Virtual Boy Ranked - Game #12

Wow! Lame robot! 3D Tetris finally has competition, and its name is SD Gundam: Dimension War. So, OK, first I need to establish something: I am not familliar with Gundam, all I know is that it's like Japanese Transformers, but with anti-war messages instead of the weird anti-Middle Eastern messages that made Shaggy quit? This is kinda the sort of thing you should expect going into an "every single..." project, but anyway. Let's talk the game.

SD Gundam: Dimension War is a tactical turn-based strategy game, you move across a board, ambush opponents, and then fight them in shmup battles. This is a great idea to work off of! but in execution, both the board and shooting are just plain bad.

I'll start with the shooting, because this is a bit easier to describe. There's a good idea to this shooting: you use the second D-pad to swap weapons, this is a cool idea! The weapons are mostly fine - gattling shot, big shot, biggest horizontally-shapped shot, and for some reason you have a sword, which is completely useless, I guess it was just in the show so they needed to keep it here. I dunno. You start at a fixed perspective, player in the front and opponent in the back, once enough damage has been done, you then move and now have to fight on multiple planes swapping - this is very obnoxious, CPUs are happy to just run away and get basically no penalty. The spaceships are the worst part of this though, there is no way a robot will be able to defeat a spaceship, at all, the spaceship always wins because it has so much HP and can shoot so many lasers.

Now the board is something else - you can move up to 4 steps, when you land on someone you can go to the shooting minigame, the spaceships can only move vertically or horizontally at once, there are meteors that cannot be passed through. There's no real telegraphing as to where you can go, and there's nothing to do on the board except just go to foes - there's no reason for the meteors because there's no projectiles to hide away from, at most they might prevent your opponent from getting to you too soon because of their maximum steps, the only effect the shooting game has is killing robots, nothing you do there applies to the board (I mean, you can't really do anything there except shoot and slash, but still) - the robots don't even appear to have unique abilities outside of the shooting, if they even have that, some fly, but that just makes them inaccessible for all robots except other flying robots, thus just giving the game less depth. Shooting as Gundam, the main protag, felt the same as shooting as any other robot. Speaking of robot distinction, that is another major problem here - if you have not ever watched Gundam, the game does nothing to tell you which robots are good and which are bad, at the start of a game you'll need to just randomly click around the board until you get a robot you can use.

The music sounds like... do you remember those YouTube videos from the late 00s that were like "Super Smash Bros. Melee Theme, 8-Bit Style?" and it sounds nothing like any 8-bit platform and more like a chorus of cartoon robots? Like, every instrument is just a soft beep instead of having drums or such? Yeah, that's this game's soundtrack.

I wouldn't say it's as bad as 3D Tetris, but it is absolutely only worthy of one star.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #11

Everything I've been through with the VB up to this point was worth it. I had a massive smile on my face while playing this, it is such a great Star Fox-style rail shooter, with a lot fun little details. (I love how you can destroy unboarded ships and mechas to prevent the enemy army from boarding them)

The controls work really well, you can customise directional movement, you can slow down or speed up with a button, shooting feels good, and there's a sort of air dash (there's probably a better term for this on-rail shooter fans would know) to dodge bullets.

The graphics are unexpectedly great - I might not be getting the full picture since the emulator I used makes VB games grey-ish purple and not red, but I never had any problem with identifying what is good and bad, identifying what's a wall and what's a gap, so on. The biggest problem is draw distance, but even then everything renders in time for you to react

In terms of negatives: there are no bombs or alternate weapons as far as I could tell, which is a shame, perhaps they show up later, I dunno - also, the sound design is a bit funky, I get why they made it so that rapid-shooting doesn't make a sound (assuming it is intentional and not an oversight), but it makes shooting feel a little soft.

My biggest gripe is the boss fight, as I've said before, I'm not completing these games, only giving my first impressions after 1 or 2 levels so perhaps the later boss fights are better. This boss is fought in a very open level, which the ship clearly isn't meant to steer in, and the draw distance cannot support. There is no radar to see where the boss AFAIK, so you will be bombarded with lasers from behind.

Also, yeah, I dunno what's up with the Virtual Boy product placement on the corner of the screen lmao.

