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 Boy18. Catrap
Game Boy19. 3D Thunder Blade
3DS eShop20. 3D AfterBurner II
3DS eShop21. 3D Fantasy Zone II W: The Tears of Opa-Opa
3DS eShop22. Ikaruga
Gamecube23. Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & The Monster Seal
Vita24. New Adventure Island
PCE25. WarioWare Twisted!
GBA26. Dragon Warrior
NES27. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D
3DS eShop28. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
DS29. Gargoyle's Quest
Game Boy30. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
PS131. Puyo Puyo CD
PCE CD32. Retro City Rampage DX
3DS eShop33. Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition
3DS eShop34. Super Puyo Puyo Tsuu Remix
SFC35. Super Aleste
SNES36. Sega Rally Championship
Saturn37. Knuckles' Chaotix
32X38. Mystic Quest Game Boy *NEW*
So, as usual, I've gotten way behind on my updates. Rather than spend 2 hours writing a big wall of text no-one will want to read though, I figure I'll update one game a day for the rest of the week to get caught up. That said, lets start with:
Mystic Quest
Mystic Quest was one of my Summer Challenge games, and the only handheld game on my list this year - hence why it got beaten quickly and nothing else has been finished since. Console time is hard to find
Anyway, Mystic Quest might no be well known to some of you, and it's status as a classic therefore might be called into question, so let's called it by it's other names. In PAL land, it's Mystic Quest (possibly to tie it to Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, which was called Mystic Quest Legend over here). In America though, it goes by the name 'Final Fantasy Adventure' and in Japan, it's Seiken Densetsu. It's also the first game in Squaresoft's Secret of Mana series.
However, Final Fantasy Denstsu Quest is a very different game to it's successors. It might loosely be described as an Action RPG by some, but in all honesty there is far more of the 'action' and far less of the 'RPG''. What it plays most like in actuality is The Legend of Zelda series - you explore an overworld, collecting new items to proceed (in this game they're all equippable weapons), attacking enemies with a button press and exploring dungeons to progress.
The game does have a few more RPG elements though. For one, you level up. There are 4 stats to worry about - Power which determins your attack, Endurance which determines your HP, Wisdom which determines your MP and Will which determines your power meter. This charges up when you're not attacking, and when fully charged you can unleashed a powerful special move. Will is the least useful stat by far, but you'll get plenty of it as you level anyway. Once you level up, you can choose a stat to increase by 2. Each stat has 2 associated stats that will increase by 1 each if you choose it too - for example, gaining 2 power also grants 1 endurance and 1 will. Unfortunately, no stat choice yeilds Power, Endurance and Wisdom, which would be the ideal combination.
In addition to levelling, you can also find armour, weapons, shields and helmets to equip. Armor and helmets determine your defence, shields can blocks various enemy projectiles, and weapons work in different ways as well as icnreasing attack. Some weapons are needed to progress - sickles cut bushes, axes cut trees, chains let you hook across gaps etc. Weapons are assigned to one of the 2 face buttons, with magic and items assigned to the other. You'll need to switch a lot, so expect some tedious pause menu navigating to come up a lot.
One of Mystic Adventure Fantasy's favourite mechanics is granting you an AI partner to assist you. These vary in usefulness, often just shooting randomly and not being much help. They all have a special skill you can ask of them though, such as healing, offering a shop or letting you ride your chocobo, so they can be handy even if they're as thick as a plank.
The dungeon designs in Mystic Quest are more simplistic than the very clever designs of Zelda on GB, and are more akin to the original Zelda - puzzles rarely get more intricate than 'break down the wall' and when they do they're often a pain - especially puzzles which require you to freeze enemies, as screwing it up means walking 8 screens back to make the enemies respawn.
Bosses are often exciting and fairly tricky early on, although later encounters go down easily, The story is compelling in a badly translated, limited text early 90s RPG kinda way. I love that the villain's name is Dark Lord and I love how many bits of odd grammar and deliberately inaccurate spelling have been used to fit the script into windows of about 25 characters of text. The game also throws new scenarios at you constantly. It's a good 12-15 hours long, but it feels very fast paced and each little section of the game passes by quickly. The music is also fantastic, and the overworld theme in particular should be better remembered than it is.
I liked Mystic Quest a lot. It's a well featured, well designed and fun game for the original Game Boy that stands amongst the best action adventure of the system. It's no Zelda perhaps, but it deserves to rub shoulders with the best as it's an amazing experience for the system. Every should go play it.
Also, for the record, I like this game more than it's sequel (which I also liked). I prefer the action-adventure focus here to the Action RPG bent of it's successor.
), but after that "shit hitting the fan" moment, it got very difficult for me to stop reading it. I found that the beginning section was also very enjoyable to read, as I enjoyed the character building and humour, but some people seem to find it a bit slow. 
