nice break from Capital G Golf.

Maybe the best simpsons game until hit and run??

PGA European Tour - 4/1/1995

We’re back in Unexpected Developments town and lemme tell ya, John C Loose is fully on his bullshit here. This has some of the weirdest, bleepiest bloopiest melody-free music I’ve heard on the game boy. And I have listened to hundreds and hundreds of game boy songs.

Tellingly, the start button is dedicated entirely to turning the music on and off. Mostly off in my case.

Also this guy wants to see your feet!!! (okay not really he’s just standing there)

Anyway, they’ve removed the odd input from SI Golf Classic and replaced it with a pretty standard two-tap meter input. I played all 18 holes in this because it is exactly middle-of-the-road. It does nothing wrong but nothing right. It’s maybe a touch too generous on putting. It has really well-rendered and animated slacks

I would say it is the most Dad-core golf game on this list. It’s here to make dads feel good about getting a game boy, and to make them feel better at golf than they really are.

PGA Tour 96 - 11/1/1995

THIS IS THE SAME GAME WITH DIFFERENT COURSES AND NOW THE GUY HAS A HAT. I got so mad when I saw this (and heard the (NEW) abysmal music) that I turned it off before getting any other screenshots.

I REFUSE

Pocket Golf - 9/25/1998

Weirdly I don’t remember playing this game at all. I was probably very tired. It looks…fine?

More style than half these games. We’ll say it was good and move on.

I recommend at least opening all of these to look at the pictures. I’m gonna split GBC into a new post because this is getting unwieldy to edit.

EDIT: I accidentally smashed Pocket Golf into PGA tour 96. It did not deserve that.

[VastleCania]

Game Boy Color

Hole in One Golf - 4/23/1999 - if you read only one, READ THIS ONE

Easily the weirdest game on the list!!! It’s a very straightforward golf game most of the time. The music is really really nice, but every time the screen does…anything, the music restarts, Considering how often you change modes in games like this, it’s pretty unbearable.

Like, for example, the following actions will all reset the music:

• Setting your target
• Picking a club
• Hitting the ball
• The ball lands anywhere
• Getting near the green
• Getting near the hole
• Triggering a special event

So that’s a minimum of four resets per stroke, and a maximum of eight!! Effectively you only hear the first 5 seconds of any song in this game repeated over and over and uneven intervals. It’s awful.

It looks great though! Like, maybe my favorite game aesthetically, including the weirdo golf bandit your player is.

Also if you were reading closely, you might be waiting for the other shoe to drop. “What’s a special event in golf?” you ask yourself quietly.

Well, you see those 4 white signs? If you land in the square outlined by those then…something happens. And by something, I mean a furry or some elemental shows up and moves your ball.

For example, that zone triggers WROTH

Who smacks the ball to the right

Here are all the other characters I saw:

Uniformly they just show up and kinda thwack the ball to the right, for better or worse. Sometimes they miss the ball entirely!!

Otherwise it’s pretty unremarkable?? If it weren’t for the music issue (which is un-fucking-bearable) this might be my favorite game on this list.

Golf Ou: The King of Golf - 7/16/1999

Holy shit this game is cute!! The palette choices here are beautifully pastel. I wonder how hard it would be to read on a non-backlit screen, but I love it in 2022.

It’s also the second game on this list that goes for a “fully rendered 3D” feeling for the entire game, unlike most which just do it for driving. And this time it works! It’s extremely snappy, the ball arc is readable, and it provides lots of information if you want it to:

Not pictured is hitting Select twice, which gives you a grid in 60m increments to show you distance. It’s really thoughtfully designed!!

The downside to this is that all of the courses are basically straight lines. The game is designed fully around the fact that you can’t turn, so there’s not much in the way of course design other than Obstacles In Front Of You. But honestly, it’s not that big of a deal - this is a really nice game to play, and a nice game to look at!!

Since the golfing is so snappy it’s also short, relatively speaking, which is nice. One of the things about Golf Video Games is that every second of waiting or loading is just going to extend an already-long game.

I would recommend playing this…except!! there’s a better version. Which isn’t in this post. It’s a bonus for the next post.

Mario Golf - 8/10/1999

This is, ironically, everything I don’t want in a golf game. I either want the game to be a nice-to-look-at but otherwise austere game Just About Golfing, or I want it to be absolutely bizarre and basically nothing like golf. This manages to do neither well by being a Golf RPG (i.e. talking, leveling up, etc.) without any real gimmicks.

It looks great though! The closest visual reference I can think of is the Game And Watch Gallery games on the GBC: Nintendo aesthetics filtered through a third part who is slightly less interested in keeping things on model. Check out the scorecard:

I love love love the little shy guy and koopa shell just hanging out on top of this. Another highlight is the vaguely sinister underground theme remix for Putting For Birdie:

Mario Golf GBC - Birdie Putt - YouTube

The golfing in this is maybe the best looking pseudo-3D golf on the system as well:

It’s not as aesthetically united as Golf Ou but it looks good and plays snappily! There’s nothing wrong with this game.

But it’s just not for me, unfortunately! I just want to sit down and play 9-18 holes with no bullshit. Or a tremendous amount of bullshit. Either way.

Golf Daisuki - 10/29/1999

I keep missing the title screens for these. Anyway, this game is pretty decent! I guess the power of the Game Boy Color really enabled these kinds of “3D” games.

This is the first game with exciting camera angles, which is cool. Every drive shows the ball coming towards the camera at an angle, much like watching it on TV. It’s nice!!

It also has really cute cutscreens for various windfalls or calamities that might befall one in the game of golf

I thought this game was just fine. No complaints from me, but nothing special either. Just a pretty good, cute golf game!

