Gaming off the Beaten Path

I've probably covered Mega Man more than any other series here on GOTBP. Yet there is still a lot of uncharted territory for the franchise, territory I am going to start exploring this week. For as much time as I have spent on the series, and as important as it is to my history as a gamer, I've never really explored the Game Boy Mega Man titles. As was the style at the time, pretty much any popular NES/SNES/Genesis game got some level of similar handheld release on the Game Boy/Game Gear. Sometimes these were attempts at straight points, others were instances of the same name but a different game, while others had elements of both. For the most part, the Mega Man Game Boy entries fit into the latter category. They were typically released between NES entries, Mega Man II on the Game Boy between 2 and 3 on the NES, and so on. They would contain elements of the two games they appeared between, the aforementioned Mega Man II would contain four bosses from MM 2 on the NES and four f...

  I want to be the very best, like no one ever was... I've covered a lot of obscure games since I started GOTBP ore than three years ago. Even some of the "bigger" titles I've covered aren't really that popular in the grand scheme of things. Well, this time it's going to be a little different, because it's time to talk about the single largest merchandising brand in the world: Pokemon. But we aren't going to be discussing the new Arceus games, or Pokemon Go, or how people are literally fighting each other to get their hands on the cards right now. We are going back to the beginning: back to a little game, for a little console that made a big amount of people pay attention to what was, at the time, a relatively niche form of entertainment. I'd like to start by talking about Pokemon, the little Game Boy game that could, which came out of nowhere and changed the world of gaming. I'd like to do that, but it would be a gross exaggeration. While I do...

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most important game consoles ever released...the Nintendo GameBoy.  It may not have looked liked much, but this little gray beast with monochrome graphics stuck around for 14 years, outlasting the NES, SNES and N64.  Hell, the GameCube came out before Nintendo stopped making these things. They came out with all sorts of iterations, including the smaller and better lit GameBoy Pocket and the GameBoy Color, which, you guessed it, played games in color.  There were also about eleventy billion accessories, maybe three of which were actually useful. I wanted to review a GameBoy game in honor of the milestone, but most of mine have been lost to the ages.  The GameBoy was great to take on the road with you, but the small cartridges were easy to lose in all sorts of places.  I didn’t want to play any of the obvious ones, so, Star Wars it is. This is a straight up port of the NES Star W...