RF Generation Message Board

UPDATE: Super Mario Land review is online!
http://gameboyguru.blogspot.com/2015/04/super-mario-land-1989.html

As you can maybe tell by my updated avatar and signature, I'm embarking on a new journey, where I will attempt to collect, play, and review every North American released Game Boy game.  Once I'm done with the GB library, I'll move into GBC, and then eventually to GBA.  I figured this might be of interest to some of the retro collectors and fans here, and since there's not another specific sub-forum for shameless self-promotion, I thought I might as well put this here.  I've got a blog started already, with a small write-up detailing my history with the Game Boy, and 2 reviews I've already put up.  I'll probably use this topic to give updates as to my progress.  I'd appreciate some feedback as well; my reviews tend to be long-winded, so if they're too "windy", or not concise enough, let me know.

MODS: if this is inappropriate here, feel free to move this topic to whichever forum or sub-forum it WOULD be appropriate in.  I have no desire to cause issues here, as I'm still a relatively new member, and only wish for this to be a place I can engage others in to help me make the sites better - both mine, and this site through various discussion.

In any event, here's the link to the new site: http://gameboyguru.blogspot.com
In case anyone cares, I have companion Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr accounts for this project as well  ;D

Feel free to post your blogs here as well - there are many of us who would be interested, and cross-posting it may help you generate some activity as well.

I would suggest contacting Waynepe. He's a member here who's well into a full set for Game Boy and other handhelds, and has a lot of knowledge that I'm sure would be helpful. Also, I'm not sure if you care about them, but there are a lot of Publisher variants for Game Boy - we don't even have anywhere near all of them documented. I don't think gameplay changed in most of them, so they shouldn't affect your playthrough and review portion. I *think* ryanflucas collects Game Boy as well, but he's not been active on the forums for a long time.

Waynepe is a great guy. Give him a chat if needed.

Best of luck on the project. A Game Boy series sounds great to me!

Thanks to both of you.  I've reached out to Waynepe via PM, hopefully he'll get back to me.  I'll consider cross-posting the entries to a blog here as well.

Well, if you have a couple hundred years to spare, you just might pull this off.  ;)

BTW if you have any foreign versions of GB/GBC/GBA games in your collection, one feature you could incorporate into your blog series is a comparison between the foreign and North American versions. You could compare cosmetics (label and box art) as well as gameplay, if such differences are significant.

@Zagnorch - actually, that comparison part was going to be an occasional feature, as I've just picked up 3 import titles.  I have both the North American and the Japanese versions of Kirby's Pinball Land and Mega Man 2, as well the Japanese game Outburst, which was apparently localized as Raging Fighter, so once I pick that one up, I'll be able to do that comparison as well.  The interesting thing is, Outburst is almost entirely in English, so it looks as though the changes could be very minimal.

Love the avatar, btw.  Weird Al RULES.

And yes, I know it will take some time to go through the list, but I think it will be fun.  I missed out on so much of the GB library the first time around, and though I know a fair percentage of it will be shovelware, it will be interesting to go back, especially since we're 25 years out (I feel old) from a lot of the pinnacle titles for the system.  Some of those games still hold up, some of them will likely only be enjoyable with the right nostalgia goggles on, and some of them will just be wretched.  But that will be part of the fun - digging through the entire catalog and learning the system's strengths and weaknesses through its large cache of games.

Pretty cool - I'll check out your blog and hopefully give some feedback soon. ^_^

Good luck on your adventure!

Thanks! Any feedback will be greatly appreciated, as I want to make the site as informative as possible, without it being boring.

I think I have a new favorite blog. I'm less then 10 titles shy of a complete North American release set. Looks great so far!

Thanks!  I saw your comment on the initial post this morning, thanks for that.  I'd be curious to know if you've also collected hardware, i.e. GB Camera, printer, Light Boy, etc.  Are you just down to the most rare & expensive stuff, or have you knocked some of that off the list?

