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So I found this awesome GameBoy listing on eBay last weekend, and it finally found its way home. Need to get a cable to check if the printer works. Screen has some dead spots.  Let's bust out the soldering iron! and fixed, let's check those games!  Uh oh, batteries dead though... let's fix it!  Tada!
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Jul 28, 2019 08:47
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doctorfrog posted:If you gotta stall out, you could do worse than Egypt, which has the best map music in the universe. I can confirm this, having also stalled out in Egypt
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Jul 28, 2019 18:23
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On the 8th map now. Will finish tomorrow probably.
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Jul 29, 2019 05:12
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  Really satisfying final map. Very happy I played through this. The stages were really good about being fair in their difficulty, overall. Some just required a few attempts to get the execution down right, but I never felt like any levels were unfair. Look forward to the next game.
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Jul 31, 2019 00:13
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So yeah I definetely had to tap out at the level in world 5 where you basically have to build your own platforms. Not that I think it's impossible, I just don't have the time to think through it. Still, got a couple of good streams out of the game and it was a lot of fun to finally see what the fuss was about with it. It's really neat to see how so much of Mario's 64-bit moveset is shared with this game in weird ways (the triple jump ending with the flourish, the backflips, etc. )
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Jul 31, 2019 01:44
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Finished the game without using save states. They really are insanely generous with the extra lives although I think that I used 15 of them on the final boss   It was a great pack in game for the super gameboy. Difficulty was fairly evenly spread barring a small handful of levels. Now I'm a little more interested in the DS and 3DS follow up although I've heard mixed things. Looking forward to what the next pick is for August. Edit: Also here is some ridiculous poo poo for stage 5-10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylUGLZat8Os Moop Moop fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 05:12
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I'm suuuuuper pissed cuz I made it all the way to the last stage last week and then had no time to beat it because our lease is up and we had to move... into storage units because our new apartment isn't habitable yet :/ Doubt I'll have time to finish it up tomorrow. Such a fantastic game, though! Excited for the next one.
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Jul 31, 2019 05:30
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Work is a bit insane at the moment so I don't think I'm going to finish the game by the deadline but I'm going to take a drat good crack at it. I'll still be posting our next game as normal tomorrow. Extremely excited for this next one as I've never actually played it before.
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Jul 31, 2019 10:03
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Hello again, my old nemesis.... Edit: I'm pretty sure young Mode 7 had to have his older cousin beat Airplane for him. Thankfully I am now much more skilled at games  
Mode 7 fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 14:01
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This month was very busy for me, so I couldn't put much time into DK as I would have liked. However, what little I did play was fantastic. The game felt like a proper sequel to the original arcade game. I love the moveset, so many options and it controlled great. Contrasted with Monster Max, which had a very (intentionally) restrictive moveset, DK was a huge improvement over it's controls.
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Jul 31, 2019 14:15
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Unfortunately I only made it to 7-4 in Donkey Kong before I had to retire for the night, but I'm definitely going to go back and finish that game when I have time. I absolutely love the sound design in the game, the variety of in-level and map-screen tunes certainly but the sound effects are wonderful; Donkey Kong's gurgling roar is stuck very firmly in my head along with the end of level music-jingle and the dash sound of Mario speeding into the unlocked door you've just opened.