Virtual Boy complete - Game #11

I have only a very passing familiarity with the "Faceball" or "MIDI Maze" franchise, as far as I can tell, it's a very historically significant FPS that was built around the concept of having 16 players. The VB doesn't have multiplayer, so this game has to be judged off of its single player offerings... the single player offerings are bad.

The stages are very big and seem to have been made with 16 player gameplay in mind, however, in single player, you are set to take down 2 to 4 enemies in a time limit, which instead makes it seem like a barren maze.

There doesn't seem to be a visible life bar, and outside of the minimap there's no real way of telling how many enemies are left. There's a box with circles in it on the top left of the HUD, but I never saw it deplete. A lot of the enemies do not actively pursue you and instead just stay stuck in a small box they refuse to escape from. Often times I struggled to enter these boxes because of the destructible wall system, looking for the right walls to destroy, and ended up being timed-out.

The 3D effects are impressive, but this is a bit of a burden towards the game - far-off walls are shaded, but destructible walls flash - because the VB only has 2 colours, it's very common for walls to look destructable from a distance.

The only varied enemy type I found was invisible, but even then the reticle still locked-on to them.

That being said, for the positives, movement is fast enough and wall-bumping was minimal and unpunished; the aforementioned 3D effects are ultimately impressive regardless of their effect on gameplay; there are good options provided for locating smilies through the radar and mini-map; and shooting smilies feels very statisfying. I did have a tiny bit of fun in the first few levels, but once the levels started getting more maze-like, my enjoyment dropped.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #10

Just like with Golf, I feel like I'm at a bit of a hard place to talk about this game because I don't have much experience with bowling - Golf made me interested in golf, it was a fun title that made me want to learn more about the sport and its game adaptations. Mario's Tennis was a boring game I felt nothing towards that luckily was based on a sport I've already enjoyed video games of. Nester's Funky Bowling, on the other hand, is in a sort of middle zone leaning a little more towards the Mario's Tennis side of things. It doesn't make me interested in bowling, but I at least felt kinda engaged? The bowling mechanics are good enough, find a spot; stop; and then roll at the right point, I couldn't see anything wrong with it, it's just kinda of a boring bowling game. The challenge mode, which I assume isn't original by any means, but is a bit more interesting, as you're given a patterns of pins and have to take it down with a single ball. It really just feels like a minigame rather than a fully fledged thing, that would be fun for 5 minutes or so, there aren't any alternate ball weights as far as I could tell, nor were there different terrain floors.

My real gripe with Nester's Funky Bowling, really, is the hook of the game: Nester himself. Nester has the bad attitude you'd expect from a kid who hangs out with a fictionalised version of a monopolistic 80s video game CEO - anything short of a strike will set him off. Two pins left? Throws a temper tantrum with a 90s CGI pre-rendered uvula shot. One pin left? Mocks you by undergoing rapid tissue necrosis. It's on-character for the comics, where Nester is a bit of a show-off and constantly having Garfield thought bubbles mocking people, basically serving as a foil that Howard accidentally upstages with his honesty, but there's only like 8 animations after a roll and 6 of them are negative, with one positive for taking down all the pins in a second roll and one positive for a strike - Nester himself doesn't even appear in the strike animation! I don't mind game characters being bad sports, in fact I prefer it if anything, but it just comes off as frustrating when absolutely NOTHING can please this lil' brat, and the things that could turn him from sore-loser to sore-winner you don't even see the reactions to.

Yet, I do think the novelty of Nester showing up in a game for once does place it a bit above Mario's Tennis, given how historically disconnected Nintendo's multimedia extensions and advertising have been from their games compared to other companies. Nester actually gets referenced a bit in US-exclusive Nintendo games, but not counting Lark (a character from Pilotwings 64 who is essentially just Nester with a different name), he's only shown up in a physical form here. I guess on a tangent unrelated to the game, the cartoon character of Howard has had a similar "felt-but-not-seen" impact to the real world Howard Lincoln on modern Nintendo, establishing the cult-of-personality that views corporate suits in the same light as fictional superheroes, and that's led to bad things, like Reggie's post-Nintendo misadventures in cryptocurrency and Twitter child harassment, so I do find there to be something a bit off about Nester through guilt-by-association - he's a fun character, but I can't say him being phased out of the Nintendo brand is too much of a shame, as funny as a Nester V-tuber hosting Nintendo Directs would be. Or maybe it's just the way his hairline is drawn, that might be what's off about Nester to me.

