The Mummy - Game Boy Color - Review

It’s not often that I’d have high expectations for a game based off of a somewhat forgettable 90’s film, least of all one on a handheld system, but there was something about the Game Boy Color’s The Mummy that made it look very, very promising. The Konami logo on the box was enough to catch my attention initially, but this wasn’t just any Konami game, but an 8-bit, 2D, horror themed Konami game, and historically when you put those things together very good things happen. It was enough to get me excited and I couldn’t help but wonder if The Mummy was actually a thinly veiled tribute to the classic Castlevania series.

A Tale of Two Game Boys - A Restoration and Modding Project Log - Part #3

Fresh off of my successful restoration project I was feeling confident and ready to take on my first ever Game Boy mod. I began by watching a few video tutorials and found myself wincing a little when it came to certain stages of the backlighting process. There would be no turning back after this, the mod would either be successful or the Game Boy would be killed in the process. Nevertheless I was determined to see it though and so undeterred I started shopping for parts.

A Tale of Two Game Boys - A Restoration and Modding Project Log - Part #2

My goal was clear in my mind and I was totally focused on achieving it. I knew nothing else would distract me over the next few days and so my mission to restore a broken Game Boy to its former glory and all out mod another was ready to begin...

A Tale of Two Game Boys - A Restoration and Modding Project Log - Part #1

The Game Boy modding scene has always been something that’s intrigued and concerned me in equal parts. Whilst I love the creative and colourful designs that new custom buttons, shells and backlights can provide, I can’t help but feel that with each mod a small piece of gaming history is forever lost. Yes, I know there are likely millions upon millions of unaltered Game Boys out there in garages and attics, and I know that the number of people who still see value in them is fairly small in the grand scheme of things. However I also know that over the years many others will have ended up in landfill, never to be seen again. More to the point; Nintendo aren’t making any more of them. Whatever we have now is all there will ever be, and that number can only ever get smaller. 

But does it really matter? Should we be preserving and restoring Game Boys to keep them as original as possible ‘warts and all’, or should we embrace the new ways of keeping our outdated handhelds relevant in this age of smart phones and tablets? To find out once and for all where I truly stand on the matter I decided I would take the plunge and try my hand at both restoring and modding an original dot-matrix Game Boy.

Quest for Camelot - Game Boy Color - Review

In 1998 Warner Brothers released their feature-length animation ‘Quest for Camelot’. The film set in Arthurian England, was reportedly plagued with internal conflicts during its production and was met with widely negative reviews upon its release. The troubled film failed to make a splash in the box office too going on to lose a whopping 40 million dollars for the studio. I guess it turned out to be less of a Quest for Camelot and more of a Quest to lose-a-lot then? (Sorry.) Despite this, later that year a video game adaptation was released for the Game Boy Color courtesy of French developer, Titus (yes, the ‘oh, no, not Titus,’ Titus). 

The Game Boy Players League - Introduction & Rules

Description: The Game Boy Players League is a friendly competition in which participants are challenged with tackling a designated Game Boy game each month. Players are awarded points based on how well they did and the points are tallied into a league table.  There is no cost to join and players are free to participate as little or as often as they like. New players can join the league at any time. 

Aim: To encourage the playing and collecting of Nintendo’s Game Boy line through friendly competition and an active community. 

Rules: 

1. On the 1st of each month a new game will be announced.

2. Players have until to the end of the month to participate in that month’s challenge.*

3. Players are awarded 1 point for participating in each month’s challenge.

4. Players are awarded an additional 2 points for completing the game (defeating final boss, or reaching end credits, or equivalent – dependant on the game)

5. Bonus Points may also be available which will be outlined for each game.

6. Players can submit multiple entries throughout each month, though they are only awarded points based on their best entry. (I.e. points for participation and completion are only awarded once.)

7. To enter, each participating player must submit a photo. The photo must clearly show proof of the players achievement as well as a hand written note with their name (or alias) and the date it was taken.

8. Players are required to use a genuine, official cart of each game, and are therefore not permitted to use multi-carts, reproductions, bootlegs or flash carts. (Due to hacks and save states)

9. Players may use any model of Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. (Super Game Boy and Game Boy Players are not permitted due to differences in clockspeed).

10.  Please always play within the spirit of the game and refrain from using cheat codes, game genies or level passwords that were obtained from any means other than playing through the game legitimately. 

* Late entries may be made in subsequent months. Late entries will score 1 point with an addition +1 point being awarded if the player managed to complete the game. Bonus points may not be claimed for late entries. 