And thanks for the kind words - I appreciate it :)

I mention ryan's name and he comes out of the woodwork. :D
I think the last time we talked you were sitting at 12 titles shy of a set. Did you pick something up in the last year or so?

Yeah I'm here still. :-) I primarily hang out over on GameTZ, but I still check in on here, racketboy, nintendoage, cag, digitalpress, etc.

Offhand I don't remember, but I printed up a collection list for this weekend, lets see what I'm missing:

4 in 1 Sachen, Amazing Tater, Captain America and Avengers, Castlevania Legends, F1 Pole Position, FIFA Soccer 97, Infogenius Spanish Translator, Infogenius Organizer\Phone Book, International Superstar Soccer, Mega Man V, NIV Bible 20 Lost Levels of Joshua, Snow Brothers, Spud's Adventure, WCW Main Event. Eh a few more, but at least it's a shorter list of missing then haves. :-D

I could swear I picked up the last remaining soccer titles. I'll probably do a recheck before I go to the show and shorten that list. Some of those titles I have seen in the wild, I just didn't want to pay the prices I saw. I'm also looking for a reasonable priced Watara Supervision and a few games. Possibly a few euro titles too, like Trip World.

I've owned the hardware back when it originally came out when I was a kid, but I've since sold those and traded up to whatever system came out after at the time. I always made a mint on my items because I was an only child and had strict parents that insisted I keep everything in original boxes and organized. I remember selling my Atari collection for about $500 which at the time was tons because it was all loose cartridges. I had lots of organizers, accessories, etc. I started recollecting Game Boy titles back in the early 2k's when they were so cheap on eBay. I was buying complete in the retail box titles at $5 + shipping for most. Then more collectors came out of the woodwork. 2 years ago I bought close to $100 in manuals from MGC at $2 per manual from one dealer. Since then the market dried up. Vendors have been overlooking Game Boy and not bringing in as many items, or I just miss them. Still I visit and dig through the boxes for gems.

My collection is an organized mess. Meaning all boxed titles are complete with box/manual/tray/clamshell case, inside plastic box protectors, and on a shelf in semi alphabetical order. Then I have plastic drawers that are filled with jewelers grade ziplock bags with game/manual/clamshell case in no particular order. Lastly, there's a large box with my remaining cartridge only games. The plan is to take all those cartridges and match them with clamshell cases and blank index cards and bag them. Then put everything in alphabetical order. I've been buying reproduction cardboard box trays made for GBC games to use in GB original boxes since those original plastic trays are so scarce.

Wow, sounds like you've made quite an effort to get a reasonably complete collection over the years!  Unless I can score large lots of CIB games, I'll probably settle for mostly loose carts, primarily because CIB stuff has become so expensive.  I was looking at a CIB copy of Gradius: Interstellar Assault on Amazon, and the vendor wanted something in the neighborhood of $80 for it.  Sorry, but I have no desire to pay twice original retail (or more) for something, just to have the privilege of saying I have a complete copy.  I applaud those who do and have the disposable income to do that, but I just don't, and have to do things on the cheap as much as possible.  I wish you good luck, and hope you can score the last few titles w/o having to sell a vital organ or two :)

I hear that, I have my limits as well. They're much lower then they used to be, but still I have incredible luck sometimes.

I'm not sure what your thoughts are on emulation, and that of this site since some sites don't allow speak of them. Personally for really old titles that are a pain to locate at reasonable prices, I'm fine with emulation. I'll even admit that I have every GameBoy game that exists in a folder here on my Mac that I can emulate on a whim. Still, for personal collection's sake I pickup real items whenever I can.

