ValuGamer

Lately I have been playing a lot of Game Boy games. I recently re-purchased Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for the GBA and it is great. I had it back when I first got a GBA, but it was impossible to play without proper lighting. Now that I have an SP to play it on it is like experiencing a whole new game. It follows the same formula of the other Metroidvania games: run around, kill stuff, get items, repeat. Works for me.

This one is particular interesting because they give you the double jump boots very early in the game. Whenever you get any movement-enhancing items in these games, it is always fun to try and remember all of the places you’ve essentially unlocked by doing so. And then begins the long, tedious trek back to the other side of the castle… These games might not be perfect, but they are still a lot of fun.

Okay, so I need to come clean on something. A few years ago I produced a poster for a 3D graphics course to advertise our end-of-semester exhibition. I was informed at one point that my poster could be viewed as condescending because it equated student work to blocky Atari games. That’s an understandable point of view, but it was not my intention. If anyone was offended by it, I am truly sorry. If there was a “message” to this poster, it was essentially a comment on the technology we were using to display our 3D environments. At the time, the CAVE was on-par with the original PlayStation in terms of poly counts and texture resolution. A limiting environment, for sure, but so was the 2600.

I bought the first version of this thing a few months ago on eBay. Reviews are pretty mixed, and at $29.95 it seemed like a good deal. A portable NES? Amazing, right? Well, not quite. It is a big pain in the butt to get games to start on the thing — even worse than using an original NES. The screen resolution is smaller than the resolution of the games, so they are downsampled to fit, which means they look terrible. The B and A buttons are backwards. Yeah. However, it does still play games… eventually.

I am looking forward to reviews of the FC Mobile II. It hosts a bunch of new features and appears to fix some of the problems with the first one.

(I originally heard about this at TinyCartridge)

As you can see, Nintendo needed some star power in the form of Marvel’s War Machine to help jumpstart the launch of the Game Boy.

Welcome to ValuGamer! I plan on using this site to write about old video games and junk food. I will probably not write proper reviews but I will give my impressions on the game/food and answer any questions you might have.