Last couple of weeks I was on a Gamecube kick. I decided it was time to change gears to another console this weekend:
1. Ys Book II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter
PSN Vita2. 3D Streets of Rage 2
3DS eShop3. 3D Gunstar Heroes
3DS eShop4. 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2
3DS eShop5. 3D OutRun
3DS eShop6. Mugen Senshi Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier
PCE CD7. Mugen Senshi Valis III: The Fantasm Soldier
PCE CD8. Bomberman
PCE CD9. Rocket Knight Adventures
Mega Drive10. Trax
Game Boy11. Panic Bomber
Virtual Boy12. Arcana Heart 3: Love MAX!!!!!
Vita13. Super Monkey Ball
Gamecube14. Lost Kingdoms
Gamecube15. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
Gamecube16. 1080° Avalanche
Gamecube17. Bubble Ghost
Game Boy *NEW*
18. Catrap
Game Boy *NEW*
Bubble Ghost
Bubble Ghost is a arcadey styled game where you play as a ghost and make it your mission to guide a bubble through 35 rooms of a building out of a window to freedom. Your ghost loves that fucking bubble. You better not pop it. The game originally came out for lots of European computers, but in 1990 it recieved a Game Boy port with a significant aesthetic redesign. This is the one most people remember.
You guide the bubble my moving your ghost around and pressing A to blow air at it. Your ghost will turn to face the bubble as he goes around it, making moving the bubble in the 8 cardinal directions a breeze, but you can also move around whilst the bubble is moving to get some more finese. The bubble has some basic physics meaning it won't stop on a time, and will continue drifting slightly before coming to a stop. Later levels require very delicate movements and often you'll get lined up for the next puff and wait for the bubble to slowly drift to just the right position.
The bubble will pop if it hits a wall or any of the other numerous obstacles about - literally anything can pop it. Obstacles include moving objects, candles which pop the bubble with heat if it goes above them, fans that blow the bubble off course, floating spike balls, disappearing walls and more. Some of these have to be worked around, but a few, like the candle and the fan, can be deactivated with your ghost by puffing on them.
Bubble Ghost is a pretty decent looking game for such an early release - nothing remarkable, but it has a cute design and clean aesthetic that makes it very clear what things are and how you might interact with them. Better than the visuals though, is the music. The soundtrack is stunning, despite consisting of about 3 songs. The games main theme, which plays on all of the game's 35 stages, is absolutely brilliant, one of the best tracks on the system imo. It took quite a few tries to beat Bubble Ghost, and I never got sick of the song, even after well over an hour of hearing it. It was composed by Hitoshi Sakamoto, of Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII fame. Here's the link if you want to try it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVc56hzQdwkBubble Ghost features 35 stages which must be beaten in one sitting. You have 3 credits of 5 lives each to make it through, but you'll likely get a few as you go too. That said, you tend to lose lives thick and fast on some of the harder levels, so it's not hard to game over. The difficulty isn't crazy though, and with a little persistence you'll make it through.
Bubble Ghost is a simple and early game on the Game Boy. There's not too much to it. However, what is here is fantastic - I think the game is a must own for the system. Easy to pick up and play, hard to master, and fun the whole way through. Bubble Ghost is excellent.
Catrap
Catrap is another fairly early Game Boy game from 1990, and another Game Boy port of a sightly obscure home computer game. The original version, Pitman, was created on the Japanese MZ-700 computer, but was popular enough to be given a Game Boy port years later.
Catrap is a block pushing puzzle game where you play as two kids who have been given a terrible curse and have grown cat ears and tails. As this was 1990 and the internet hadn't caught on yet, they decide to explore a pyramid and cure the curse instead of making their fortune from becoming meme icons.
The mechanics of Catrap are super simple - to beat a stage you must kill all enemies on the level. You do this by simply walking into them. You can push blocks, and break through some dirt blocks too, but you can't jump - ladders are the only way to move up to a higher level. Enemies, blocks and dirt can only be taken out by moving sideways, so the game becomes about setting up blocks and platforms so you can take out all the enemies. Some enemies fall when the platform below them is taken out, but ghosts will stay at the same tier so require extra thought.
Whilst the mechanics of Catrap are simple, the puzzle quickly become very complex - enemies need take out in specific orders, and one wrong move can make a puzzle unwinnable. This introduces Catraps best feature, and one ahead of it's time - pressing the A button allows you to rewind time and undo previous moves. This is an absolute livesaver.
Although Catraps puzzling is generally kind of fun, some of the later levels become tedious and frustrating. Towers of dozens of blocks and enemies lend themselves to tons of trial and error to ge through, and this is compounded on the occassional levels that let you play as both cat kids, switching between them and moving independently - allows one to act as a platform for the other or similar.
Catraps presentation is pretty bare bones too - visually it's basic but charming, but the music is mind-numbing. It's not terrible, but its short and basic and the game has 5 songs in total. 1 is the title screen, one the stage select and one the password, leaving only 2 songs for the games 100 levels, which can take up to 10 hours to power through. It very, very annoying very, very quickly. This seems to be a common issue n old puzzle games though (I'm looking at you Lolo).
Catrap is a fun little game in small doses. The first 2/3rds or so of the game is pretty fun, and some of the remaining third is also clever. However, later puzzles devolve too much into tedious towers of stuff to deal with, and quickly become tiresome. The game is worth picking up if you see it cheap, like I did, but overall it's probably something only puzzle addicts will love.