As a collector, nothing beats playing the games on the original hardware, but I have no qualms with emulation at a core level.  I think it's great that people are learning about old technologies by using new ones to reverse engineer the way the old technology worked in order to reproduce it in software form.  It's quite fascinating, actually.  Do I sometimes play emulated games out of convenience?  Sure.  Sometimes it's easier to fire up the soft-modded Wii or Xbox and load up an emulator than it is to dig out the cartridge.  However, for the purpose of this project, I'm hoping to do most of the gaming on the hardware itself, though admittedly, I'm doing most of the work on a GBA SP versus an original brick or GB Pocket.  That has as much to do with the LCD screen as opposed to the Dot Matrix display as it does the back light and rechargeable battery.  Still, I have to emulate to take screenshots, so every screenshot you seen in my reviews so far is me playing it on my PC so I can grab screens.  That will become harder down the line as I play some RPG's, because most of those shots will probably be just stuff I can grab in the first 30-40 minutes.  I don't fancy playing the whole thing twice.  My other thought was using my PSP so I can still get that hand-held experience, and use an emulator that I can take screenshots with, transfer them to PC, and blow them up to the right size.  I haven't decided fully yet.  Any thoughts on that?

To clarify the stance of the site, we just follow the legality of emulation regulations - you're more than welcome to talk about it, but just please don't distribute or post links to the ROMs on the public forums since it becomes a gray area. It's not so much the issue of the legality of ROMs (who are we to determine every person's eligibility for having a back-up vs. a pirate?), but responsibility in case someone gets malware from a poor source and blames a member (and the site) for it. One of my co-workers was the person that created Nesticle, so I'm certainly not one to judge on emulation. ;)

We've also used emulators for the ease of capturing screenshots for the site, as well as for documentation for ROM revisions. Emulation certainly has its place in collecting, and discussions about it shouldn't be discouraged.

I would expect your eyes would start to hurt after awhile if you did it on the original DMG systems they were released on. Even using the lightboy attachments, it ended up not being bright enough, or not brightened evenly. I used to own a Game Boy Light, which was a Japanese Game Boy Pocket with indiglo backlighting. Those were great, but still not as bright as they could be.

That's why I liked HDMIBoy. http://www.hdmyboy.com It seems like a nice way to be able to place these games on a TV, and perhaps even screenshot them decently. I just can't spend 258,00 euros ($277 + supplying your own DMG Game Boy) on this type of device. If the development team can get that price down to lets say $100 to $150 I'd consider. Still, even that's expensive. If they could get it down below $99 the chiptune LSDJ crowd might be able to use it to make entertaining music videos while they use them to play music during indie concerts. Frankly, if we ignore the aspect of people being interested in newer consoles, I think the LSDJ Chiptune movement may have be one of the reasons why the market for collectors boomed in recent years. Game collectors are often not chiptune musicians, but it does increase the sheer amount of custom modified Game Boys you see on eBay, thus raising the numbers of systems overall. There's the Reteron5 which I liked initially when it debuted at Midwest Gaming Classic a few years back. I was one of those who preordered. After getting my hands on one at a local shop and saw how badly they were produced, I cancelled my preorder. The local shop ended up mailing them all back because of the cartridge slot issues. I think Nintendo dropped the ball big time. They should have acquired Hyperkin years ago and re-released a combo system capable of playing your own classic games (NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, N64, VB) and allowing you to purchase custom greatest hits titles of their choosing on proprietary cartridges which contained the game, developers interviews, extras, guides, rough drawings, etc. For the systems that had generations blowing on the cartridges, they took the sheer nostalgic factor out of it by releasing virtual console titles. But that's a whole other topic alltogether.

I'm not sure what emulators allow for screenshots. I just fired up my DSi with SuperCardDSTwo flashcard running the emulator lameboy, running The Addam's Family. No ability I can see to take a screenshot, so I took my digital camera, disabled the flash, and snapped this. Aside from that overhead light that's reflecting off to the side, I think it's pretty good. Still an emulator capable of screenshots would be best. http://i.imgur.com/y4FezCnl.jpg

Thanks for the clarification on emulation. That's about what I expected, but I always like to make sure before I venture into those waters.

If I remember, Visual Boy Advance allows for screenshots.

