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How To Win At Game Boy Games: Beowulf’s Game Boy Youth Returns

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
I've beaten Double Dragon legit. It's a tough nut, but I think I had less issue with it than the NES game. Really, my biggest issue was indeed the platforming - it feels like some jumps are nearly pixel-perfect and the edges don't feel quite right. Outside of that, I think it's a great game if you can get past that difficulty - admittedly a tall ask.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I definitely liked a lot of GB DD more than the NES version, but *holy hannah* was the difficulty just a complete non-starter. Only through reckless abuse of savestates did I know there was anything beyond level 3

Also, I bought a stank-load of Jeff Rovin books as a Wee Octo, and mainly remember him for his... tremendously bonkers Mortal Kombat novelization and how angry he got at his Genesis strategy guide when it came to Altered Beast
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_-_Fall_of_the_Foot_Clan_(U)_!_.png


Fall of the Foot Clan

Shredder has kidnapped April, the turtles need to save her. Just another day in NYC. This is another game that I know forwards-and-backwards and I’ve done a full Let’s Play of the series.

This gets described as “seek-and-destroy as you walk along,” which is another case of phrasing that’s technically accurate but odd. I mean, I guess I’d call this a primitive beat-em-up? Jeff doesn’t bother to note that the four turtles are functionally identical in this game (as opposed to most others where Don has more reach or Mike is faster), and leaves the descriptions of the enemies and their point values to the manual.

Babywulf was also my wingman for this game (which, admittedly, I have pretty much memorized, so the distraction wasn’t really an issue). It’s actually a pretty effective way of knowing what Jeff wants you to do! Unfortunately, Jeff’s commentary tries to come off as more thorough than it actually is, so for this game specifically you could read a paragraph, play for a while, and then just read the boss description when you got there.

Of specific note: Jeff doesn’t mention the flame heads in stage 2 and the fact that one of them cues you in to a pit you need to jump over, which seems like an odd omission. Stage 3 is downright sparse and while he calls out the foot soldier that pops up and throws bricks at you, he doesn’t mention you can just bat the bricks back. He describes the spine stretchers in stage 5 as “not worth fighting”…well, yeah, they’re invincible? He does note that you can one-shot Rodney with a jump-kick, and given he’s the only non-boss enemy that takes more than one hit otherwise, this is very useful to point out. Jeff’s advice for bosses (generally jump over them and attack from behind) is decent, but virtually all of the boss projectiles can be destroyed with your weapon and he never mentions that. (Also, he seems to think you can duck under Bebop’s shots—you can’t.)

He misses more than half of the bonus rounds, finding only two in the first stage and one in the fifth (and only has tips for what BIGGER and SMALLER mean, not actually how to effectively guess the numbers or play the other two bonus games). He does give the bonus level select code (that I couldn’t actually get to work on my handheld, but I suspect was an input issue) and the life-restore code (which he doesn’t note—and might not realize—can be used exactly once per level).

Jeff gives this an A rating, calling it fun for all ages and noting that the graphics and music are excellent. And while in a lot of ways, this isn’t that great a game—you have a limited range of motion and there’s relatively little strategy, and the last two levels are pretty empty and repetitive. But again, in the era this book was being written in, this was indeed top tier and the graphics were, in hindsight, very good. (And the music is mostly the TMNT theme song on repeat, but the other tracks are decent.)
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Yeah, Ninja Boy 2. I can never remember the name.

Did you play that one?
I didn't--I actually hadn't even heard of it until recently. (Which is odd, because I watched the tiny rpg scene on the Game Boy very carefully back in the day.) I'm wondering if I need to add it as a bonus post at the end of this project.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Final_Fantasy_Legend_I.png


The Final Fantasy Legend

And here we have the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the reason I hunted down this book in the first place: Jeff’s terrible, terrible coverage of Final Fantasy Legend. The man simply didn’t understand rpgs, and honestly, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even read the entire manual.

As a reminder, my Let’s Play of FFL is probably the most in-depth LP I’ve done, and can certainly teach you everything you need to know about the game.

Jeff calls this a “role-playing quest” and correctly notes that you’re trying to find Paradise by climbing the Tower. In the hero section, the problems begin: He says, “You earn greater strength (Hit Points) as you win battles, the results of which are decided by the computer...The more Hit Points you have, the stronger the weapons you can purchase.” And wow. Strength is a different stat than HP; only Mutants gain HP (or strength) via fighting battles; the results of battles are determined by the actions you input; and your HP has no influence on what you can purchase or equip. Maybe he’s somehow conflating HP with GP? You do get money after every battle and basic capitalism is in effect.