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Aug 1, 2019 00:35
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 Game of the Month for August 2019! The Game Boy was home to many ports over the course of its life - sometimes, these were straight up ports (or at least, attempts of straight up ports) of NES (or later, SNES) games. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening started out as such an attempt - was it possible to recreate The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past on Nintendo's tiny handheld that could? As it turns out, the answer was no - but instead we got a beautiful, charming, quirky entry in the Zelda series that remains many people's favourite (including mine) to this day.  We're not going to play Link's Awakening this month though - it's a well known, insanely popular game and thus a little out of the scope of what I'd hoped to do with this thread. But we are going to play the game that indirectly helped make it possible! Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru ("For the Frog the Bell Tolls")  I've always been a fan of Nintendo R&D 1 - as you might have guessed from my avatar, I love the Wario games – and R&D 1’s Game Boy outings are often full of charming weirdness. For example, compare pretty much anything in Super Mario Land or Super Mario Land 2 (or hell, Wario Land which was really Super Mario Land 3) to the big brother Super Mario Bros games on Nintendo’s home consoles. Developed by Team Shikamaru – a club within R&D 1 consisting of Makoto Kano, Yoshio Sakamoto and Toru Osawa – and an external company Intelligent Systems who regularly contributed programming work to Nintendo’s games development, it was released in Japan on September 14th, 1992.  For the Frog the Bell Tolls is an Adventure-RPG featuring automated combat (bump into enemies to fight them), top down exploration segments and side-scrolling platformer-esque dungeon segments. The engine that For the Frog the Bell Tolls was built on would later form the basis for Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – in a cameo, Richard from this game appears in Link’s Awakening requesting Link’s help to get back into his castle! Although it was never released outside of Japan, in 2011 an English translation was made available via Romhacking.net - you can find it at https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1623/  A pre-patched English rom is readily available through your good friend Google, but should you want to patch your own rom, you can use Romhacking.net’s online rom patcher at https://www.romhacking.net/patch/ - simply add your .gb rom file, add the .ips file you downloaded from the link above as your patch file, click the button and away you go. If you encounter any issues patching the rom, please send me a PM and I will be happy to help sort it out. Your challenge this month! Between 01/08/2019 12:00:00AM GMT and 31/07/2019 11:59:59PM GMT…. Level 1 – Chat  As is now the standard, simply play the game and chat about it in the thread. Love it? Hate it? Know some interesting trivia? Let us know! Level 2 – Complete  Finish the game and post proof of your victory. You may use any means available to you in order to do so, including walkthroughs, save-states, cheats, glitches, other posters in the thread etc. Level 3 – Challenge  Finish the game and post proof of your victory – you must not use any save-states, cheats or glitches and the use of a walkthrough is not permitted. This is on the honor system, obviously, but I love and trust you all. Mode 7 fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 00:51
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Ooh, great pick but I'll actually have to consider if I play this one. You see, there's been a GBC port in development for a few years now that I've been following. The rom hacker took a break to do the Super Mario Land 2 DX and Super Mario Land 1 DX ports and the Variable Font Width hack for Link's Awakening. Weirdly enough I caught a search that led to a 4chan post they did recently mentioning they were probably not going to do those types of hacks anymore, but first they wanted to fix some big bug problems with Super Mario Land 1 DX (it was rushed to make the anniversary date) and wrap up For the Frog the Bell Tolls DX. Oh, since I brought up Super Game Boy emulation a couple times in the past I feel I should mention there's been a very recent update on the higan/bsnes side of things (the one that let you run the SGB software on top). And something more important imo: https://twitter.com/byuu_san/status/1155523051477356544 Doom Goon fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 06:05
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I'm excited for this one. It's been on my radar for a while.
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Aug 1, 2019 06:17
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Doom Goon posted:cool Those DX versions of the Super Mario Land games are some astounding work (though I don't like how big Tiny Mario is in the first one with the changed graphics), exciting to know that the guy behind them is also working on For the Frog the Bell Tolls. That ZSNES snow effect though is like pure nostalgia being injected into my veins.
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Aug 1, 2019 06:59
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I started a replay of Link’s Awakening today. I had no idea the engine came from another game. Definitely going to jump in on this one.
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Aug 1, 2019 07:11
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I've been trying to decide whether or not I want to replay Link's Awakening before the Switch remake comes out next month. Maybe we'll make it September's Game of the Month 
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Aug 1, 2019 07:20
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Only finished the first two worlds of DK94. Really want to finish that game one day. Been wanting to play For Frog The Bell Tolls for years. Hope I can find the time to do it this month.