(I spent more time writing the tangent about parasocial relationships that has nothing to do with the game than the actual review. Virtual Boy Complete is not a serious academic review, in case you couldn't tell, it's all first impressions. Haven't done a tangent here before, and I'm not sure if any other VB games necessiate it - Waterworld maybe? But since Waterworld is last I'll probably want to prioritise summarising my feelings as a whole about the VB over Costner talk)

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #9

I feel nothing towards this title. It has less depth than a Cool Math Game. Only two shots despite the VB being twin-D-pad, and no multiplayer. Doubles is fine enough I guess? but singles feels barren. It's not "bad" per say, as much as it is a null void that it's impossible to feel positively or negatively towards, so I think I have to give it a really low score. Gets an extra half a star for 1. not being 3D Tetris, and 2. Yoshi serving with his tongue, which is cute.

I will say there's a fun novelty to a major, multi-generational Nintendo IP like Mario Tennis having its roots on VB, and I do like the outfits, glad they brought that back for Aces.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #8

Going into the VB Library, Mario Clash was an exciting game to get to - I loved the WarioWare microgame of this as a kid and I'm a big fan of the original Mario Bros and Donkey Kong Jr, but as I got into the library, a lot of the games I was excited for turned out to be duds (Jack Bros is mediocre, Innsmouth no Yakata is bad, and 3D Tetris is outright awful) so Mario Clash started to become intimidating and feared (not as much as Waterworld though lmao) - imagine my relief when it's really good! A standout title even!

Mario Clash is often billed as a sequel or spiritual successor to Mario Bros, but I'd have a hard time saying that - you have the same "pest control" objective and most of the enemies are back, but you're not jumping under platforms, instead the only way to kill enemies is with Koopa Troopas - Koopa Troopas can be stomped, no other enemies can, so you have to pick up the Koopa Troopas' shells and throw them into the other enemies - this has a 3D background/foreground effect with pipes of course, because Virtual Boy. Surprisingly, this foreground effect isn't a hollow gimmick, the game would not work as well without it! Chasing pests through pipes (or, most of the time given how enemies are designed here, being chased) is thrilling fun, and at times can feel like a Scooby-Doo door chase. The levels are well-done and navigatable while also being a little maze-like in spite of their small size. The throwing was a bit hard to figure out at first, when Mario faces the other layer, the shell is thrown from where he's holding it, not the center of Mario, but once you figure that out it's fine. There are slippery ice levels, but they work well, since you barely even slide

The enemy design, however, is imperfect. Mario character design typically tends to be done in a way that makes an enemy's function extremely clear, Buzzy Beetles are hard and shiny so you can't hit them with projectiles; Thwomps are big and heavy so they stomp you; so on, which isn't exactly true of Mario Clash - the pegasus Goombas must be hit from the other layer, but there's no real way of telling that because they don't have any front or back armour, only a mohawk; the Bullet Bill boxes have what appear to be detonators on top of them, but they kill you if you stomp on them, so on. The Sidesteppers (crabs) were the peskiest enemy to deal with, and might just take down Hammer Bro for the title of "worst-game-designed 2D Mario enemy" - as you have to hit one from the side - specifically the face - then it changes from profile to facing the front and you have to go into the other layer to hit it from there - this would be fine if tedious if it weren't for the fact that vulnerable enemies will lose their vulnerability if not hit quick enough. There are barely any enemies that you can just hit from the left or right unfortunately, and waiting for enemies to move to the other side can be a bit tedious if they're too close to a pipe and either make crossing impossible or non-useful. None of these enemies outright make the game bad, but I do have a drop a star (or half a star on Backloggd's review system) because of them, otherwise I'd be happy to give this game 8/10

Even though I did criticise the enemy design for most of this review, I do feel quite highly of this game! It's fun to play, just as statisfying to knock out enemies as the original Mario Bros, got a thrilling chase vibe to it, and makes good use of 3D! I think this is the first VB game (well, second after Wario Land, since I played that years ago) I've played where I actually want to go back to it someday and complete it, it's not perfect, but it's certainly a fun time and matches the 90s Mario standard. Hopefully if I go back to it, being able to go in knowing the enemies work will increase my opinion of it.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #7

The idea of the Virtual Boy within gaming culture has always been "Wario Land good. Jack Bros. good. Everything else bad." This is not true. I really tried to get into Jack Bros, but it ultimately fell flat and came off as forgettable. It's not without merit and I can see what stuck with people from it - the problems with this game are not in its foundation, it is in the levels and bosses themselves.