In the strategy section, Jeff claims that “how to win” is relatively easy and all you need to do is “build your Hit Points, arm yourself to the teeth, talk to just about everyone you meet, and the rest is like playing connect-the-dots.” I mean, Nintendo Power’s readers apparently beg to differ, as it seemed like all of the Counselor’s Corner questions were “Where do I go next?” Then again, Jeff doesn’t even get to the battle with King Sword in his coverage, which is maybe halfway through the base world. The manual takes you through the beginning of the ocean world!

So instead of extensive walkthrough, Jeff spends a lot of time on team composition. He claims, “Monsters are especially good at the later levels,” which I suppose you can claim is true if you build up a powerful monster in the early game (which I did in my LP), but is absolutely false when you take the game as a whole. Monsters are actually the worst for the endgame because they top out at the same strength level as non-boss enemies you’re fighting stacks of. I’m reasonably certain a 4-monster party mathematically can’t beat the Creator without the saw glitch.

Jeff is really down on Mutants, claiming that they are more trouble than they’re worth because they only get experience by striking the final blow in battle. This is not true, but even if it was, the fact that Mutants can use magic books would make that extremely easy to arrange for the majority of the game.

Jeff recommends for your Humans, “boost their Hit Points to 200 and don’t let them drop below that.” He later notes, “If you have enough Gold, you’ll be able to purchase 200 Hit Points from a merchant. You can’t make a better investment than that!” This is all indicating that Jeff didn’t understand the system at all, by both advising that your Human characters should...never take damage, I guess (because max HP can never be reduced in this game), and confusing the HP200 item (which raises Human max HP by 10-20 points up to 200) with just buying 200 HP. Oh, and he only mentions the Inn in relation to finding the Guild at the beginning; I don’t think he knows that you can heal there, or if he’s somehow mixed up the GP/HP exchange it does. (He has one line that you should also buy strength and agility from the shops because they are “enormously valuable to Humans,” but gives no indication as to why. He doesn’t actually reference any stats other than HP anywhere else.)

Jeff’s ideal team is two Humans (male and female) and two Goblins, and there shouldn’t be any surprise that he thinks you want Axes or Long Swords for both of them because he doesn’t distinguish between strength-based and agility-based weapons. He directs you to fight 3-4 random battles on your way to the Bandit’s Cave (hah!) and doesn’t mention the treasure room there at all. Afterwards he gives the big hint that there’s another castle you can find by circling to the south, but there are dangerous Wererats and Karatakas there, so keep those Hit Points up!

Jeff gives this game an A rating, which is absolutely valid though strange given he really doesn’t understand how to play it. He says it’s “not quite as complex” as Zelda (which is a statement well-suited to starting a fight) but that “Role playing buffs will eat it up like they were Monsters faced with Meat!”

And yeah, this is the most hilarious bad coverage I think I’ve ever seen of a video game, with outright counterproductive “tips” and a complete misunderstanding of all of the game’s systems. Like, just reading the manual and never touching the game would make it clear Jeff doesn’t know what he’s talking about, as would playing pretty much any other console rpg.

...And now I’m desperately curious to know if the rest of his books included Final Fantasy or any of the Dragon Warrior games.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
I didn't--I actually hadn't even heard of it until recently. (Which is odd, because I watched the tiny rpg scene on the Game Boy very carefully back in the day.) I'm wondering if I need to add it as a bonus post at the end of this project.
It's an interesting, weird game. The random battles play out like a beat-em-up, where you have to defeat a certain amount of enemies. The boss battles are then turn based, and you have your second character with you. If the stars align correctly, you will do a combo attack (you don't have control over the second character, so this is luck based). I should replay it, but when I did some years ago, it wasn't quite as enjoyable, as I remembered. I guess being starved for rpgs, and being a young kid, will make such games exciting.

That said, I'm sure it's worth experiencing, as it's quite unique.

Regarding that FF Legends coverage - I think more and more that Jeff is just a straight-up action gameplay guy. Who enjoys fast-paced games with a lot of fighting, and so on, but doesn't like slower games much. I imagine he just rushed through FF Legends, tried random stuff without thinking too much about it, and therefore getting a lot wrong. It just fits with how he disliked the logic puzzle type games he covered. Or dislikes, that one of them has no time limit. That's still the most bizarre thing to me.
 

