Pocket of Horror: Lighthouse (Game Boy Color)

 This is a demake of World of Horror, a game I haven't yet played (though I'm sure I will eventually), but which drew me in simply for the novelty of being a horror game made for Game Boy Color. Because I haven't played its inspiration, I can only judge it as a game in its own right, and am unable to compare the two. 

 

It uses a few elements that it seems like a lot of the new wave of Game Boy Color games use, no matter the genre: full-screen pixel art, abstract menu-based gameplay, and tastefully restrained colour palettes. I don't know if that's because the tools being used to make these games favour them, or if it's some kind of leftover resentment from western GBC-owning kids from the olden days of never getting to play the likes of Sakura Taisen GB or Hana Yori Dango: Another Love Story in English, now driving them to make their own GBC adventures with their own fancy pixel art.

 

So, how Pocket of Horror works is that you choose one of four mysteries to investigate. Then you'll be told a little story, through full screen art, little "investigating" animations, and text. Sometimes, you'll get to choose on of two options, and sometimes you'll find yourself fighting enemies. These battles feature yet more full screen art of your foe, and you have a bunch of options to pick, such as attacking, defending, trying to restore your stamina or reason, and so on. Whenever you pick an action, a bar at the bottom of the screen fills up a little bit, and when it fills all the way, he enemy attacks. You can usually just attack wildly and kill the enemies before they do the same to you, though since I died partway through the fourth mystery, that might be a poor plan in the long term.

 

After each mystery's solved, you get a key, and all four are needed to open the way to the lighthouse, where the final mystery lies. I can't spoilt the details of that final mystery for you, because I haven't been able to survive all four mysteries. You've got three numbers to keep track of as you play: stamina, reason, and doom. Stamina and reason obviously represent your physical and mental health respectively, and if either reaches zero, it's game over. Doom, however, is more mysterious. It's a percentage that goes up or down a little bit every time you do something. It was in the mid-forties when my playthrough ended, and I'm left curious about what might happen if it gets to a full hundred.

 

This is a decent enough little game, and definitely worth a bit of your time. I'm really interested in the rennaisance that the Game Boy and Mega Drive in particular have been going through in recent years, so there'll probably be more coverage of both consoles here in the future. It's not a 100% correlation, but it's interesting that a lot of new Mega Drive games are action titles, and a lot of new Game Boy games are like this: adventures that focus on making decisions and really pushing quality of presentation above all.

Battle Athletess Daiundokai GTO (Playstation)

 While looking up which came first out of the Battle Athletess anime and videogames, I found something surprising: it was neither! It originated as a radio drama! Then, the Saturn game was released before there was an anime. That Saturn game, is, I believe, a kind of girl-raising sim in the vein of Princess Maker or Graduation, and has never been translated into English. I guess they wanted to go a little more mainstream for this Playstation release, though, since it's a much more accessible (and less language dependent) racing game!

 

Being about athletes(s), they aren't utilising any kind of vehicles, instead running on foot! Unlike a lot of leg-based racing games, there's no athleticism required from the player in the form of high speed button-tapping. Instead, your selected runner goes at a consistent speed, and instead your focus as the player is on a couple of other matters. The first is avoiding the various obstacles strewn about the stages by going round them, jumping over them, or sliding under them. The second is management of your runner's stamina. You can hold up on the d-pad to run faster (or in the case of one character, ride a bike that appears from nowhere), which depletes your stamina meter. When it's all gone, your runner will stop for a few seconds to catch their breath.

 

All of this is presented in very colourful and charming 3D, and it's the presentation that's clearly the selling point here. There's definitely a lot of affection for the characters in the game: they're all voice acted, of course, and there's nice little touches like how when you lose in single player mode, the "continue?" countdown will be said out loud by the character who defeated you. They all each have their own stages, too. The cast is an international one, and the stages are all from the Street Fighter II school of harmless national stereotypes: the Russia stage is snowy and has nice architecture, the China stage takes place atop the great wall, the Japan stage is slightly futuristic and surrounded by neon signs, and so on. The protagonist is exempt from this, being Japanese, but having a stage that's in a place that looks like a mural painted on a nursery wall. (Japan is the only country represented by two characters). Finally, each character also has a semi-secret (and usually a little strange) pose that they adopt if you pause the game, no matter what they're doing at the time.

 

It's a pretty fun game! It'd probably be even moreso if played with other people (and, had I known about it back then, I can easily see it being in the rotation of versus games in my teenage bedroom around the turn of the century). The only real problem is that it's also very slight, and there's not really a lot of variation. The various playable characters don't really feel any different from each other, and though all the stages look different, and the obstacles on them have unique models and textures, mechanically, the only real difference between them is the way the obstacles are laid out. Even just having one unique element for each stage would have added a lot to the game. Maybe a special ability for each character, too. Still, as it is, it's still okay. You'll get a little bit of fun out of it on your own, and probably a lot more with opponents. It's also a very lovingly made game with a lot of charm, and I think that's worth something, too. I think it's worth a look for the curious at the very least.