Category Archives: gameboy

Tetriminos keep falling on my head!

gameboy, nintendo, retro gaming, video games

I was hoping to have written this post earlier, particularly on the release day of the movie.

However I made a decision that I wanted to watch the Tetris movie with Nathan. Which was after the release. That plan fell apart when at Nath’s he had no interest in watching the movie.

My first memories of playing Tetris go all the way back to when it was released on the Atari ST in 1987. I remember playing it whilst down in Brighton and it would have been after I finished Dungeon Master on my heavily upgraded Atari 520STFM (I upgraded the internal drive to 1.44MB, the memory was also increased to 1MB).

But the ST wasn’t the only version I played back then. Two or three times my friends and I played it head to head on the arcade version. All I remember is I got my butt kicked every time.

However Tetris really got it’s teeth into me the next time I owned it.

Like millions of others I got a copy of Tetris when they purchased a Nintendo GameBoy. That was the best bit of business Nintendo ever did. For many all the GameBoy was was a portable Tetris player.

Tetris was one of the games I played a lot of on the GameBoy. Before I eventually moved on to the likes of Zelda Links Awakening, Super Mario Land or Donkey Kong, the most lines I completed before dying was over 111 lines.

Probably as iconic as the game itself was its Type A theme music by Hirokazu Tanaka. Even now as I type this post that tune is playing in my head.

How Tetris ended up on the Nintendo systems at the time is what the Tetris movie is all about. At the time I was oblivious to all those happenings.

It wasn’t until I got a cover mounted extract of the classic book on video game history Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World by David Sheff that I became aware of the surrounding events.

So we are looking at over ten years after the events I was finally reading the story of how Nintendo got their hands on the rights to the console version of Tetris.

I think I’ve owned Tetris on every Nintendo handheld I’ve owned.

But we need a board game link here for this blog to.

Funny enough I think it’s had an impact on board games. If only to give designers the Tetrimino. Think Patch Work, Cottage Garden, Blokus.

Blokus has been a game I’ve wanted to try for a long time. But not one of those “I really got to play this” games. More a “it’d be nice to try this sometime” game.

The only thing this game has in common with Tetris though is the use of tetriminos.

I enjoyed the two player version I played. The games were quick, fun, and puzzley. And I wouldn’t mind a copy to play with Nath. Yes that’s how much I like it. Maybe if I see a copy at UKGE at the start of next month I’ll buy it.

The roll and write wing of my collection has a roll and write based on Tetris called Brikks. Sadly it’s a game that still sits in that pile of shame. I need to rectify that. It promises to be the game that most captures the feel of the video game on the tabletop.

The Tetris movie starring Taron Egerton isn’t the first “movie” about the game there have been one or two documentaries. Probably the most famous of which is the Ecstasy of Order about competitive players of the game. Which if I remember correctly (I watched it years ago) was very captivating, and interesting.

Egerton plays Henk Rogers and his performance is very good. As is the rest of the supporting cast of this movie.

This movie is obviously a dramatisation of the events that took place. Much in the vein of The Social Network (which I love) and Micro Men (which I also love). For me this movie also has a lot in common with biopics such as The Buddy Holly Story, The Doors, Walk the Line, and yes Rocketman!

I think it was Mark Kermode who once said it’s all about how these movies manage those magic moments in the subjects story such when The Doors came up with Light My Fire. Tetris the movie has those moments such as when Rogers is first shown the GameBoy and shows Tetris on it to the engineers.

I love the 8-bit retro look for the brief animated cut aways used through out the movie.

This is a great dramatisation. I really like it. It’s entertaining and manages to appeal to none gamers as well. Who knew the story behind Tetris coming to probably the worlds favourite handheld was so full of drama and intrigue?

A must watch.

Early Present To Myself

Advanced Wars, Advanced Wars 1+2 Re-boot Camp, gameboy, nintendo, switch, video games

This weekend saw the much anticipated release of Advanced Wars 1&2 Re-boot Camp on the Nintendo Switch.

I love Advanced Wars.

I’ve played it since it first came out in 2002 on my GBA.

21 years since I first played it!

Wow.

I love the classic PC RTS Dune 2, and Command and Conquer. So when I heard about Advanced Wars and though not a RTS but turn based I still needed to get it.

2002 saw me commuting between Farnborough and Surbiton on the train. So portable gaming with my GBA (that was later replaced by a GBA SP) was a way to pass the commute. And probably at that point in my life the main opportunity I had to game.

I loved Advanced Wars. I was an instant fan.

The turn based mechanic worked perfectly on the hand held GBA. The graphics were cartoony and worked really well on the small screen. The cut scenes and pop up characters were drawn in a cartoon anime art style. A style that matched the bright tone of the game perfectly.

I can’t remember the music. However that would be due to me playing the game without the sound on. Something I did all the time back then.

There was a story. But I don’t remember any of it. That’s not a reflection of the game at all. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since I played the game.

I don’t remember finishing the game. But I did get a fair way into the game. I think I was pretty close to completing it.

It should come as no surprise that I got the follow up to Advanced Wars, Advanced Wars Black Hole Rising when it was released in 2003. Which was more of the same.