Jack Bros. is a top-down game, you go through a level collecting keys, attacking enemies with a single attack, pushing blocks, and jumping off of exits - your health is also the time limit, getting hit by enemies reduces your time (within the plot, you're a fairy who has entered the human realm and has to get home by Halloween). This is a Sokoban puzzle game setup, no way about it, the combat is too rudementary to really be a top-down action game (Jack Frost has a weak rapid projectile, Jack Lantern has a slow powerful projectile, and Jack Skeleton (no relation), who I played as, only has a dinky little knife), but Jack Bros. does not really have many puzzles - it's structured like an action game where most gameplay revolves around killing and twitch-dodging enemies while the puzzles are inserted infrequently to vary the gameplay loop. This makes a game that has a well-made engine just feel slow and clunky. I will say that in the main stages you do get enough timer collectables for the time limit-health system to not feel unfair - key word: the main stages. This segways into the bosses.

The bosses are probably the worst part of this game - they're not poorly designed really, they're kinda just bog standard top-down bosses with weak points and projectiles - the problem is, like the engine, everything else around it. Timer power-ups never show up on boss fights, even though - being at the end of the stage - that is where they are by far most needed. leading to many unfair deaths. Also of note: the star system, you can collect stars that do a screen wipe - but, because this is a puzzle game where every enemy goes down in one hit, it's virtually useless until you get to the bosses, where you will have collected multiple stars (you start with 3) and can basically get it down to a quarter of it's health for no effort... and even then still get cheated by the lack of timer power-ups.

The game is at its best when it's doing puzzles. There's a fun floor with multiple exits where you have to look under the stage to figure out where to drop, and one interesting puzzle involved destroying lasers, but these puzzles are very few.

The game has a fantastic soundtrack, but it starts all over whenever you progress a stage, so you barely get to hear the smooth VB tunes. The game also suffers from having a lot of madatory tutorial text. Luckily, these don't replay when you die and restart a stage, but not so luckily, there's no way to replay them either.

Ultimately, Jack Bros. is simply "meh", only really notable for being the first localised Shin Megami Tensei game, otherwise it doesn't really have much going for it even within the Virtual Boy lineup I've played so far. If the levels and bosses were designed with puzzles in mind, I would be able to call it a stand out, but they just kinda aren't.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #6

I was looking forward to this, a Virtual Boy horror game? Sounds like a match made in heaven (or hell, I guess. Horror and all) - unfortunately, the only scary thing about this game is the RNG. It's essentially a psuedo-3D maze game, think 3D Monster Maze, with a bit of FPS thrown in - you're in a big mansion filled with doors, and have to collects bullets, keys, and orbs. Bullets are well, bullets; keys are well, keys; and orbs show you areas on the pause map. As I mentioned earlier, these are placed with RNG. The bullet system works as it should (though I'll get to my thoughts on the shooting controls and monsters later), but the keys and orbs are both handled a bit poorly.

The keys open locked doors, as a key should - the thing is, locked doors have no visual signifiers. Just a random door from the stage gets labeled as "the locked door", so you can't enter without a key, and entering it with a key clears the level. This is fine when you've got an orb, but the problem is that often times they'll appear early into a floor, so you'll either clear a stage very quickly, or you'll find it without an orb or key, and then have no way of knowing which way to go back when you have the key, and waste the very short time you have trying to pick up an orb you really wouldn't need if the game was designed a slight bit better - not helped at all by the fact that none of the rooms in this game are distinct from one another, so backtracking without an orb is absolutely impossible.