Issun

(He/Him)
I cannot hear Jeff Rovin's name without thinking about how reading about his life after writing these guides is an adventure.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
I cannot hear Jeff Rovin's name without thinking about how reading about his life after writing these guides is an adventure.
In October 2016, during the last days of the Donald Trump campaign, Rovin appeared on Hannity, in Breitbart News and the front cover of National Enquirer, claiming to have been a "fixer" for Bill and Hillary Clinton, hiding family scandals. His allegations included that Hillary Clinton was "bisexual" and a "secret sex freak" with an "open marriage" and had a romantic relationship with Vince Foster.[Wikipedia]

HOLY SHIT.

Also, it looks like he briefly overlapped with my dad at DC in the 70s. I pinged my dad to see if he has any memory of the guy. Apparently he was a very prolific hack (affectionate) before he went nuts.
 

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
"Jeff Rovin has been editor-in-chief of Weekly World News"

Rarely has one sentence ever told me so much about a person.
 

RT-55J

space hero for hire
(He/Him + RT/artee)
I like to imagine that the sole reason he did that in 2016 was so that he'd have an alibi for the inaccuracies in all of these guidebooks he wrote.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
"Jeff Rovin has been editor-in-chief of Weekly World News"
My unofficial-uncle Bob Greenberger was an editor at Weekly World News for a while, too. Apparently it was a fun gig, because unlike some of the other tabloids, there was never any pretense that it should be taken seriously. When you know it's a goof you can have real fun with it.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I will again point out his Sega Genesis guide where he got so mad that part of the end credits had the phrase "No Nukes" listed
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Follow-up from The Answer Man: "He was at DC and then gone before I was hired. I met him once or twice in passing. I didn’t know he went nuts."
 

yama

the room is full of ghosts
I had the Mario Games book. Starting with World 5 of Mario 3, he's like "oh, you've gotten this far so you don't need a blow by blow guide." and devotes only a paragraph or two for each level.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
This may have already been posted, but the process of how these were written totally explains why there are some stark inaccuracies.

It hadn't been posted; so thank you! It confirms my suspicions--probably all of our suspicions--about how quickly Rovin was churning out these books and how his methods worked. (And explains some of the gaps in his walkthroughs as "he didn't scribble fast enough."
 
Last edited:

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Fist_of_the_North_Star.png

Fist of the North Star

And we’re back to games that are new to me. I watched the anime of this…25 years ago? Probably more. Jeff calls it a “martial arts combat” game and explains that it’s a round-robin martial arts tournament between the Lords of the post-nuclear war world to determine the ruler. He notes that the hero is whichever character you choose, and the villains are the other 10.

Apparently you gain experience points when you win battles, which somehow make you stronger for the next round. I’m not entirely clear how this is helpful, since not only do you just have to fight every opponent, you fight them in a set order depending on which character you take. (Gamefaqs indicates you can use passwords to save built-up characters and then go through the full tournament with your higher levels. That’s kind of a neat idea and Jeff ignores that mechanic completely.)

The two general tips Jeff provides, which I think are both pretty valid, is to play against each character you want to use so you can see how the computer uses them well; and to practice dodging. These are pretty decent tips.

Then he gives you a full walk-through playing as Kenshiro and I found it entirely useless. (He actually gives a paragraph of tips for each of the ten fights!) The first battle is against Heart, and Jeff suggests you go to the far left, crouch facing Heart, and press A rapidly until he dies. This strategy leads to Heart jumping towards and away from you, hitting you each time but taking no damage himself. It is entirely useless.

So I fought Heart honestly and tried Jeff’s strategy against Shin: Charge your Aura Waves (changed fireball attack) from a crouch, and then fire just before standing, and supposedly Shin won’t dodge. This is also not effective (Shin does dodge), and he can charge and fire just as fast as you can, so you’ll basically both be hopping and crouching, dodging each other’s fireballs until you get bored. I’m deeply skeptical about Jeff’s later strategies given that the first two were crap.