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Aug 1, 2019 10:25
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I recently replayed link's awakening earlier this year and found that it holds up very well and remains one of the best games on the platform. This frog game was on my list to get around to eventually so I supposed I'll dive into it this month. I was reading that the fan translation is pretty high quality but that the colorization hack has been lost in development for several years.
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Aug 1, 2019 15:33
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The guy making the colour hack is still around and he works pretty quickly once he's picked a direction, I think he's been putting off the final touches on the Frog patch because he's indecisive about tiny things.
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Aug 1, 2019 15:45
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I've played for a few hours now and it's really fun, pretty easily my favorite of the three so far. It is extremely Link's Awakening, down to the annoyance of repeating pointless text you've seen a billion times before (e.g.picking up an acorn). One of the tunes is also reminiscent of one from LA but I won't be specific cause it's fun to hear it and go "hey that sounds familiar!". A minor complaint is the area with instakill lava, so every time you die you respawn at the hospital and have to trudge back. Except you don't, because the save system allows you to just reset the gameboy and load, so you can effectively quicksave without using save states if you're going for the level 3 rank this month. I am, however, getting some audio pops on the sound effects (not the music; more like whenever I jump or scroll through dialogue, etc.) and I don't know if that's the ROM or the emulator or my system, or maybe it's accurate to the original hardware.  Not a big deal though.
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Aug 1, 2019 16:35
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Doom Goon posted:Ooh, great pick but I'll actually have to consider if I play this one. You see, there's been a GBC port in development for a few years now that I've been following. The rom hacker took a break to do the Super Mario Land 2 DX and Super Mario Land 1 DX ports and the Variable Font Width hack for Link's Awakening. Weirdly enough I caught a search that led to a 4chan post they did recently mentioning they were probably not going to do those types of hacks anymore, but first they wanted to fix some big bug problems with Super Mario Land 1 DX (it was rushed to make the anniversary date) and wrap up For the Frog the Bell Tolls DX. I'ma look into this frog video game, but first going to play me some of that that Super Mario Land 1/2 DX. About a year ago I made it 3/4 of the way through Link's Awakening DX, then my save got corrupted. If we do that next month's club, I'll pick it up again. I only ever had the original for Game Boy, and it's just about the pinnacle of DMG polish. I can't describe how much I enjoyed it, having a Nintendo Power subscription and no other console, it was a dream come true having a real Zelda land on the Game Boy. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 18:44
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I very clearly have far more free time on my hands than anyone else in this thread, and I don't mean that in a positive way.   No walkthroughs or save states or anything like that, this game doesn't need those at all. It's easy and linear and you can save > reset > load through the diary if necessary. Really charming and fun game. Link's Awakening obviously improves on it by a million miles being far larger, deeper and more clever in its design, but it wouldn't be fair to knock Frog for coming first, and honestly it stands on its own. It definitely feels like a hidden gem and it's a shame it was never released outside Japan. The combat system was a nice change of pace, where it's more about managing your health and resources and having fights auto-resolve than actively hitting enemies. That said, the ending... :\ Captain of the Guard decides that you will marry the Princess, she gets half a sentence to protest before he shuts her up and it ends with a sexist joke at her expense. I mean I'm not going to complain about a princess-in-need in a Game Boy game from 1992, but just felt like there was a weird and unnecessary shift in tone at the very end there. Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Aug 3, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 15:14
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Aw poo poo, why couldn't I have found this thread a month ago? DK'94 is still one of my favourite games on any system (it made so many long backseat journeys tolerable) and I'd have cancelled all sorts of dumb poo poo I wasted my time with in July to blast through such a classic one more time  Oh well. Link's Awakening is another favourite (I think that goes without saying for anyone who owned a GB back in the day?), so I guess I'll give this "Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru" thing a shot out of curiosity.
