bite sized: gameboy hot takes

Hey loggers. And welcome back to another bite sized episode of the Backlog Breakdown. Bite sized episodes are shorter episodes that we give you every other week in between our main episodes where we really just tackle a single subject. It doesn't have to be super thought out. Not that we do anything super thought out in this podcast. Just kidding. We try and think things out. But I'm your host, Josh, and today I'm going to be sharing with you some Game Boy memories in the form of some Game Boy hot takes. I've got some takes. They might be hot, they might be lukewarm. Let's, let's be honest, I'm not exactly the most spicy person in the world, but I kind of want to throw some things out at you. Before we, we go ahead and get started, I'd like to just talk about the Game Boy. First of all, I'm talking original Game Boy. When I say Game Boy, I don't mean Nintendo ds. I don't mean what your mom called a Game Boy, which is like any handheld device ever, which I get. Hey, hey, you don't have to moms out there, you don't have to keep up with all the latest and greatest stuff. You, you can call a Switch 2 a Game Boy if you want to. That's fine with me. Go do your mom thing. You're awesome. But as for me, what I'm talking about on this episode is technically the original Game Boy. What was it released in like 1990? Something like that? I know it's super early and one of the things about the Game Boy for me personally is that this was actually probably my first console, dedicated video game console that I ever owned. I remember my dad coming home with a Nintendo Entertainment System that he had gotten a degree garage sale. That was early on in life. But I do think we had a Game Boy before that because Game Boy was this system that you could pick up guys, boys and girls, you could go to the store, your local Toys R Us, and I think you only had to drop like $80 to pick up a Game Boy, so. And now that's $80 in 1990s money. So it's a little bit more. I guess that's the cost of a Switch Lite nowadays. Maybe, I don't know, I don't know. The monetary conversions, currency conversions and all that stuff. So I could be totally off on that. But what I'm saying is that it was not a huge investment. Like certainly that is a big deal. You know, you're not just going to pick one up, pick up an extra Game Boy at the corner store while you're out getting some, some, some. Some coke and cigarettes. I don't know, whatever. That's not the case, but it's also not the $500 switch 2 that we have nowadays. So these things were all over the place. These Game Boy devices were all over the place. Our family actually owned two. Okay, I'm one of five kids, so we shared stuff. But throughout the years, we amassed two different Game Boys. And not only was the system relatively cheap, the games were pretty cheap as well. I want to say they retailed for like 40 bucks a piece, which again, 90s money. I get it. But we didn't buy new games hard, hardly ever. We would go to resale shops or dedicated video game stores and pick through the bargain bins and buy the 499 video game or the 9.99 video game if we really wanted it. Something along those lines. So I have very fond memories of my Game Boy. You know, the side note to all of that, hey, this thing was really cheap discussion here, is that what you did have to really invest in was batteries, because the original Game Boy took four AA batteries and it didn't last a super long time. Now, my parents limited how long we could play video games during the week, and so I guess that helped with battery consumption. Rechargeable batteries weren't as big of a deal when I was a kid, or maybe my parents just didn't get them for one reason or another, I don't know. But batteries were definitely a thing. I remember going to my cousin's house when I was real young. This was like during a family reunion and playing their game gear, their Sega game gear, and they wouldn't even use batteries. They actually had a charger. So you plugged it into the wall, you sat up against the wall and you played this thing. And that was amazing. I mean, it was revolutionary to me when Game Boy Advance SP used a charger and had its own battery inside the thing instead of having to put batteries in it. I digress. These are some memories of Game Boy and part of the reason why I wanted to, I was gonna say, have this discussion. I suppose it's a monologue in the form of this, this podcast here. But to talk a little bit about the Game Boy and my experiences with the Game Boy and something that is near and dear to my heart now. Why, Josh, would you be talking about this right now? It doesn't really matter. Switch 2 just came out, so I don't know. I guess I'M on a handheld kick. Not really. It's actually, I've been watching some YouTube videos of people talking about Game Boy games, and I've had some thoughts about Game Boy and again, my love for the system. But we'll talk about that in just a second because now we've got some hot takes, okay? Some Game Boy hot takes. Original Game Boy. You listening out there? Did you ever play an original Game Boy? Have you. Have you actually experienced it? Or am I just the old guy yelling at clouds here with this episode? I'd love to hear what you have to say. First hot take for Game Boy is that, frankly, most Game Boy games don't hold up nowadays. Most Game Boy games are not very good. And it has to do with the nature of the medium of the Game Boy, because if you've never played one, you might not realize this. Nostalgia. Nostalgia glasses are a very powerful thing. I love a bunch of Game Boy games. We'll get to that in a minute. But this thing has a really small screen on Game Boy. Very high pixel density, right? I think that's how you say it. Basically, the sprites, if you have big sprites, then that's gonna take up a substantial amount of the screen. Everything feels very zoomed in. You can't see very well in a lot of different games unless you have very small sprites. And I don't