The Old Grey Brick, She Ain't What She Used To Be - A Game Boy Thread

[Tegan]

aka "Tegan won't shut the fuck up about buying Game Boy cartridges so we might as well contain it to one thread."

So I'm gradually amassing a quality Game Boy library, focusing on -but not limited to- the GBA. Just this morning I put in a pre-order for Limited Run Games' reprint of the original Shantae (GBC), and this afternoon I snagged a fairly nicely-preserved copy of Pokémon Trading Card Game (GBC) for just ten bucks down at one of my usual thrift store haunts. Last weekend I managed to find Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 (GBA) at another thrift shop for fifteen, finally completing my set of all four Super Mario Advance games. I also got my eBay purchase of Polarium Advance (GBA) in the mail on Tuesday. It's been a very productive week for the collection!

Still, probably the coolest thing I've snagged recently was this eBay find: a complete-in-box copy of Hatena Satena (GBA), an obscure Japan-only puzzle game that plays like Picross + Minesweeper and looks like the most bonkers-ass Y2K-era Japanese pop art sensibilities you can imagine. It's fun as heck and I'm completely in love with the box art. I generally don't go for CIB at all, but this was (surprisingly) the cheapest option and actually looks so gorgeous that I might get a shadowbox for it and hang it on my wall.

 

[Kazin]

The Japanese GBA boxes were so cool looking. I remember the picture of your modded GBA sitting on a bunch of your GBA games from TT 2.0 - I'd love to see pictures of all your carts!

Before I sold off nearly all my games, I kept all my GB/GBC/GBA games in a shoebox - felt wrong. There are these standee things people sell on Etsy that display the carts all nice - I might get a small one for my (small) counterfeit collection I'm making.

 

[Tegan]

The Japanese GBA boxes were so cool looking. I remember the picture of your modded GBA sitting on a bunch of your GBA games from TT 2.0 - I'd love to see pictures of all your carts!

Oh right, I meant to take this photo two week ago when you asked.

Behooooold:

 

[Kazin]

Oh right, I meant to take this photo two week ago when you asked.

Behooooold:

Good stuff. That pink Game Boy Pocket rules! Is it stock or modded? What is that dongle underneath the Pikachu GBA SP? My best guess is it's a headphone adapter for the SP...

I need to play the Starfy games one of these days. I hope you can find a cheap copy of Minish Cap since Link to the Past looks all lonely up there! lol

 

[Tegan]

the pinky is made out of a busted-up Ice Blue Pocket with a good screen and an imported Japanese pink Pocket with a naff screen combined into one unit, with new buttons and a new lens. It was the first mod/repair job I ever did, but I wanna go back and do more to it (eg: backlight it and sort out the notorious power problems that the Pocket has). The Color is to be modded later; it's stock but has a broken headphone jack. And the dongle is a headphone adapter, yes.

Starfy is really good but they're all like 25% too long, I managed to snag all three in a bundle for only $25 (before shipping from Hokkaido). I want Minish Cap so bad. =__=

 

[Kazin]

I'm going to be attempting another Pocket backlight this weekend, probably - if you're not installing an IPS screen, be extremely careful during the process where you peel off the reflector. I broke two screens a few weeks ago doing that! I have another one I'm going to try out but I'm nervous about it lol.

Great collection, though, thanks for posting a picture, I love these goofy little carts and systems haha

 

[Vidfamne]

I haven't thought about Ham-Hams Unite in a long time, but now that I see it, I find that it may surprisingly have been the most lasting GBC game I've played (not that I have played many), although Pokemon TCG certainly wins on replayability. Some games are best absorbed into nostalgia...

There's such sympathy in seeing the "everyday" environments being reshaped and reinterpreted by the small, nimble hamsters -- the tea shop in the primary school's handicrafts room, or a certain lovestruck hamster working on an ice statue of his beloved in the supermarket's cold storage, or the "Ruins" (probably my favourite place) made from a jumble of broken and discarded household objects. It's all not unlike make-believe games ("the floor is lava" etc.) that six-year-olds certainly still play.

By associating each action with a word in "hamster argot" and a little animation to accompany it, the game also allowed you to create custom dance routines to such evergreens as a tinny excerpt of Ravel's Boléro*. When my father recognized that, he asked me with a surprised smile what was going on in the game.

* "I have only created one masterwork in my life, which is the Boléro; sadly, it does not contain music" (Maurice Ravel)

 

[conchobhar]

The GB Hamtaro games are genuinely great. Obviously very simple, but really creative and charming.

 

[Phantoon]

Scurge: Hive? I see you are a woman of culture.jpg

Nobody ever talks about it so I guess it's pretty obscure, but it's an isometric Metroidalike. It's pretty great.

 

[q 3]

I'm still patiently waiting for that pirate-themed Advance Wars game from the Scurge: Hive devs. Surely it will be shadow dropped any day now!

 

[Phantoon]

I'm still patiently waiting for that pirate-themed Advance Wars game from the Scurge: Hive devs. Surely it will be shadow dropped any day now!

I didn't even know that could've been a thing and now I'm sad it wasn't

 

[Riot.EXE]

Scurge: Hive? I see you are a woman of culture.jpg

Nobody ever talks about it so I guess it's pretty obscure, but it's an isometric Metroidalike. It's pretty great.

