There are many versions of the Gameboy available but seeing as I didn’t want to commit myself to the console to any degree I decide to limit myself to spending no more than £10 and managed to pick up a GB Color (no I haven’t gone American, Color is the actual release name here) for £8 with a couple of games, silly case (just look at it) and a Game Genie. The great thing about the GB Color is its backward compatibility with the rest of the GB range capable of playing all the previous black & white titles with a limited but clever colour palette. You might wonder why I claim it’s clever but just try playing an old GB game that has a section with water. The console picks up on this and actually displays the water in blue. It is magic!
The GBC I bought was a bit worse for wear and my first task before playing was to take it apart and clean all the contacts. I’m not sure what the previous owner had been doing with it as there was a sticky residue set round all the controls and I had to spent a good while scrubbing it clean with ethanol before it would work properly again. It never occurred to me at the time to take a few pictures of the insides but all I can say is that it wasn’t a pretty picture.
The first game I fired up was Megaman and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. With only 4 bosses and what felt like an insane difficulty level it just wasn’t a patch on MM2 but at least it was interesting to see Capcom was trying to take the series multiplatform for the first time and I can only hope things improved. Sadly I’m not a Megaman collector so where the series went from here I haven’t a clue. It’s not a bad game but something is missing that I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s the way the game plays or the lack of bosses it just didn’t feel the same as Megaman 2 to me.
Next was Tetris but there’s not much that can be said about this. A Simple, wonderful, addictive and time consuming puzzle game. I only meant to have a quick blast but before I knew it I’d wasted 30 minutes and didn’t make it much past level 10. Going back to the late 80’s I have vague recollections of it conquering the known gaming world which isn’t surprising.
Included with the auction was a Game Genie. Now this thing is a beast of a plug in, almost two thirds the size of the GB Color it slots into the cartridge slot with the GB games nestled away on top. The idea is that turning it on gives you a menu screen that you can type or effectively change code into the game you are playing. This can range from altering the number of lives, invincibility or making the game even more difficult. I didn’t do much more beyond turning it on and having a play with the main menu and it wasn’t until after I’d taken the photo for the blog that I released that there was a large bible of game codes slotted into the side of the device, very handy. There’s a full alphabetical list of codes in there and I think it covers most of the GB’s games library failing that you can actually make up your own codes but I’d probably need n instruction manual to even attempt that.
I really bought the GB Color out of curiosity and I probably won’t be buying many games for it. I may even pick something up on the cheap from time to time and type something up for the blog.
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1 comment:
I remember when this system was put in the market, in my neighborhood I was the first one in have one of this, my first game was Pokemon Yellow Version, and when about mega man of course I bought it.
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