Any emulator should work for screenshots. They might not all have a built in function to do so, but you can still press print screen. :P

Yes, it does.  I've used that, as well as BGB.  All screenshots on my reviews so far have been via one of those 2 emulators.  And I'll echo Ryan's statement - thanks for the clarification on the site's emulation stance.  I certainly don't condone piracy, but I understand the tendency to want to check out a game before purchasing, especially given the rarity of some.  I mean, who wants to pay $100+ for Mr. Gimmick if they're not convinced it's a fun game and they're going to get their money's worth?  That's one reason I haven't plunked down the cash for most of the Japanese shmups on the Saturn, despite the fact that it's one of my favorite genres.  I may never own a copy of Radiant Silvergun, because I refuse to pay that kind of money for something that is NOT rare, and is only priced thus because of its reputation and the fact that it's always in demand.  I'll never have enough time to play that game enough to make it worth $150 or more.

Getting back on topic, I think you're right, Ryan.  Playing on the original brick, or even the GB Pocket, would be an exercise in inducing headaches.  I loved the original GB when I was a kid, and I still have one, and also recently acquired the see-through GB Pocket, but I know that playing on them can be a chore.  Even going back to the GB Color is less than ideal when I have a GBA SP.  But I do plan on spending some time playing through some of those games on the original hardware, if only to get a perspective on the aspects of the game that will be different on original hardware, such as the blurriness of scrolling, etc.  It does factor into some of the more fast-paced games, or games that do more in terms of scrolling, sprite movement, etc.  It's amazing to think, how some of the early games scrolled slowly enough that the blur effect wasn't that bad, but some later titles that pushed the hardware must have been difficult to play on original hardware because of that factor.

I second Shadow's suggestion that you also put these posts in your RFG blog. From time to time, I will promote blog articles to the front page. Handhelds don't get a ton of love, so it would be nice to see some articles on these games. I haven't promoted many articles as of late due to low blog activity, but I assure you that it happens. ;)  Good luck!

For what it's worth, according to Nintendo Corporate:


I'm assuming you're using a GBA SP 101, rather than a 001, due to the backlit screen?

Yes, I'm sure it's a GBA SP 101.  It doesn't appear to be something that was modded, and I'm sure if it had been, the vendor I bought it from wouldn't have let it go 3 years ago for the $20 I paid for it  ;D

And yes, Nintendo's stance on roms and emulation echoes that of any other vendor, because they're protecting their IP's, as they should.  They take a hard line stance because they have to, and I wouldn't expect them, or any other game company, to do any less.  Having said that, I consider it a bit of a philosophical difference in the interpretation, from the standpoint that many of the titles are no longer available, nor will they be.  Sega can likely never offer downloadable Virtual Console or other versions of their Spiderman games on the Genesis, because they no longer have the license.  Same goes for their X-Men titles.  Konami no longer owns the licensing for any of the TMNT games, because Activision published the latest iteration, based on the new TV series.  So even though the original 2 TMNT arcade games are major classics, other than licensing deals that allow for some limited release of that stuff, it's likely not going to happen.  Nintendo 1st party titles will nearly always be available, since they use their own IP's, but what about 2nd party (or previously 2nd party) stuff like RC Pro Am or Banjo-Kazooie?  Not likely.

The way I see it, emulation is an important part of keeping the heritage of this older gaming technology alive.  I love the fact that Nintendo opened up the Virtual Console on the original Wii to multiple companies, and wish that the Wii U's VC was as inclusive, but sadly, it hasn't turned out that way.  That's too bad, because I love the Wii U, and wish that Nintendo had done a better job of marketing it and differentiating it from the Wii.  That said, I have supported Nintendo's official digital emulation efforts.  I bought TLoZ: LTTP for the play through here, and plan on buying Earthbound, as well as a handful of other titles that are harder to find physical copies of or are more expensive.  Bring it on, Nintendo - open the floodgates and convert all your Wii titles over to the Wii U VC (assuming license agreements still hold up), and I'll buy more as I have disposable income.  Until that time, I'll keep seeking out physical carts, and will buy VC stuff when it makes sense to do so.