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

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Snoopy_-_Magic_Show_(USA_Europe)_tcUnMu4Co7Hr58UN1erLqr.png


Snoopy’s Magic Show


Woodstock has been bird-napped! Snoopy must brave a maze full of pushable and breakable blocks, teleporters, and deadly magic balls to rescue all of the birds.

Jeff calls this a “Blockout maze-type game,” and I have no idea what he means by that, because Blockout is 3D Tetris and this has nothing to do with that? It’s an action-puzzle game in a similar vein to Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle or Godzilla, with unique levels that you need to solve while also being careful of semi-random hazards. (And it gives me a similar vibe that the game was developed and then the licensed characters were slotted in—there’s nothing in this game that makes the action or puzzles unique to Snoopy. And even the “magic show” part feels tacked-on to explain how Snoopy can destroy blocks.)

Jeff gives passwords and walkthroughs for the first 20 levels (of 100+) and a lot of that space is distinguishing O from 0 and I from 1, because the passwords use the full alphabet. While you still need to account for the erratically bouncing balls, his walkthroughs are decent ways to handle each level and still get a big clear-time bonus. Jeff then gives a collection of additional passwords, though he doesn’t actually note what stages each one takes you to (they’re for stages 21-43). Jeff doesn’t actually tell you “how to win,” but I think we’ve abandoned expecting that by this point. (Admittedly, I’d hoped for a late-game password or two so I could see the really crazy levels. Ah, well.)

Snoopy moves slowly compared to the balls, and the slightest graze of his hitbox kills you. You get used to it quickly and needing to plan ahead works with the puzzle nature of the game. This game is otherwise very good at being its own tutorial, doling out the new challenges one at a time so you learn how to handle them: Pushable blocks, breakable blocks, blocks that appear and disappear over time, teleporters (that affect the balls), one-way floors (that do not), the invincibility power-up, etc.

Jeff gives this an A, saying it’s fun for the whole family and delighting that the licensed characters actually look like they’re supposed to. I think the best review you can give a game like this is to note that this 64kb game made for a monochrome 2.5” screen more than 30 years ago still commanded my son’s attention for a solid half-hour despite 10,000 other games available on the same retro handheld. The Peanuts IP might be tacked-on, but the game itself is solid and entertaining.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
A game I actually played.
An uncle had it, so I never had much time with it. I did have fun, but I also remember it getting hard fast. Even years later, when I tried it with an emulator for infinite lives (I assume they are finite here?), I couldn't get very far.
And as tacked-on as the characters are, Snoopy and Woodstock are nice designs, and definitely add to the charm of the game. Even without being a fan of the peanuts (they aren't much of a thing here), I liked their sprites, and that made me enjoy the game more.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
SolarStriker_(World)_tU6jVvuR5Tw4Yi19fGFQrp.png


Solarstriker

“It’s those old rats from Reticulon,” Jeff informs us, “come to earth in the year 2159 intent on conquest.” Better blast them all!

This is a vertical shoot-em-up, which I feel like was an under-represented genre on the original Game Boy. Jeff is very upfront with the fact that “everything’s going to depend on the player’s speed and reflexes.” And I don’t claim to be amazing at shmups, but I think that’s ultimately a true statement. Even ones like this where the encounters are 100% fixed aren’t really memorizable (because the enemy bullets often matter more than the position of the ships), so you learn the basic strategies and then you just practice.

Jeff does a decent job hitting those basic strategies: Stay near the bottom of the screen; don’t chase perfection; don’t trap yourself in corners; fight bosses by watching their bullets (to dodge) and shooting continuously and you’ll win eventually. He then gives semi-complete “walkthroughs” of the first four stages anyway (which aren’t really useful to try to follow), and ends that coverage with the comment that the game gets so fast afterwards that you’ll just be shooting and dodging blindly. Which I’ll contest, because while again I’m not amazing at shmups, levels 5 and 6 of this are far from the worst I’ve seen. I’m guessing he got tripped up by the Blazer enemies, which are really tough to kill and zoom down at you very quickly. (Basically, you can’t kill them unless you have Turbo Missiles AND you happen to be in the right place to concentrate fire you them right when they appear. So really you just need to dodge them.)