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Aug 2, 2019 17:24
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Glare Seethe posted:I am, however, getting some audio pops on the sound effects (not the music; more like whenever I jump or scroll through dialogue, etc.) and I don't know if that's the ROM or the emulator or my system, or maybe it's accurate to the original hardware. I’m playing with a GB everdrive on a SGB2 and getting the same distortion. It’s annoying but whatever. I played through the first “dungeon” last night. It’s an interesting little game, but the lack of any meaningful combat system does hurt it. I imagine it won’t take too long to finish it.
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Aug 2, 2019 19:53
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Okay, so far so good. It's a cute enough paint-by-numbers lite-RPG to throw some hours at. THAT BEING SAID.... there are a few things I take issue with but I'll mention/spoiler them when I'm done.
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Aug 3, 2019 02:18
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Feel free to play DK '94 and chat to us about it anyway Zogrim - the reality is that most Game Boy games are, by their nature, pretty short and finishable within the month unless there's other contributing factors like them being hellishly difficult. There's plenty of downtime in the month to play other stuff!
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Aug 3, 2019 05:32
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Okay, cool! Not that I would ever need an excuse to fire up DK'94, but now that I actually have one... Edit: Jesus the combat in Kaeru is some tedious bollocks after a while. AND STOP PUTTING ENEMIES AT THE EDGE OF THE loving SCREEN. ZogrimAteMyHamster fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Aug 3, 2019 |
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Aug 3, 2019 12:24
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Oof, I'm not good at these games at all. Was really hoping it'd be another action game. I'm going to have a hard time getting into this one, I can tell.
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Aug 3, 2019 19:25
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ZogrimAteMyHamster posted:Edit: The main issue I had with the combat (despite liking the casual nature of it in general) is that you don't always know if you've got the health to take on an enemy. And if you don't, and fail to escape, you're just sent back to the hospital and have to trudge back. I think the game's easy enough that it's not a big deal but it's also not exactly ideal.
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Aug 3, 2019 19:56
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Turns out you can get a working Game Boy Color for next to nothing on eBay, so I bought one for 8 euros and then some games. At first it didn’t start, but it turned out just to be the usual corrosion on the battery contacts. Currently playing and enjoying Link’s Awakening for the first time. Super Mario Bros DX was also a good time, although purists probably scoff at the save feature. Suits me fine, though, and I had some great nostalgic fun. Only drawback is that the smaller viewing area makes it a bit harder to anticipate enemies sometimes. Also bought a larger lot of 11 games on the cheap, which I’m waiting for at the moment. Contains Donkey Kong 94 and Gargoyles Quest, as well as Tetris and Super Mario Land. Enjoying my new hobby so far. Never had a Game Boy back in the day, and I’m impressed. Me and my friends played Lynx, which feels clunky and murky in comparison. (I have a Lynx at home, and picking it up feels much harder. I can’t really take it on the bus either.)