I still have my copy. I've yet to beat it...and god damn does that game get NOISY near the end...(Plays great on the Game Boy Player, though. The analog stick on the gamecube controller lends itself well to the isometric controls)

 

[muteKi]

How's it compare to the DS version?

 

[Tegan]

Ham-Hams Unite is brilliant; the idea of a game about overcoming a language barrier is such a strong concept and it's kind of startling that it isn't used more often.

 

[Riot.EXE]

How's it compare to the DS version?

It's one of those, "The other screen is a map" games...

 

[Sarge]

Nice collection! Definitely dig that you've got Drill Dozer, Scurge: Hive, and the Starfy games.

If I remember right, there were a couple of graphical flourishes that were in the GBA version of Scurge: Hive that weren't in the DS game. I need to poke around and make sure I'm remembering that right, though.

(Yep, found it.)

 

[Phantoon]

My GBA stash (I'll do the Classic / Colour another time:

I managed to forget Zelda aLttP / Four Swords but otherwise complete. I think you'll be able to see my next candidate for modification...

 

[Kazin]

I need to get Wario Ware Twisted. It's one of the few games I actually have to have a legit copy of because of the special hardware inside the cart lol.

I wonder how much Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon is going for these days - I prefer the GBA version to the Genesis one of that game.

 

[Phantoon]

Wario Ware Twisted was an import, that never came out over here. Being an English Nintendo fan was "fun"

 

[Kazin]

Wario Ware Twisted was an import, that never came out over here. Being an English Nintendo fan was "fun"

That's always been the case, hasn't it? You missed out on tons of stuff back then. Didn't Squaresoft almost entirely ignore your continent for like two decades or some crap? Lol

 

[Phantoon]

That's always been the case, hasn't it? You missed out on tons of stuff back then. Didn't Squaresoft almost entirely ignore your continent for like two decades or some crap? Lol

Yep! The one and only Squaresoft game we got before Final Fantasy VII (outside of Game Boy stuff) was Secret of Mana. About a year late, so everyone who knew what it was had already imported. After it (I presume) then bombed, that was that.

 

[Sarge]

I kinda regret not snagging the GBA port of FFVI, but I passed since I still had my SNES version. I didn't do that with FFIV, but I bought that cheap, although to say the GBA port is sub-optimal is an understatement. The ATB system is outright broken.

I wonder how much Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon is going for these days - I prefer the GBA version to the Genesis one of that game.

According to PriceCharting, approaching $40 for a loose cart.

 

[Kazin]

I kinda regret not snagging the GBA port of FFVI, but I passed since I still had my SNES version. I didn't do that with FFIV, but I bought that cheap, although to say the GBA port is sub-optimal is an understatement. The ATB system is outright broken.

I rewrote a repro GBA cart with the sound restoration hack for both FFV and FFVI and I'm really happy I did. Kinda wish I could combo the palette fix with the sound fix for VI, though...

According to PriceCharting, approaching $40 for a loose cart.

Wow. Well, good game, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[MetManMas]

I kinda regret not snagging the GBA port of FFVI, but I passed since I still had my SNES version.

The novelty of portable FFVI on GBA was nice but I really wish that Square Enix had TOSE port the game to the Nintendo DS instead of releasing it as one last hurrah for the Game Boy Advance. The game clearly needed more time in the oven and more power, resolution, and buttons than the GBA could offer.

I mean, Chrono Trigger DS wasn't perfect, but it was a helluva lot less compromised than FF6 was.

 

[That Old Chestnut]

This is my stash. Some of these are recent finds (within the past 3-4 years or so), and some I've had since like forever.

The natty looking one with no label is Super Mario Advance, and the Advance Wars 2 got its label scuffed up due to an unintentional trip through the washing machine (which it survived!). Kinda jealous of all those pristine labels upthread!

I stuck my Wario amiibo in there because Wario.

 

[Phantoon]

Very nice! I'm wondering where half my Game Boys are otherwise I'd post my Game Boy stash

 

[ThornGhost]

Everyone posting here should know: this is a good thread and seeing all the Game Boy goods is great. Keep it up, I may try and sort of collect up my stash as well.

I'm honestly a little surprised at how many of you have the Classic NES Series games. I mean, it's TT so obviously yeah, but those always seemed like such a poor value proposition to me. Maybe it was just because I was in a time of life where money was tighter but I could never justify dropping (if I recall) full price on a single NES game for GBA. I don't think I have any, even with collecting games post GBA EOL.

 

[Phantoon]

It's portable NES goodness, which at the time was otherwise impossible.

I wouldn't go after them now!

 

[Kazin]

Everyone posting here should know: this is a good thread and seeing all the Game Boy goods is great. Keep it up, I may try and sort of collect up my stash as well.

I'm honestly a little surprised at how many of you have the Classic NES Series games. I mean, it's TT so obviously yeah, but those always seemed like such a poor value proposition to me. Maybe it was just because I was in a time of life where money was tighter but I could never justify dropping (if I recall) full price on a single NES game for GBA. I don't think I have any, even with collecting games post GBA EOL.

It's portable NES goodness, which at the time was otherwise impossible.

I wouldn't go after them now!

Even at the time, I thought they were bad deals. The only one I'd have considered was Metroid, but I could play that on Fusion!

Eventually I will post a picture here of all my Gameboy stuff. I want to "finish" my repros and they are taking forever and a day to get here from China.

 

[Phantoon]

I was going to say that "Original Metroid isn't that great of a game" but I bought Ice Climber so the joke's on me