Jeff gives this game a D+, which I think is the lowest in the book. He complains about the lack of variety between the characters, the lack of replay value once you beat the game, and the fact that none of the elements of the post-holocaust world actually appear in the game itself. And I wouldn’t say he’s wrong on either front; but frankly my biggest complaints are that 1-on-1 fighting games just don’t work very well when you’ve only got two buttons to work with; and the hitboxes are wildly off from the sprites for some characters. Kenshiro takes hits to his extended arms but his punches can barely connect until you’re hugging your opponent. This game has the feel of a cheaply thrown-together fighting game that they slapped a licensed property onto so it would sell.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Flipull_(USA).png


Flipull

And now a puzzle game that I haven’t seen before. Not quite action-puzzle, in that there’s a timer for the round but you can take as long as you want with each individual move. Your blob-dude has a block, and when you throw it and hit a matching one on the stack, the match disappears and the block behind it jumps into your arms so you can throw it next.

Jeff calls this a “ricochet puzzle” game, which is both accurate and…not a genre? Are there any other games that you could call that? Anyway, the Hero can climb ladders (…by which we mean up the side wall—I’m not sure where Jeff got “ladders” from) and throw blocks; the villain is arguably the timer and the blocks themselves.

This is another game where Jeff gives two pages of tips instead of any walkthroughs, because the stages are randomized. His tips are only mildly about strategy and mostly just how the game actually works. (And mostly which block you’ll get given various conditions, at that.) This game is about planning ahead, because you know what block you’re going to get when you throw, and you can predict how the stack will fall if you eliminate blocks from the bottom, so you can always tell what your next move should be. That said, when I was playing I had trouble planning the several moves ahead that it requires to avoid getting yourself stuck and needing to use your limited S-blocks (wildcards). Would I get better with practice? Definitely. Am I likely to? Nah.

Jeff gives this a C+ rating, though his complaints hinge on the lack of variety in gameplay and player options, and when you’re giving high marks to games like Dr. Mario and Tetris, I don’t think that’s really fair. I’d accept a C+ more readily if his reasoning was just that it’s not as fun and addictive as the top games in the same genre.

Like Dr. Mario, this is a game that I think I’d be a lot happier playing the color version of. The patterns on the blocks are reasonably distinct, but not quite intuitive enough at a glance that I can get into a good flow. I should probably pull up the arcade or Famicom version to test out.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Gargoyle_s_Quest_-_Ghosts_n_Goblins_(UE)_!_.png


Gargoyle’s Quest


We’re about to hit a big whack of games that are new to me, but before that we have one more title that I know really well and have a Let’s Play of: Firebrand’s quest to murder his way through the Ghoul Realm and prove he’s the biggest badass around.

We start off weakly, as Jeff incorrectly claims the Destroyers are an evil race of aliens who’ve invaded the Ghoul Realm (they’re just another group of demons, Jeff), and that Firebrand is searching for a force called the Great Fire to stop the invaders (it’s actually a legendary hero called the Red Blaze).

Jeff calls this a “fantasy quest” (again, accurate but insufficient; it’s a hybrid platformer-rpg), and claims that Firebrand can collect “various power-ups...which are used to earn extra lives.” Firebrand does in fact collect power-ups during the game—lots of them—but they’re permanent upgrades and you never have to find them in the action stages. The Vials you collect in action stages are just money, and the other two collectables are hearts (standard health restore) and 1ups.

Jeff gives an entirely passable walkthrough of the first stage and doesn’t mention the top-down view at all; then notes that it’s a very long quest and you’ll need to master the basic skills to get through it. I can only imagine that Jeff (or his sons) did not, in fact, master those skills and didn’t get very far in this game at all.

Then he gives some passwords, but with a very nebulous set of descriptions of where they put you beyond “near the end of the game” and the like. Also, oddly, after the password NTAN-RRX7 he says you should “make an expensive purchase,” which is an odd piece of advice given the only thing you can ever buy is extra lives. He also drops NPAN-RRXY as a fully-equipped endgame password, though as I noted in my LP, there are still four dungeons, another round of upgrades, and two hard bosses after the last place you can get a password. (And Jeff doesn’t even say anything about the multiple entrances to the last area, all but one of which are fake-outs!)

Jeff rates this an A, noting that it’s tough getting started, but that once you master the skills, this “is truly a great adventure in the tradition of The Legend of Zelda.” And yes, I would agree that this is a top-tier game for the system and the era; and that it is indeed very difficult until you get the hang of it. But regarding “how to win” Jeff has absolutely failed us here.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
This is an early game? Might be my favourite, of the ones covered up to now. Great one.

