Game Boy Player Land (my blog)

[noiseredux]

added a post about the GB launch titles.

[Flake]

Good update! I've played almost all of those games at one point. I never realized they were all launch titles, though.

I agree, Super Mario Land was the killer app of the launch. There was much begging and pleading for that back in the day.

[noiseredux]

Good update! I've played almost all of those games at one point. I never realized they were all launch titles, though.

I agree, Super Mario Land was the killer app of the launch. There was much begging and pleading for that back in the day.

I'm glad you've been enjoying the GBPL blog so much man!

[AmishSamurai]

Have Tetris and Super Mario Land too. However, both being such old games the internal save batteries that kept track of high score (I don't know if the SML one saved what level you were on or not) are dead.

[Hobie-wan]

Tetris never saved scores. It doesn't have a battery.

[k.vlaros]

Top class update, NR. Just stellar! I've had all of them but Alleyway at one point or another.

I'm in your camp wrt. Super Mario Land 1. For one, the theme music is deadly-addictive. And speed runs- the game is perfect for them. Sure the sprites are small, obviously they tried to simply scale down the proportions of the NES version, with mixed results. But look at how imaginative they were with the level designs. Each world has a distinct and wacky theme, the game having gone totally abstract. And it wasn't completely self-referential yet. It was still proving itself. Add in the Gunpei trivia and it stands as a classic among handheld titles of all genres, of all time.

And yeah, Tennis is a much better game than Baseball on feel alone. I remember the thrill of popping Tennis in to the GBC to discover it was pre-coded with the green palette. I actually think I want to track that cart down again. Mario Power Tennis for GBA is solid and has plenty of polish, but for that basic 'pong' brain-on-auto-pilot gameplay, OG Tennis has it beat. Good hypothesis on Baseball being in large part a link cable sell along side Tetris.

[noiseredux]

Have Tetris and Super Mario Land too. However, both being such old games the internal save batteries that kept track of high score (I don't know if the SML one saved what level you were on or not) are dead.

none of the launch titles had batteries.

[AmishSamurai]

Tetris never saved scores. It doesn't have a battery.

ah. Never knew that.

[noiseredux]

Tetris never saved scores. It doesn't have a battery.

ah. Never knew that.

we were actually talking about this the other day in another thread -- as far as I can remember, the first GB game with a battery (in the US) was Final Fantasy Legend. I have no proof, but can't think of an earlier title.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Sounds about right. Just like early NES games, early GB titles were so simple and primitive they were meant to be played in short bursts that didn't require saving, or the games themselves were so short to begin with saving would be redundant.

For early games that did allow you to save your progress, you of course had passwords, like in Fortress of Fear.