Jeff gives this a C, complaining about the enemies being “faceless,” the low variety of power-ups, and the lack of passwords or warps. The power-ups complaint is the only one I think is valid (a shield power-up or a diagonal laser would have been awesome). I give them credit for making each of the six stages look and feel a little different (despite the gameplay staying the same) as there’s a new (nice for the era) background in each stage and they’re still pulling out new enemy sprites with new movement patterns on stage 6. And the monochrome graphics on the Game Boy are actually a benefit here, because you never worry about bullets blending into the background. Like many of the action-puzzle games on the Game Boy, this is a great pick-up-and-play title, which you can play ten minutes of at a go and it’ll entertain you (without costing additional quarters like an arcade machine), and the fact it has an actual ending is kinda secondary to that.

Jeff also makes the odd comment that “This is one of the oldest kinds of Nintendo games, harking back to Alpha Mission for the NES.” Which…yes, but Alpha Mission is a mostly-forgotten 1985 game and Xevious (from two years earlier) is the really obvious founder of the genre. Or you could go all the way to Space Invaders and then Galaxian, for the through-line. (Jeff’s painstaking minutes of research really show!)
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
To be fair to Jeff Rovins investigation skills, I think that Xevious’ NES port came some time after Alpha Mission in the US.

However I think 1942 is older than either
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Solar Striker is a game that I think somehow transcends the sum of its parts. It's a very basic shooter, but there's something about it that feels really nice to play.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
To be fair to Jeff Rovins investigation skills, I think that Xevious’ NES port came some time after Alpha Mission in the US.

However I think 1942 is older than either
Okay, fair, the NA NES port of Xevious was in 1988, and 1942 was in 1986...and the NES port of Alpha Mission was released in 1987. Honestly, still sloppy work on Jeff's part.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Amazing_Spider-Man_The_(USA_Europe).png


Spider-Man


Would you like to do whatever a spider can? This is your opportunity, and by the way, the Sinister Six have kidnapped Mary Jane and you need to defeat them to save her.

Just in case you thought my lack of DC Comics games would bizarrely translate into owning Marvel Comics games...nope! Never played this, or pretty much any home console Marvel-branded game of the era. (I played the arcade beat-em-ups, and they were excellent. And honestly still are, for that matter.)

Interestingly, people often thought that I wasn’t reading Marvel comics titles because they were “the enemy,” but no, it was mostly because I didn’t get them in bulk for free the way I did DC titles. There were a few eras where my dad had good relationships with his counterpart at Marvel and we’d get stacks of their books, but there were also eras at Marvel where they cut down the “comp list” to the absolute bone. Peter David—one of their most popular writers for a while—once complained that he was more likely to get free helicopter rides than free comics out of the Marvel management.

Regarding the game, the first problem we had was that neither the game itself nor Jeff explains the controls, so Babywulf and I had a genuine “How do I shot web” moment and had to look up a scan of the manual. (The “move and jump then hold the attack button for web” to go into swinging mode is absolutely not intuitive.)

Jeff does his usual stage-by-stage walkthrough, neglecting useful facts like killing “Manholes” by stomping on them in favor of worthless suggestions to attack most enemies while crouching—which makes it much more likely you’ll take a collision hit while trying to kill them. See, the hitboxes in this game are a Problem, similar to Fist of the North Star, in that Spidey has a hard time getting close enough to enemies to connect with his kicks without touching them and taking damage. And the mercy invincibility is woefully inadequate—one hit very often turns into two or three because you don’t have time to react after realizing you’re taking damage.

But you can’t fall back to shooting web at everything because it’s limited-use and you also need your webshooters to swing through certain areas. And the game is terrible about telegraphing which areas you can cross with a long jump and which you need to use precious web fluid on. AS IS JEFF! His stage walkthroughs also don’t warn you when just jumping rather than swinging will kill you, which is a horrendous oversight.

I did think the vertical wall-crawl dodge-em-up segments were fun, specifically because they use the spider-sense as a gameplay element: If a falling object is heading straight for you, the spider-sense buzz will appear while it’s still off-screen, giving you an extra fraction of a second to move out of the way. That’s clever! (The fact that pressing the jump button during these sections just kills you because you jump off the wall…less clever.)

Jeff gives this a B and says that Batman is more fun. I’m with him (actually, I’d probably drop this to a C), and that’s not because of company loyalty: It’s because Batman never runs out of batarangs.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Batman is most certainly the superior game, accuracy to the source material be darned.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I don’t know if a Batman who guns down everything is a better or worse interpretation of the character than a Spider-Man who you can barely control
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Another game I played a lot of, my cousin owned it. I'll go a bit in depth, because I have a lot of fondness for it. Maybe because I always loved Spiderman.