This is a twin-stick shooter, but has no real reason to be. The corridors are cramped and the monsters are big, so there's only really two areas of the screen you'll need to shoot, and they don't attack frequently enough to where there's much reason to keep distance.

Another thing I mentioned going into this, and probably the most damning flaw, is: the game's not scary! The enemy designs don't feel intimidating, you can hear their footsteps even when they're not nearby, they're completely silent once they approach, and they're all just too frequent and easily disposed of to really take you by surprise. There's a lot of potential for horror settings on the VB, with its bizarre blood-red-on-a-night-sky colours, but as mentioned eariler, it's just the same hotel room over and over. If you could get through an identical hotel floor on stage 1, it's not too hard to believe you could get through the same hotel floor on stage 4.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #5

I don't know what makes a golf game good, this is really my first serious experience with straight-forward golf, buuut - it's fun! The physics work, and while the putting is hard to figure out at first, it makes sense once it clicks. I love psuedo-3D graphics, and this game has that. Biggest problem is, unsurprisingly for a VB game, depth. I often had to close one eye when positioning my ball to make extra sure that the arrow is in the right place - this was only really an issue with the arrow though, in all other parts of the game I understood the 3D plane very well. The sound effects are very nice, there's a fake crowd which is appreciated in any sport game.

There's really not much to say about this. It does what it's trying to do and lacks notable flaws, so it's the best VB title thus far. (until I get to Wario Land, I've played that one before, I know it's gonna be 9 or 10 stars) I have a feeling I'd be more harsh on it if I had more golf experience though. Does make me want to get into golf games more however.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #4

There are echoes of a great pinball game in Galactic Pinball, the physics are fantastic, and I had no problems getting the puck where it needs to go, even without using the tilt (which is there, mind you). The game feels a bit less gimmicky than Nintendo's IP-based pinball offerings (even if a bit more so than something like generic NES Pinball or Revenge of the 'Gator), which is welcome to me at least.

So, why is it only getting 5 out of 10 stars? Simple: the boards. The boards are barren and deserted, most of them are just empty space with a single gimmick either in the middle or to the left, and maybe something at the top - the most populated is the Colony board, which is also the most fun (even if it still doesn't feel as zippy and bumpy as a 3D pinball game should be), if every board was fun as the Colony, this would be a 7/10, but even that suffers from having a meteor-shooting minigame with strange controls, where it's basically impossible to time the shooting right.

Good soundtrack though, as to be expected from the red menace.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #3

I went into Bound High expecting a game on par with VB Wario Land, as it's always been known as "the mythical cancelled game that could've saved the Virtual Boy". This was not a good way to go into Bound High, and for the first few minutes, I was very much put off - but once I put myself into the right mindset, of a score attack game and not an unconventional Jumping Flash-style psuedo 3D platformer, it clicked!

You play as this little Bakugan fella who uncontrollably bounds-bounds-bounds-and-rebounds off of evaporating blocks, and has to push enemies off of the blocks he evaporates Motos-style, at the expense of having less room to land - the controls work really well, I never really had any issue landing on the right blocks or enemies, and I found the idea decently easy to figure out.

It's a good concept and decently executed, but not addictive as it should be, landing on enemies feels fine, and the chain reactions are fun, but the visuals and sounds should have more oomph, landing on a destructible enemy makes a dinky little "blip" sound instead of a destructive pound, and while the sound of a falling enemy is clearly meant to evoke the cartoon slide-whistle, it's extremely short and finishes by the time you can even process that they're falling. I don't know if this would've been fixed should the game have released. You can collect power-ups, but I couldn't really tell what any of them did, either in practice or in visuals (with the exception of the freeze power up). Quite egregiously, there's one power-up which makes your character fat, but it doesn't increase the size of their hitbox.

I only got to world 2 in the regular story mode, and had to stop due to a pretty awful wind gimmick - however, I did play the endless random mode, which appears to remove said gimmick from World 2 stages, and I assume would remove any other gimmicks, so it's all good. There's also a golf mode, but it's very clunky and unintuitive, as much as "optional sports mode" is appreciated in any game (NASB1 lover here).

I had no issues with the motion, something I did have with 3D Tetris, but can absolutely understand why it'd be a concern for some.