Obviously by the time Advanced Wars Dual Strike came out on the DS in 2006 I too had moved on to the latest Nintendo handheld. Although continuing the story of the previous two instalments that were on the GBA. Dual Strike introduced new features that made use of the dual screens of the DS.

I enjoyed playing the latest instalment of Advanced Wars. But looking back it doesn’t seem to have had as big an impact on me as the original GBA game.

The final Advanced Wars I played was its fourth and final portable outing Advanced Wars Dark Conflict in 2008.

Despite owning the final portable instalment of the series I don’t remember ever playing it. I think considering the events of 2008 and what a major upheaval to my personal circumstances they were. The fact I didn’t get to play Dark Conflict doesn’t surprise me.

I never did play the 2005 RTS spin off Battalion Wars on the GameCube. (I should try and pick a copy up.) Or the 2007 Wii Battalion Wars 2. I remember reading good things about Battalion Wars at the time. As I’ve already established I’m an RTS fan, so I think these versions would tick a lot of boxes for me, and that I’d enjoy them.

So here we are 21 years later with Advanced Wars finally hitting the latest Nintendo console. I feel with it’s release on the Switch the game has returned to its mobile roots!

If the title Advanced Wars 1&2 Re-boot Camp doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the game, especially having played it before. Then I don’t know how more obvious they could have made it.

This release is an update of the original two GBA releases with the usual graphical improvements (I’m assuming) that goes along with it.

I love the tag line in the title of Re-boot Camp. It’s funny. Well I chuckled.

I’m going to take a little break from my Doom series of posts to play Advanced Wars, and give myself a chance to get the boardgame to the table some more.

Which means you’ll get at least one more Advanced Wars post.

Until then…

A retro video game project started

gameboy, retro gaming

Merry Christmas.

I hope everyone got everything they asked Santa for.

This post isn’t board gaming related at all. It’s about a little “project” I’ve decided to do that sees me jumping into a time machine and revisiting my younger years and video gaming history.

It all started Tuesday when I saw on social media somewhere (most likely Twitter) some art work related to the video game Nebulus from Hewson Consultants.

Now I’m old enough to remember it coming out originally and playing it in the eighties in its 8bit form. But I had a vague impression that it got released on home consoles that included the Nintendo GameBoy. It was probably an old Retro Gamer I was remembering.

As always a couple of minutes on Google and Wikipedia confirmed that there had indeed been a version for the GameBoy. But it had been renamed Castelian for some reason.

Five minutes later a Castelian cartridge had been purchased on eBay. Which means it’ll be with me most likely in the New Year. If I’m lucky before then.

I thought wouldn’t it be cool to revisit some of the old GameBoy games I own while I was waiting for Castelian to arrive.

Finding my old games was the easy bit. The hard bit was remembering where my handheld consoles were. Eventually I found them after some digging around. I even managed to find the correct chargers!

While I put my GameBoy Advance SP (GBA SP) on charge, along with my 3DS lite I sorted through my games collection to select a handful of games to play (see photo below).

I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this earlier in the year. I could have been playing these during the lockdown.

As I was going through my GameBoy collection I could swear I had Robocop for it. But it was not to be found. Maybe my mind and poor memory were playing tricks on me.

But another visit to eBay saw a GameBoy version of Robocop on its way to me.

Christmas Eve afternoon saw me fire up my GBA SP with Tetris for the GameBoy plugged into the cartridge slot.

Tetris was bundled with the original GameBoy back in the day. It was a classic combo that sold insane numbers. There is an amazing chapter in the book Game Over by David Sheff that goes over the saga of how Nintendo got the license for Tetris and teamed it up with the GameBoy.

For many it was the only game they played on the GameBoy. It was a portable Tetris player.

For me GameBoy Tetris is the definitive version and the yardstick later versions are judged against.

It’s easily been a decade since I’ve played this version. So to clear 75 lines on my first attempt wasn’t too bad for this aging player. My next couple of games I was in the eighties for lines cleared. Back in my younger days I had reached over 120 lines. But that’s with the tetrominos falling at a silly speed.

The music for Tetris on the GameBoy by Hirokazu Tanakais is still iconic and catchy as ever.

While this “project” is going on Tetris is going to be a game I keep coming back to for a break.

Another classic on the GameBoy is Donkey Kong.

Like so many games (and this will be a recurring theme during this “project”) I never completed the game but got pretty far into it.

I like Donkey Kong. It’s an interesting take on the arcade classic.

Donkey Kong starts off with the four levels from the arcade original. And to be honest if they had just recreated the arcade game I would have been happy. But they didn’t.

After you complete the fourth level you start to work through 97 new levels! However although the over all aim is still to rescue Pauline, on each level you now have to collect a key to open the door to advance to the next level. These new levels remind me more of old Spectrum and C64 platformers like Manic Miner or Chuckie Egg.

A nice touch is the ability to save your progress at regular intervals. It aids progressing through the game.

It took a couple attempts before I was sailing through the classic arcade levels without losing a life. It’s amazing how even after all these years it all comes back to you. But the game is still a joy to play.

I’ll write some more on Donkey Kong in the next post about this “project” as I progress through more of the levels.

Until then stay safe.