The game consists of eight levels, basically two sets of four. The first is in the city, on the street, and I think there are no infinite pits. You fight Mysterio at the end, who mainly stands there, and then transforms into a moving puff of smoke that moves around in a straight, diagonal line, and bounces of the walls of the screen. In that state, he is invincible, and will hurt you if you touch him. Easy level.

I didn't know Mysterio, in the cartoon I saw (the one with Iceman and Firestar), he hadn't appeared. At least not in the episodes I saw. Which weren't a lot. I only had Austrian tv, which didn't show it. It did show on German tv, which my cousin could watch, as they had a satelite dish. So I only saw a handful of episodes. I mainly remember one with Sandman, who listens in on Peter, I guess, as Sandman has turned into a bench that Peter and someone else is sitting on.

The second is, as mentioned, a level where you climb a building. There are windows with enemies, which you have to punch so that they go away. No boss here.

The third is on top of buildings (I find it neat, that this follows after you climbed up a skyscraper). Here you have a lot of bottomless pits, of course, because as we all know, if Spiderman falls, he will die, like every other person. He has no special power to prevent death here, totally not. At the end, you fight the Green Goblin (edit: Hobgoblin - especially for this fight, basically the same character, though he does throw strange balls onto you, instead of gliding into you), who, I think, only moves around on his glider, which you have to dodge while attacking him. If my memory is correct, it's another easy boss.

I knew the Green Goblin. But I only realised years later, that this was supposed to be him on his glider.

Next we are on a train. I don't remember much about it, it's basically like the first level, probably with typical hazards of levels where you are on moving trains. You fight the Scorpion, who I also didn't know. I interpreted his tail as the part of a vacuum cleaner, that you use to vacuum stuff up.

Then we start with the second set, another level outside. This time, I think, in a park. I mainly remember trees, and chestnuts falling down on you, as hazards. You fight Rhino, another villain I didn't know. I guess I really only watched a very low, handful of episodes back then. How did I not know these weirdos. I think the battle is just him ramming into you, and you having to jump over him. As the other battles, I remember it being easy.

Then we get the second level, where you climb up a building. Maybe it's only here, that enemies look out of windows, and you have to hit them. Again, no boss.

Level 7 is another one on rooftops, with way more bottomless pits. The boss is Dr. Octopus, and it's awful. Edit: After watching the LP, I realized that I remembered this fight completely wrong. I think the problem was more, that you often had no choice but run into the Doc. Don't know why I died so often there, back then.

Level 8, the final one, is in the sewers. I don't remember anything about this, aside from you fighting Venom. Who I, again, didn't know, and just accepted as Evil Spiderman, which is pretty much correct, anyway. This fight is pretty hard, even without bottomless pits. I think if you fall into the sewer water, you don't lose health, but get even less agile, which is bad for fighting Venom. Maybe, my memory is hazy. I mainly remember him moving up and down on one side of the screen, while shooting black goo at you. I think he then jumps to the other side, and does it from there again?
Edit: After watching the LP, I have no idea why I had so much trouble with that fight.

Anyway, at some point, I did beat this game. And while I can't believe it, because it sounds really dumb, I remember it being very confusing, as the game would show the words Game Over on the screen. Even without knowing englisch, I knew these words, and they meant I failed. So I had no idea what I did wrong, and why I lost the game, after defeating Evil Spiderman.

And that's all. Thanks for giving me a chance to talk about this game, Beowulf.

Edit: I'm watching an LP now (here, give it a look, if nothing else just to see the goofy portraits of the enemies) . I forgot an important detail: There are two jumps. You normally do a low jump. Only with some momentum, after walking a bit, can you do a high jump. Not having read the manual, this shortly stumped me, as I couldn't jump over some boxes in the first level.
Also, you need the high jump to reach the upper part in Docs fight. Which made it even harder.

Also, damn, the game was developed by Rare.
 
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jpfriction

(He, Him)
This one sticks out in my mind as the only gameboy title I ever rented. There was a rental shop in town that had a handful of gameboy carts for what feels like a month in retrospect. I don’t think it lasted long.