know the technicality behind it, but generally this piece of tech is not great, it seems to me. I'm gonna explain it this way, but I don't know if this is technically correct. It seems to have a pretty slow processor. A lot of games are pretty slow on the Game Boy. It can't compute a lot of different things. There can be slowdown, there can be lots of sprite flicker and things like that because of things going on the screen. So you can't have that much going on. And it's very limited by the small screen. You also only have two buttons, which was not necessarily a huge limitation at the time because the original NES only has two buttons, A and B. But it does limit some of the things that you can do on the game. In addition to that, a lot of games for the original Game Boy, not all, but a lot of them are generally pretty ugly, pretty slow, or both in a lot of kind of licensed game cases. It's just a lot of the games, if you go back to Game Boy, if you go to Nintendo Switch Online, playing old Game Boy game, most of them don't really hold up nowadays. And so while I have lots of nostalgia for this system. I also recognize I don't want to play a lot of it like a Game Boy. Collecting sounds terrible in in, in the sense of I, I. Hey, I would love to collect the handful of games that I actually really like. Get to that in just a minute. But I would never want to own a complete collection of Game Boy because most of the games are hey, this is this hot hot takes right? Most of the games on original Game Boy are trash. They. They don't hold up. You shouldn't play them. You should play some better games than old Game Boy games. That said, my second hot take is that some of my favorite games of all time come from the original Game Boy. That's right. On my own personal top 100 list. Probably at least five games are from the original Game Boy. Link's Awakening fan flippantastic Zelda game. Now is the Switch version better than the original Game Boy version? Maybe, perhaps, probably. But the original version is so I just love it because of the nostalgia for sure. But I also think it's a fantastic, quirky, lovely little game and I would recommend it to anyone. Anyone still holds up fantastic game. Donkey Kong 94 also amazing game. It does not feel limited. It takes the limitations of the Game Boy into account in its level design and it just does a great job. Anyways, some of my favorite games I love Super Mario Land. Super Mario. This is a. This will be a post script or a little, a little side note hot take is that I like Super Mario Land much more than I like Super Mario Land 2. Super Mario Land 26 Golden Coins is a great game but Super Mario Land there's something about the length of the game just being very short. The music is amazing. It feels very different than other Mario games but I love how it feels. How it feels quirky and different and new and it felt like something that Mario has had not done at that point and still has not done to this day. Yeah, it's a platformer but you have a super ball attack which is different than your. Your fire flowers and even the different lands that you go to and then you go underwater in a submarine shooting stages and then in the sky. It's. It's very. It's interesting. It's different. I absolutely love it. And the music is fantastic. I mean the tunes still stick in my head. It's. It's fantastic. It's a great game and it's one that you can play through in like 30 minutes which I think is some of the best games. Again we'll get to this in just a moment. Some of the best games on the original Game Boy are games that are specifically tailored to the medium and really know the limitations of the Game Boy. And I think they knocked that out of the park with the very first Mario game on the system, Super Mario Land. Go play it. It's fantastic. Another game I love on the original Game Boy, Kirby's Dream Land. Okay, again, little bit of a hot take. Like oh that, that baby game for babies. Yeah, I love that baby game for babies. Another game that's like 20 minutes long. You don't even have copy abilities in this game. But what it does. Yeah, I mean sure, baby's first video game. Yes, there's definitely that element, but it is so lovingly crafted. The sprite work, just the look of the game is so great. And again, the music is fun, fantastic. The enemies are imaginative. I love the world that is created in Kirby's dreamland and it's amazing. So anyways, first hot take is that most games don't hold up on Game Boy. Second hot take is that some of my favorite games of all time are on the original Game Boy. Okay, here's another hot take for you. I hate the look of pre rendered sprites on Game Boy games like Donkey Kong Land. I cannot stand the way that those games look. I understand what they're trying to do. You release Donkey Kong country on Super Nintendo and everyone is blown away by these computer graphics. Oh, it's so amazing. So you try and capture that and put it on the original Game Boy and I think it looks like garbage. I don't like it. I can't stand it. I never liked those games. Even though they're very, very well regarded. The Donkey Kong Land games on Game Boy, I could not stand them. I never owned them. I didn't care about them at all. Just that look, it's so. I don't think it made that transition from 16 bit to the Game Boy. I suppose it's 8 bit. I'm not exactly sure. I don't think that transition looks good at all. I think it looks very bad and I thought it looked very bad at the time. Okay, next take is that I think the Game Boy, maybe this isn't so hot, but it is a take. So it's a take. I think the Game Boy is the perfect system for puzzle games in particular. Okay. Because again, the limited nature of the hardware and the portability of this handheld. Because remember this came out in the time before the switch. Now everything can be handheld. I mean, PlayStation's jumping on it. PC's been on it for a while now. Xbox is getting into the game as well. Everything can be taken with you. Handheld. This