Also a real contender for Best Example Of The Game Boy Color Aesthetic, along with Golf Ou

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 - ??/??/1999

Jack Nicklaus was the oldest man to win the masters, and Tiger Woods the youngest. And they both had fucking abysmal games on a Game Boy system.

This starts promisingly. That’s a nice opening screen! It’s all downhill from there.

The holes themselves, at least on this course, were all reaaaallly drab. But also: look how much screen space the interface takes up!! And…are those 7, separate, unlabeled buttons?? Yes they are!!

This game, despite using the same 2-tap meter system every other golf game on the planet uses, plays like dogshit. For instance, your target will automatically be set fairly intelligently, but if it’s too far away you can’t see it. So if you want to set it yourself, you have to move over to the

checks notes

fifth button, counting from the left, and hit A. However, this resets your target to right next to your golfer, so you gotta move it back out there. God forbid you decide to do this again - it always resets your target.

Then if you want to switch clubs, you go “down” to the 7th button and hit A or B until you get to the club you like. You can also hit down to change the maximum strength of the meter to like, 7 different levels per club. I’m not sure how much anyone cares about setting that to 148 meters versus 161 meters versus 184 meters etc.

Finally, when you’re ready to take your shot, you go all the way back to the second button (not the first, that’s for setting spin, which is extremely fiddly) and start the meter with A.

It’s such a pain in the ass that I just ended up letting it tell me where to go, which was usually a mistake.

Also: there’s no music, which is a mixed blessing to be sure.

It’s just so fucking boring and awful to play!! I got really mad at this game. But also, if you hit the ball real good, you get this screen:

So it’s impossible to say if it’s good or bad.

CyberTiger - 1/1/2000

NOW THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT this game is wacky as hell.

This is a golf game for children, which is ideal. It has all sorts of fucked up modes and you can play IN A VOLCANO.

The mode I played had powerups, such as:

• Make the opponent’s ball drunk
• Make their ball explode
• Make a tornado appear and suck their ball in a weird direction
• Others I didn’t bother to pick up

In practice it’s mostly irritating but I love the concept.

I suspect most of my irritation came from playing against a computer. If a person was doing this to me I would be mad, but in a fun way.

The golf itself is pretty good too! It’s hard to tell with all the dumb shit happening but I enjoyed it pretty well.

Also you can set the computer to play as “C TIGER” who is apparently like, tiger woods but a terminator and has 3x higher stats than you do. So that’s funny.

I dunno, this game is dumb! I liked it!

Mobile Golf - 5/11/2001

Holy shit it’s Mario Golf 2!! I’m not even joking, this is a golf RPG by Camelot featuring the exact same mechanics of Mario Golf on GBC, except starring no nintendo characters. And this gal.

I have all the same problems with it as I did Mario Golf but somehow playing as this gal made it much better to me??? gay problems i guess

The story behind this is that the GBC had a mobile adapter allowing for online play and DLC, famously used for Pokemon Crystal, and…this is a golf game that used that adapter? I guess that’s not much of a story.

But it’s a full-ass game!

And guess what? It got a full translation + hacks to make all the online content available offline in September of 2021!!

Romhacking.net - Translations - Mobile Golf

So yeah I’m much more enthusiastic about this game simply because it’s weird. That’s all it takes for me, I guess.

I have one more bonus game in the tank for the final post, but I wanna split that one out (partially to bump the thread because this is an edit not a new post)

[VastleCania]

BONUS!!

SuperShot Golf Robot

This is Golf Ou, but in English!! Also, it’s unreleased, and also also the translation is EXTREMELY FUCKED UP

In this version, the world has been overrun by…golf robots…who turn people in to golf slaves?? their words not mine. and your goal is to prove human superiority by…golfing good???

One running theme is that your caddie was forced into her haircut by the robot overlords. It comes up over and over again:

The training regimen is truly horrific

And if you do finally decide to go to training, the robot HATES YOUR GUTS

Lots of threats.

I can’t emphasize how over-the-top this is. It’s incredible.

Anyway I recommend this over Golf Ou unless you want a relaxing experience. It’s really, really good and stupid and weird.

You absolutely have to read the above, I only summarized it because I included too many incredible screenshots.

Honorable Mention

BUGGY_TROLL_MINI_GOLF

Homebrew mini golf game with one course that repeats infinitely and no sound or music. The first hill is almost impossible except from 1 or 2 angles. The end.

Conclusion:

I wanted to answer the question of “What do you get when you remove the best part of golf (which is being outdoors in a nice environment)” and the answer to me was “some fairly unimaginative games and a couple of bangers”.

But what really is the appeal of golf in a video game? Is it the math? Not for me - Tiger Woods had a lot of math and I hated that. Is it the environment? That’s a huge part of it - I obviously went for the GBC games just for the atmosphere alone. Is it the physicality of watching a ball go wheeeee through the air? Honestly…that might be most of it. If you can give me a good WHEEE i’ll probably like your game.

My conclusion after all of this is that golf games are, for the most part, monumentally boring. Which is part of my attraction to them! I love boring shit, and I love people who love boring shit.

---

That’s it!! Thank you for joining me on this journey. I had a great time streaming most this in @HOBO 's discord.

I might play more golf games but I’ll make a separate thread if I do.

[hellojed]

I gotta play Supershot Golf robot. these are some excellent golf games. well done.

I did play a lot of Mario Tennis for the GB and I also remember the RPG academy stuff to be kind of too much at the time. I don’t remember finishing it because it just took for freakin ever, and the matches took for freakin ever.

If you ever do tennis GB games, Snoopy Tennis is apparently an accident of someone having a really good tennis game made, and someone with the snoopy IP, both coming together to make something really good that doesn’t make sense.