I borrowed this from a friend, as a kid, who didn't like it. Neither did my best friend. No idea why, maybe the way it was a weird hybrid, and also talky in places, didn't work for them? I just loved it for the top-down view in sections, I was that starved for rpgs.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
This is an early game? Might be my favourite, of the ones covered up to now. Great one.
Yep, July 1990. One of the first games I owned and definitely one of my Game Boy favorites. (And I was also starved for rpgs!)
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
It's funny that NPAN-RRXY is still seared into my brain after all these years. I think it was in a magazine and not this book that I got it from, though.

The Destroyer aliens thing is actually straight from the manual - they made lots of weird changes to games to avoid demons/religious slants to the games back then. And of course "Rushifell" is actually supposed to be "Lucifer", which is something I honestly didn't pick up on when I was younger.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
The Destroyer aliens thing is actually straight from the manual - they made lots of weird changes to games to avoid demons/religious slants to the games back then. And of course "Rushifell" is actually supposed to be "Lucifer", which is something I honestly didn't pick up on when I was younger.
"An alien force known only as the Destroyers" was probably intended as "foreign to us" rather than "from space," and the opening crawl makes it clearer. I maintain my criticism of Jeff.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Godzilla.png


Godzilla

This starts a long stretch of games that I never owned, never played, and didn’t have much interest in. It’s a good test of Jeff’s advice as to whether I can do well at them despite coming in blind...though I suppose the tradeoff is that I’m not terribly motivated. (I’ll drop a bunch of bonus posts in the interim to keep momentum going. Also, I suspect that some of the back-half coverage is going to be lackluster, given that Jeff clearly manipulated the versions of titles he used to front-load certain games.)

So this game—a “maze game,” according to Jeff—has you playing as Godzilla, but instead of smashing Tokyo or anything like that, you need to maneuver through a giant labyrinth made of 64 rooms, and in each room you need to smash all of the boulders there before you can move on. You spend a lot of time climbing vines and trying to maneuver the rocks against each other or the walls so you can destroy them. There are lots of other monsters; all but one of them instantly die to a single attack and all of them respawn infinitely no matter how much you kill them. I’d argue that this isn’t really a maze game so much as a puzzle-platformer, especially since it has 64 set levels in a set sequence.

In thing I find odd: Jeff claims that Godzilla’s attack is supposed to be his fire breath, but he thinks it looks like puffs of smoke. I honestly think it looks like a giant fist, and Godzilla punching boulders makes more sense than breathing fire on them.

In things that I find annoying: While you can squash enemies by pushing rocks on them, you can also be crushed by falling rocks, and that includes if you’re juuuuust a little too close when you make one fall. Jeff doesn’t mention this, of course.

Jeff actually dedicates a lot of dense page space to solving the first dozen levels. He then gives passwords for the stages he went through, and more to take you farther into the game, including tips for how to beat the levels that eight of those passwords take you to. It’s not perfectly thorough, but it’s as in-depth as Jeff’s coverage gets and it’s clear that he was digging this game. That’s further evidenced by his A- rating, and apparently the minus is only because the music is “inappropriate and uninspired.”

My guess is that this game didn’t begin life connected to Godzilla at all, and a little internet research shows that the Japanese game centered around a chibi Godzilla and all of the artwork was very cutesy. (Which still might not have been the original concept—why would you have any version of Godzilla climbing vines?)
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Another game I had. I enjoyed the start of it, but it got frustratingly hard. The puzzling wasn't so bad, but the monsters would respawn after some time. And some could only be hurt by pushing them into spikes, or crushing them with rocks, not with your "firebreath" (agreed, always thought it was a weird fist).
Also, if you take too long, that three-headed bird (or whatever, I don't know Godzilla monsters) would appear, be invincible, and kill you.

Also, some levels have two exots, sometomes leading just back to the level before. There is a map, and rooms you have solved are marked with the arrows going out, so if possible, you could avoid going back. But the 8x8 grid of levels are a maze itself, I think there are dead-ends (or just loops - if you go down in the first level, instead of right, you have to play four levels, before getting to the level that is right to the starting one, which you also could have accessed immediately), and you have to go back.

I beat it one time, with savestates, where I would make my way through all levels. It's a decent game.

I hope I'm not stealing your thunder, by going into detail here. I just find it nice to be able to talk about these obscure games that noone knows of.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
I hope I'm not stealing your thunder, by going into detail here. I just find it nice to be able to talk about these obscure games that noone knows of.
I welcome your participation because it makes the thread more fun for me!
 
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