was way before that time. This was one of the first handhelds and I get it, there was the wonderswan in Japan. There was, you know, game and watch, things like that. But this is the first dedicated one that really made an impact. Okay. And again in my head, in my head Canon for sure the first one to do that. So I think if you tailor games to that system, to the portability and kind of the pick up and play nature of the system, those are going to be some of your best games. And I think that is absolutely perfect for puzzle games. Case in point is of course Tetris. This was the big one on Game Boy. It was a pack in title. It was the one that everyone needed. This Tetris alone sold so many systems, so many Game Boy systems. But I also absolutely loved Tetris Attack on Game Boy. That's also a great puzzle game. Dr. Mario is so much fun. I had Pac man was not as much of a big fan of Pac man because it was zoomed in. You could not see well. You could toggle between different views. But I didn't think when you saw the entire layout of the level, it looked very good. But then when you were zoomed in, you couldn't really tell where the other ghosts were. And not as big of a fan of Pacman but, but even something like it's not a great puzzle game. But Yoshi, I liked that game quite a lot. I even beat the high score on Nintendo Power and took pictures of it. We never sent those pictures in, but that was my plan and I never did it. But, but got the highest score, got a higher score than the highest score in Nintendo Power for Yoshi. So it's, it's not the best, but I really enjoyed it. Okay, okay, let's. Let's wind this down. Okay. Final take that I have. Maybe this is the hottest of takes, maybe it's not. But I much prefer the original green color scheme of the Game Boy over the grayscale look of the Game Boy Pocket. Okay. I understand that programmers or whatever, they made their games in grayscale and then when it was actually released in Game Boy that it took this green tint because of the screens of the original Game Boy. I understand that. I don't like it. I don't like how gray, how the gray, black and white looks on the Game Boy. It looks super boring to me. Give me that cabbage Green. That pea soup green look with the shimmer and the sprite kind of blurring all that stuff all day long. That original Game Boy is best Game Boy screen as far as I'm concerned. I love it. Maybe it's nostalgia. I don't care. When I see, you know, oh, this is coming to Nintendo Switch Online and it shows you some video of Game Boy games and it's grayscale, I'm just like. It just feels cold and lifeless to me in a way that the green color scheme of the original Game Boy feels much more. I was going to say alive, but more like technical and like bitmap Y and like old DOS computer. I mean, actually games on old DOS computers are not good. I'm not recommending those. But it feels like, like Tron, you know, like futuristic but also retro at the same time. It's hard to. It's hard to convey that. But what I mean is that that feel of the green look of the original Game Boy is so much better in my mind. Is it? You know, do you get that dynamic range that you do from black and white? Certainly not. Don't care. Absolutely don't care. I love the look of the original green and I really don't like the look of the grayscale. So that is my final hot take. Okay. There's so much more to be said about the original Game Boy, but you also have to take it with a grain of salt because like I said, my first take is that there's not that much to go back to, but we all have lots of memories. If you have played Game Boy, if you enjoyed it as much as I did, or maybe you have poor experiences with Game Boy. There's so many games that I didn't even touch on right. I mean, at the end of the day, the Game Boy was made for these pocket sized experiences that you could take with you on the go. And there were some bigger adventures that you could have on the system, like your Zelda, like your Pokemon, like your Final Fantasy or Saga games. I believe even Seiken Densetsu, the first one was a Final Fantasy game. But the key to Game Boy making really good Game Boy games in my mind, looking back 30 years later or whatever it was to make games that fit on the smaller screen that could really benefit from the pickup and play nature of having a commute or playing it on the train or something like that. Obviously you don't play video games while you're driving, kids. That's dangerous. Also stop smoking. That's. That hurts your lungs. Anyways, it was a different time when Game Boy was released. Was it a better time? Certainly not for video games, but it was. It was a time. It was a time. It was a time and a place. And maybe some of those things don't translate very well nowadays. And that's okay to leave some of these things in the past. But there are some, some certainly gems on the system that still have a special place in my heart today. Even with the changing of times, a very different landscape where we have just a proliferation of handheld devices today, like the recently released Switch 2. You don't make those full experiences on the Game Boy. You have to tailor something to it. And some of those games are some of my favorite games of all time. So I hope you've enjoyed hearing these takes on on Game Boy. I'd love to hear your takes. Get in touch with us. Go check out the linktree linktree.com thebacklogbreakdown and tell me what are some of your favorite games on the Game Boy? What do you hate about the Game Boy? What's hard to go back to? Do you still have your original Game Boy? Do you still play your original Game Boy? What's the deal with this Game Boy? Why wasn't there a Game Girl? I don't know, but you can ask me if you want to. You can do that by going to linktree.com thebacklogbreakdown all right, thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you next week with a full episode. Till then, keep beating down your backlogs and we'll keep breaking down the benefits.