I figured out the webswinging on my own somehow (in my memory he just started doing it if you held the jump button down but that’s probably faulty), I don’t think I beat the first stage.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Something you learn about Rare over the years (exacerbated by currently watching Jeff Gerstmann running through the entire NES library) is that they were insanely prolific. But that meant that they were often churning out titles that were... less than quality. I'd wager a lot of their stuff was on either money or time crunches, because they certainly released some bangers as well.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Level 7 is another one on rooftops, with way more bottomless pits. The boss is Dr. Octopus, and it's awful. Edit: After watching the LP, I realized that I remembered this fight completely wrong. I think the problem was more, that you often had no choice but run into the Doc. Don't know why I died so often there, back then.
Yeah, I though Doc Ock was the worst of the bosses because I couldn't find a way to avoid taking hits when he crossed the central platform. Venom was comparatively easy (just long) because you just stay on the left and either jump and hit him (if he comes down the left) or dodge his shots (if he comes down the right).

Thanks for your analysis! I'm appreciating the additional commentary.
 

Beowulf

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


Star Trek: The Next Generation

You are a Starfleet cadet, training in a holodeck simulation as acting captain of the starship Enterprise. For each mission, Captain Picard with give you your task, and Riker, Data, La Forge, Worf, and O’Brian will be standing by to take your orders.

Another bonus post! I became a Star Trek fan around the same time I got a Game Boy, and Next Generation was my primary affection at the time. I eventually watched the original series by taping late-night reruns, and watched DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise as they aired over the next decade and change. I also read pretty much every Star Trek novel that was available in the 90s. So of course I was going to buy the TNG Game Boy game when it came out.

This game is a minigame collection disguised as a starship simulator. There’s no plot and the characters are there as setpieces. The missions are procedurally generated and generally consist of “Destroy enemy ships,” “Beam people out of a dangerous situation,” or “Go get things in one place and take them somewhere else.” The specific minigames are the ship-to-ship combat, the Transporter hot-and-cold seek-and-find, the “fly through the squares” to enter orbit, the “direct the sparks” boosting systems. (Though you also need to do things like, “remember to raise the shields” and such.) An example might be “retrieve a generator from Risa and deliver it to a colony on Krios before their life support systems fail.” You need to warp to Risa, maneuver to the planet at impulse, enter orbit, beam up the generator, leave orbit, warp to Krios, maneuver to the planet at impulse, enter orbit, and beam down the generator. (At any point in this, you could tell Geordi to boost power to the Transporters and do that minigame to make the beam-up minigame easier.)

As you successfully complete missions you get higher ranks (which you can resume via the password system), but the game has no official ending or winning screen—once you make Captain rank, you just keep doing missions forever.

I can’t decide whether Jeff would try to give walkthroughs of different mission types or just decide to do general tips; though my gut says the latter. “Remember to raise shields and arm weapons before going into battle!” “If you forget what your mission is, Commander Riker will tell you!” “Try not to fight too many enemy ships at once; you’ll be easy pickings!” And he’d definitely have gotten the five rank passwords somewhere: They’re the very obviously pre-generated: Q (Ensign), BARCLAY (Lieutenant), TOMALAK (Lt. Commander), RO LAREN (Commander), LOCUTUS (Captain).

Jeff wouldn’t give this a high rating, though, and look, this game wasn’t actually that great. It was aimed at kids who thought Star Trek was cool and wanted to go whizzing around shooting Klingons and beaming colonists off exploding planets. It captures nothing from the actual show—heck, there’s no option to ever open hailing frequencies, much less learn about new life or new civilizations. I’m pretty sure I had not actually touched the cart since the mid-90s until I went to replay it for this project.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Heads-up, True Believers: I'm down to my last half-dozen entries (and the last two games in the book). As you might have noticed, I'm following Jeff's lead and going alphabetically. If you have a request for a game from earlier in the alphabet you'd like to see me do some commentary on, let me know!
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I played a LOT of Solar Striker. One of those games where my parents didn't realize it was shooting, or didn't care since it was space and pretty abstract. I can't remember how far I got in it though.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Is the Game Boy game basically the same as the NES version? My brain is saying yes, but I honestly don't know if there are big differences.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I did play the Gameboy version before and it was a bit daunting for a 9 year old who had no access to a manual or any familiar with the show.

I figured it would have been a shooter or a Space Zelda or something
 

Beowulf

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


Super Mario Land


Princess Daisy of Sarasaland has been kidnapped by Tatanga! Save her, Mario!