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Aug 4, 2019 15:48
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Done! No savestates, guides, or any of that bollocks. Took a fair bit longer than expected (somewhere near five hours total maybe?), but an uncomfortable amount of that time was due to aimlessly wandering around during a couple of moments where things aren't exactly clear when it comes to progressing (such as all that poo poo in the desert/Pudding town about putting up an ad and talking to what must have been every sodding person numerous times until I must have blindly triggered the right conditions to continue). Not a bad game by any means, but definitely one that could have done with a bit more time to polish things up and make exploring less cumbersome. The linear nature isn't necessarily bad but there is no freedom to experiment with anything, taking away any real sense of replayability which is something of a shame (compare this to Link's Awakening, where it's possible to fool around and do a few things out of order without breaking the game e.g. Turtle Rock can be finished before Eagle's Tower, so you can then go roast the Eagle boss with the Fire Rod). Aside from the combat being a total crapshoot when encountering a new foe (an issue only made worse with some really lovely "random" placements at the edge of each screen, a feature which is at its absolute worst when heading through the underground paths toward the Jungle), the main issue with interrupting the gameplay stems from having no sort of "action button" to read signposts or talk to NPC's. Text boxes are just activated the moment you walk into things (or if they walk into you!), which can soon wear your patience down in areas with many NPC's milling around slowly & constantly getting in the way, such as the Bunnygirls in the Bar where you find/fight Russ or that guy looking for his daughter in A La Mode. I stood still and just watched this bumbling loving idiot walk into me time and time again, activating the same message each and every time. Certain points loaded with backtracking were pretty tedious too; finding the Eskimo town, then going to the Ice Cavern, only to go back to town, off to the Elder's hut, back to town, through the Fear Trees, then back to town before heading back out to the Elder hut... for gently caress's sake! I get that it's a GB game so they have to get as much as possible out of these small locations but Jesus god almighty the flip-flopping between objectives in this section in particular was horribly padded out. Really though, that's all I can complain about. Just a bunch of minor nitpicky stuff that only becomes excessively aggravating during longer sessions. The game itself is fine, a perfectly serviceable if easy adventure which doesn't require much in the way of "skill" in the traditional (Zelda) sense, but does have a few light puzzly elements thrown in to keep things from just being a glorified storybook. Pleasantly relaxing overall, even if it is still a little rough around the edges.
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Aug 5, 2019 03:09
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Done. No save states or guides, and honestly, I can't imagine needing one. It's a very linear game, and the only way to get "lost" is to purposefully avoid your next objective. I would have liked the game if it had some form of actual combat in it. The late game could have made better use of the game mechanics as well. Which is odd because about 3/4 of the way through you're using all of your new abilities, and then you just seem to not really need them anymore. I'm glad I played it, but I don't see myself ever coming back to this one.
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Aug 5, 2019 20:40
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With Kaeru out of the way, I guess I'll have some fun with DK '94 for the rest of the month. Not that I'll actually take that long; I played it so much as a kid that I'll just autopilot through most of it. Good start. For all my blab and nonsense about this version of the game, I was always loving terrible at the original DK in the arcade, even long after this version was released. You'd think that playing DK '94 would give you some sort of edge against the primitive original, but it actually works against you so horribly. Reflexively trying to backflip or handstand or do anything '94 Mario's capable of just results in a pathetic little boing from '81 Jumpman followed by an embarrassing death. I mean Christ, for years I didn't even realise that the "Pie Factory" was even a level in DK '81! That being said it's not like I went mental throwing coins into the machine trying to find it, but I definitely put enough in to realise just how crap I am at that thing. It's a completely different beast to control.
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Aug 6, 2019 12:58
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I've noticed my GB Pocket's screen has started to dim quite a bit on its own after I set the contrast wheel... is this a common thing and is there an easy fix?
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Aug 7, 2019 21:52
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Another bunch of minutes to spare... Blazed through Forest so fast I forgot to take any screenshots. Always liked Forest though, it's where DK '94 really started to stand out when I was young, with the first genuine (if relatively simple) puzzles in the game coming into play. Usually involving switches to activate floors/gates and using these to manipulate some of the critters into becoming improvised platforms, it was unlike anything else in my GB collection (and certainly unlike anything else featuring Mario). But after Forest came the first of a few problem locations I remember getting stuck on as a kid:  For the life of me I can't remember which particular level(s) would repeatedly do me over and ruin my weekday afternoons during Ship, but I do remember getting excessively irritable at one point because my dumb 7-year-old brain just couldn't figure out the level solutions as quickly as had been the case in Forest. It must have (somehow!) taken me a week to figure the whole thing out back then. Not so much of a problem now, of course:  3-5 was always fun to mess around on  This game is way too generous with the extra lives. Probably wasn't saying that back in the day though. bear named tators posted:I've noticed my GB Pocket's screen has started to dim quite a bit on its own after I set the contrast wheel... is this a common thing and is there an easy fix?