Would it have saved the Virtual Boy? No, absolutely not. It would've worked just fine as a Mode 7 SNES game, in fact you could've probably gotten this gameplay loop working on the Mega Drive, and ironically gets more good 3D use out of its intro cutscene than the actual gameplay.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #2

Accidentally played this game second, when I was attempting to go in alphabetical order. Anyway, I'm very surprised by the praise for this game, it's certainly compotent, no denying that, the music is great and the art and character design are as good as to be expected from a Bomberman game (not titled "Act Zero" or "Bombergirl"), but the gameplay just doesn't stack up (NPI) for me. It feels very akin to Pac-Attack, a game I already consider to be a bit of a low-tier block-stacker - you have to create a row of bomb blocks, then plant a lit fuse bomb when it appears - the lit bomb will explode in the classic Bomberman plus shape, expanding for every bomb it hits, destroying all blocks. I think falling block games where it entirely revolves around waiting for one specific block are very tedious (with the exception of Yoshi, that one's good, but it could just be nostalgia speaking since I played that as a kid), and Panic Bomber's bomb system seems to be a bit weird. Maybe I just didn't play it enough to properly figure it out, but it felt like the radious of each bomb was based on RNG, as sometimes lighting a bomb away 2 blocks away from another would light them both, while other times the explosion wouldn't go far enough - there are giant bombs, I didn't figure out the cause of these, but they erase a big chunk of the screen - it's very hard to tell when one is coming up, I believe you're supposed to watch the HUD signifier expand, but that isn't as intuitive as a bar or a number-of-turns - another problem with the big bombs is that they make the same sound effect as a stage clear - sometimes it seems like your opponent has lost, but they actually just got a giant bomb, and you're suddenly blindsided by garbage blocks and a power-down. Speaking of which, power-downs such as super-speed and control reversing do exist, and are a welcome hurdle on paper, but barely ever appear unless you're fighting bosses, which are completely unlabled beyond being the 3rd in each world (and uh, I guess looking more humanoid? That seems to be the shared theme?), where they are bombarded on you non-stop, creating a case of polar extremes. Unlike 3D Tetris at least, I can tell what's going on on a basic level.

I may have been biased here as I only had the title in the ROM list to go off of, and expected a regular Bomberman game. Perhaps if I went in knowing what it is, I'd enjoy it more.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #1

God, this is a TERRIBLE start. Too bad to be mediocre, but not interesting enough to be a fascinating kusoge. If you've ever played It's Mr. Pants (an actual good game), imagine that but the blocks stack up instead of overwriting one another. The game has a nauseating "90s 3D for the sake of 3D" camera that can often cause confusion (sometimes the camera will pan down in a way that makes an empty row look like a wall), annd would be outright unplayable if they didn't have a 2D version of the game screen on the HUD. Outside of the puzzle mode, which is probably the best use the game gets of its very poor foundation (not that that's saying much, it's still confusing and cryptic), all of the blocks are just straight lines. Unlike the real Tetris, where every problem, no matter how seemingly hopeless, has some sort of solution at any point, every problem you run into here can be solved with a simple "wait for a 1-segment block", giving a double whammy of fustration with an unstatisfying solution - there's never a chance to use the old grey matter, it's obvious solutions where you have to exhaust a bunch of useless tools before getting them, creating new problems with the same obvious solution. Ironically, the game feels less dimensional than 2D Tetris - in Tetris, there is reason to actively let blocks stack up and risk losing (the most obvious reason being to get a combo or Tetris), but here, having blocks on top of other blocks is inherently a burden, since all the blocks are flat and there is virtually no creative ways for them to interact. Additionally, you have to wait until a current block is halfway down to see the next block, so even if the game had blocks that could be used creatively, you wouldn't really be able to use them as such.

I'm surprised Tetris Attack was the game that made Henk Rogers want to pull the plug with Nintendo and not this, as it has far less resemblance to Tetris than Yoshi/Pikachu/Isabelle/Lip/e.t.c's adventures, and - compared to Tetris Attack - it's much less honest about what it is (see: the box art showing 3-dimensional tetrominos and not flat rectangles, Tetris Attack's box art shows a wall of squares like in the game it's promoting).

Hopefully, V-Tetris will fare better.