The last two games in the book are two that I know very well. (Yep, this is another that I did a nice detailed Let’s Play for!) Jeff goes REALLY in-depth with Super Mario Land—he’s got a detailed walkthrough for the entire game, beginning to end. He dedicates a whopping 40 pages of the 214-page book to this one game. And it’s honestly unnecessary? Like, I know why he did it: It’s both the most popular action game on the system and one of the easiest (and fairest) ones, so he had both the motive and the opportunity to devote page count to it. But it’s so detailed that by the time I’d read out the walkthrough Babywulf had already blazed through that section of the level.

This was one of the first few games I got for my Game Boy (this, Tetris, Rolan’s Curse, and Gargoyle’s Quest, if I remember correctly), and after many years of practice it’s the sort of game where I get annoyed at myself for not playing perfectly, not that I have any concerns I won’t actually get through it. Watching Babywulf play it actually reminded me that it’s still a pretty difficult game. Sure, I can beat it straight through with only a few careless deaths, but that’s 30 years of practice talking. Jeff’s walkthrough might actually be useful, if just to alert new players of falling bricks/spikes, or that you need to ride the boulders in World 3, or that you can run through two of the bosses and take a hit to reach the switch and automatically win.

Amusingly, Jeff notes at the end of his coverage in a “Extra Tips” section that if you beat the game twice you can do a stage select, but “Are there batteries that last that long?” If you aren’t dying frequently, you can beat SML in under half an hour without doing any speedrunning tricks. (…This is common for Game Boy games of the era, upon reflection.) He also notes you can get infinite lives by looping stage 1/1 by collecting the 1up and coins right after the Star; but frankly that requires the sort of patience that WILL run down your batteries. And he suggested a trick Babywulf tried, where you hold A when you hit the exit door and through the time-countdown so it immediately clicks in the bonus stage, which he claims will get you three extra Marios each time. I suspect that’s dependent on the terrible randomizer of the original brick; it didn’t work for us on emulator.

Jeff gives this an A. Which, duh. It’s fantastic. It’s a top-tier Game Boy game mostly dethroned only by its own sequels. Fun fact: Super Mario Land sold 25 million copies, more than Super Mario Bros. 3!
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Yep, great game. Replayed it some weeks ago, for the first time in decades, still a short, fun game. I mean, "short", considering the era, 12 levels that aren't super short are a decent length.

Did Jeff mention what we called "elevators"? These hidden bricks in Level 1-4 and 3-4, which are on the very left of the level. And when you hit them, they appear, you can jump on them and they will bring you up through the ceiling, so that you can run up there, avoiding everything for some time.

No idea how well-known they are, and in my replay, I didn't find the second one.

Also, I didn't know there was a level select. Don't think I ever beat it twice in a row. The second runthrough is nearly identical to the first, so I probably stopped when reaching it.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Did Jeff mention what we called "elevators"? These hidden bricks in Level 1-4 and 3-4, which are on the very left of the level. And when you hit them, they appear, you can jump on them and they will bring you up through the ceiling, so that you can run up there, avoiding everything for some time.
In 1-3 and 3-3, you mean? Jeff found the first one, but not the second.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Yeah, right, three levels per world, not four.

I'm sure there is one in 3-3, but it might be a false memory.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Heads-up, True Believers: I'm down to my last half-dozen entries (and the last two games in the book). As you might have noticed, I'm following Jeff's lead and going alphabetically. If you have a request for a game from earlier in the alphabet you'd like to see me do some commentary on, let me know!
Might not be an early game (I'm too lazy to look the year up), but I had an Addams Family game (simply called "The Addams Family"). Would be nice, if you took a look. Here is a longplay, just so you can look if it's the right game. I assume there are multiple Addams Family games on the gameboy, and they all might have such general titles.

Watching the start, I do like the vibes of it.
 

nataeryn

Discovered Construction
(he/him)
SML is the first game i owned as a kid. i got a gameboy, SML and Tetris. I and my brother played it quite a bit that christmas break. I distinctly remember the submarine and i know i could make it to the level with i think an airplane. considering how we rarely made it deep into SMB3 (not counting warp whistle usage) and SML2, SML must have been on the easier/shorter side.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Might not be an early game (I'm too lazy to look the year up), but I had an Addams Family game (simply called "The Addams Family").
I remember trying that at some point--I'll check it out and see if I can get an entry together.