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Aug 8, 2019 14:18
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Well, I finally got my Donkey Kong 94 on the mail today (along with some other games). First impression is that it is fun and easier than the arcade (as someone pointed out already). Though I miss the old “How high can you get”-text at the level intro screen.
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Aug 8, 2019 21:27
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DK94 was one of my favourite games as a kid and this was a fantastic excuse to revisit it. It still holds up! It's incredible how much game they could cram into those tiny levels.
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Aug 9, 2019 19:02
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So here we go, onto the area which invariably created a few headscratching moments for anyone who played this game: Stages 4-3. 4-6, 4-7, 4-10 and 4-11 were all stages I vividly remember having issues with as a kid. Not necessarily because any of these stages are straight-up difficult, but because of the penalties incurred by making even a trivial mistake; I don't know about anyone else here but I was never comfortable with the vine mechanics for some reason back then. Maybe I just disliked the way they slowed things down and made you wait around unable to progress (more of an issue waiting for the long-tailed lemur things (Monchees) to be within reach than anything, especially so in 4-9). Being completely helpless as something approached -- such as the (admittedly rare) vampire bat/Dracuchu -- didn't help matters either (though I would constantly play around with the bats for no good reason on 4-5). Add a certain mischievous Junior to the mix with his switch-flicking/mushroom-throwing antics on some non-boss stages, and there are a fair few things in this segment that are somewhat out of your hands. Especially when the little bastard just refuses to flick the switch and reactivate the platforms necessary to finish 4-7. Oh well.  That'll be stuck at 99 lives now. Back when this game was new, I got into a 'race to the finish' with a mate, as we'd often do when/if we had the same games (racing through Super Mario Land was something of a ritual of our young lives). He'd already had the game for a week or so by then so I was a good few areas behind to start with, but by the time I reached the end of Jungle he was still "enjoying" the stresses of pyramid exploration:  This loving zone. This one was pretty cruel, with some pretty tight time-sensitive solutions along the way. In particular, 5-3 and 5-9 are forever seared into my brain as being incredibly complex to my younger self. I'd be lazy and take the easy route, riding platforms instead of climbing/descending ladders, then get frustrated at what I'd done to myself once it dawned on me that I'd have to restart my poo poo attempt at navigation. So I'd try again... and do exactly the same loving thing without thinking. With all the back-and-forth between switch-flipping to get items and avoid being smashed into the ground, this poo poo was like Tomb Raider before Tomb Raider was even a thing. When I finally figured out what the actual solution was, I was simply stunned at how ignorant and stubborn I'd been. 5-10, being "build your own solution", was (is) one big panic if you want all the items (although there is a really boring, easy key-only solution too). The moment you make a move upward, you're committed to finishing the climb or falling all the way back down and (probably) smashing your head in, whatever comes first. Knowing that the time to reach the top was very limited would lead to all sorts of hastily-constructed impromptu garbage such as this:  Still worked as far as reaching the exit goes, though I actually missed one bonus item in my mad rush  5-11 was another "what the gently caress do I do?" level, and for the life of me I don't remember how I stumbled upon the solution of blocking the gates with the platforms but it almost certainly came through several lives' worth of trial-and-error (most likely trying to trap that scorpion too). Ah well. Playing it all again now, I actually appreciate the puzzles a whole lot more. They're really simple but not immediately obvious. 
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Aug 13, 2019 15:35
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Preparing for our September game, quick question for the thread; is everyone happy to do a Link's Awakening playthrough given the remake is due in the latter half of September, or shall we keep it to Game Boy stuff that's a bit more off the beaten track? Also a second, separate but still Game Boy related question - I managed to get a complete in box copy of Solar Striker, mostly just for the novelty as I don't see much CIB Game Boy stuff in my part of the world, but the pawn shop it was in stupidly slapped a gigantic price sticker across the box Anyone got tips on removing the sticker without damaging the box underneath?
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Aug 30, 2019 13:30
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