Players can submit entries either throught the GBPL Facebook group found here: Click Here

Or by email me at: timelessgaminguk@gmail.com

Follow this link to see the current challenge and catch up on the latest news from the GBPL: Click Here

Alien Vs Predator: The Last of his Clan - Game Boy - Review

It seems strange looking back now but in the early nineties it wasn’t uncommon for 18 certificate films to be blatantly marketed at children. As long as it had a cool sci-fi setting or a badass looking monster then it was considered fair game to turn into a toy line, comic series, video game and maybe even a spin-off cartoon. 

Oddworld Adventures II - Game Boy Color - Review

Recently I reviewed Oddworld Adventures for the Game Boy, and as a big fan of the Oddworld series I was left fairly underwhelmed.  Whilst I enjoyed the gameplay and puzzles I found the graphics, and longevity to be somewhat lacking. The Game Boy port of Abe’s Oddysee had been scaled back to one small section of the original game, and as a result I was left with a feeling that it could have been so much more. Thankfully, Abe’s adventures on the Game Boy didn’t end there and so now it’s time for me to turn my attention to the game’s sequel; Oddworld Adventures II. 

Don't want to mod your Game Boy/Pocket/Color/Advance? Here's how I made an external light that actually works!

Nintendo's Game Boy line is something very close to my heart. Over the course of my life, I've owned and enjoyed every iteration of the plucky handheld, from DMG to Color to Micro, and everything inbetween. As anyone who grew up with the earlier versions of the Game Boy will atest to however, the complete lack of an internal light was always, to put it politely, something of a hindrance. Various third-party companies tried to step in with numerous solutions, and these ranged from the bulky, battery-powered add-ons produced for the DMG to the small, flexible worm-lights that everyone with a Game Boy Color seemed to own.They all had one thing on common though; none of them really worked. Whether it was due to the light being, so small and focused that it merely illuminated one tenth of the screen, or because the light was so dim that it could give Paris Hilton a run for her money. The struggle for 90's kids was real.

Oddworld Adventures - Game Boy - Review

I’ll never forget my first experience with an Oddworld game. Soon after the release of Abe’s Oddysee in 1997, I found myself sat, huddled around an old PC monitor with a friend as we watched the opening cut-scene, open-mouthed. FMV cutscenes in video games were still fairly new at the time (at least to a console gamer like myself) and I was completely transfixed by the richly, detailed world and cinematic quality storytelling. 

Pocket Soccer - Game Boy Color - Review

Living in the UK, I’ve always had a hard time in not being a football fan. It’s pretty much a given here that everyone you meet will at some point ask you which team you support and my usual reply of “I don’t follow football” usually kills the conversation quicker than if I’d have thrown a Nazi salute at them.

Legend of the River King – Game Boy Color – Review

In the late nineties the world was gripped with Pokemon fever. The game had already found huge success in its native Japan with the release Pocket Monsters Green & Red, before taking the rest of the world by storm with the release of Pokemon Red and Blue. Those of us in the UK however had to wait until 1999 before we could get our hands on the games but by then we had already been initiated from afar thanks to increasingly tantalising reports from the gaming mags of the time. Game Freak’s light hearted JRPG had well and truly struck a chord with younger gamers and its fiendishly addictive premise of catching, trading and battling the titular creatures became an obsession for school-kids everywhere. Of course it didn’t take long for other developers to begin frantically trying to tap into the craze by creating their own rival games.

With HD-Rumble on the way I want to pay tribute to where it all began; the N64 Rumble Pak

As we look forward to an exciting future of HD-Rumble with the Nintendo Switch I thought now would be the perfect time to look back at one of the pioneers of force feedback technology; The N64 Rumble Pak.

What the 'NX' Needs is... (Nintendo Switch predictions revisited)

Almost a year ago, I decided to try and counter the many calls for Nintendo to make a high-end, 'gimmickless' gaming console. Now, in the wake of the full Nintendo Switch reveal I thought it might be interesting to revisit my thoughts and predictions for the NX and subsequently give my verdict on the Nintendo Switch's divisive presentation.

Know your roots - Is it important to play the original game in a series?

Every gamer has the system they look back on with rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. Typically it’s the console we cut our teeth on and experienced our favourite franchises the first time. It’s easy to hold the games on these systems in high esteem and think of them as the best of their respective series just because they meant so much to us the first time we experienced them. 

My foray into gaming began on the Super Nintendo and Gameboy and really took off with the release of the N64. Many of the franchises I love today I first played on these systems and to this day I think of many of them as the best of their kind. But many of these series have older origins which I was never able to experience at the time due to either being too young or in some cases, not having even been born.