SML is the first game i owned as a kid. i got a gameboy, SML and Tetris. I and my brother played it quite a bit that christmas break. I distinctly remember the submarine and i know i could make it to the level with i think an airplane. considering how we rarely made it deep into SMB3 (not counting warp whistle usage) and SML2, SML must have been on the easier/shorter side.
I feel like SML2, because it had both the battery saves and the more open world, was easier to make and maintain progress on. As opposed to SMB3 which I feel like there were lots of levels of that I didn't see until the Super Mario All-Stars cart.

Also of note, YouTube suggested Game Boy Games You Played in 1990, which heavily overlaps with the games in Jeff's book
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Tetris_(V1.0)_(JU)_!_.png


Tetris

“Type: Placing odd shapes into neat piles.” Jeff, I can tell you’ve given up and just want to get this off to the copyeditor. Anyway, Tetrads fall from above and they are the only villains; you need to line them up for points and try to get a rocket ship or Russian dancers.

Jeff refers to the shapes as Tetrads. I was wondering when “Tetrimino” became the standard, and the rabbit hole of the internet took me to the Tetris Guideline. Short answer: Tetrimino became the standard in 2001. Some older guides use Tetromino (the mathematical term), or the alternate spelling Tetramino. Tetrad was the common fan term before that, was used by Nintendo Power in 1989, and was used for the macguffins in Zoda's Revenge: Startropics II. But the Game Boy Tetris manual? It calls them “blocks.”

As is sensible, we get three pages of general strategies in bullet-point form, and they aren’t bad, but they also aren’t the best list I’ve ever seen: Don’t bury holes in the pile. Try to leave a block sticking up on an otherwise flat surface so you have a place for Zs. Put Flat Tetrads where they’re most useful. Leave the middle open when your stack gets high. (He also seems to think the falling Tetrads speed up as your stack gets higher and warns against putting an upright flat Tetrad too high. This is not true.) Now, everyone has their preferences and I’m not going to say leaving the middle open might not work for some players, but it doesn’t work for me as it forces you to think about two distinct stacks rather than one.

As a longtime veteran Tetris player, my #1 tip is “Don’t force yourself to lose while praying for a long piece.” There really is no better strategy than to keep the stack under control. Nintendo Power recommended building your stack as a slope to the left or right, so you can plug in an L (or even a T) for a 2-line if the stack gets too high while you wait for the long piece. It’s useful to keep an eye on what’s coming next and make sure you have a space for it, and as you play you get a sense of what kinds of spaces you need for each block. (Jeff’s advice to not leave a surface 100% smooth is actually pretty good.)

Jeff gives this an A as well, and again, it’s absolutely deserved. This game sold the Game Boy, and it became the gold standard by which puzzle-casual games are judged. (Though it does seem my skills have atrophied—I couldn’t actually beat B-Type Level 9 High 5 as I was preparing this entry.)

Tetris was the last full game Jeff covered. He’s got 3 pages of “Game Boy Mini-Tips” (a paragraph each for 9 games I didn’t own and don’t particularly care about) and 2 pages of “Lynx Mini-Tips”, the latter being a slate of passwords for Chip’s Challenge, Electrocop, and Gates of Zendocon. Honestly, this supports my theory that Jeff was on a BBS or had some similar source of passwords for games independent of finding them himself. I will say that if I had a Lynx rather than a Game Boy, but got this book for the “special section of tips,” I would feel very much cheated.

We saw 30 games from the book, 8 of which I owned back in the day. Did Jeff successfully teach us “How To Win” any of them? Arguably a handful, but he was more likely to leave you high and dry two-thirds of the way through a game; and his walkthroughs contain some glaring omissions and outright falsehoods. But that’s a wrap on Jeff himself! Anyone want a free book?

Fortunately, I’m not done: I have a few more bonus posts before my full wrap-up of this project.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
I guess Jeff decided at the start, that he wanted to give each game a type, and when realizing that this was harder then he expected, he didn't do the sensible thing, and just get rid of it. Over the last few games (if not all, I don't remember), the type he put games in always felt weird and forced. Oh well, can happen.

The same thing probably with this whole "villains" thing. It strikes me as very weird, to think of anything in Tetris as a villain/enemy. It makes a weird kind of sense, but is essentially pointless.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed the thread, and will keep enjoying it, as long as you keep adding posts. I'll just now thank you for doing the work, even though you likely had quite some fun with it, too.
 
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