FreakBoards 2023 NES/GB Book Club #7: ???

[Cuboid64]

Previous Threads
#1: Legend of Zelda (NES)
#2: Super Mario (And Wario) Land (GB)
#3: Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
#4: Trip World (GB)
#5: Mega Man May (NES/GB)
#6: Metal Gear (NES)

Curious about what this is? Here’s the explainer!

Spoiler!

What is this?
Every month a game will be chosen at random and the goal is to beat it, or at least get as far as you can in it. It’s not a race, not a requirement, just play an old-ass game you haven’t otherwise thought to give the time to. You might find a new old favorite or at least learn something about it!

How long does this go on for?
Until the end of the month! You’re free to keep playing the game afterwards, but the thread will be unpinned.

Who can join in and How?
Everyone and anyone! There’s no registration necessary, just find a way to play the month’s game! Whether it’s a PC emulator, a piece of boutique hardware, or even on ORIGINAL hardware, any way’s fine as long as you’re able to play the game.

Also not a huge necessity but very welcome: log your gameplay! Screenshots, text, video, art, keep us up to date on where you are and what you think about the game as you go! At the very least give us a screenshot of where you are at the end of the month.

HEEEEEY! Been a while! Like, six months. Sorry for the quiet treatment, to be honest I was busy with work and also just, really not feeling up to continuing this whole thing? It's definitely been fun but I admittedly started feeling anxious about it, so I ghosted on it! But it wouldn't feel right to end the year with one more club project, yeah? So, here's what we're doing this month.


What’s the game this month?


IT'S FREE PLAY, BABY
I had had my heart set on it being a Final Fantasy vs. Dragon Quest month, but it didn't feel right without a vote. Though you could certainly play one of those games if you so decided.
But nah, to cap the year off, play a NES OR GAME BOY game of your choice. Something new! Something you've already played! Maybe you want to revisit a previous Book Club game! Go wild!

[SkieSquiggles]

YIPEEE I WILL

[Finch]

BOOK CLUB IS BACK!!!! Thank you Cube! I wanted to continue book club, but maybe some of the rest of us should pitch in to help put out votes so it's not all on you.

[Mak-Etcetera]

Book club!!!!!!!! glad to see it back!

there are too many games too choose from so i went with the rng approach

I used this list https://www.listchallenges.com/all-nort ... -boy-games

and i rolled 224 so that means i gotta play this


wish me luck i guess

[SkieSquiggles]

I've decided to try to beat Gradius, because it seems fun! I'll make sure to play about an hour every day and I'll let you all know how far I get!

[SkieSquiggles]

This game is beating my ass ! But I will keep trying. I will not break my warrior's oath so soon.

[VentusVulture]

I randomly generated a list and got a game called....... Nuts & Milk. Awesome. It's a puzzle game where you play as Milk collecting fruits to free your wife Yogurt while Nuts tries to stop you. It gets fairly challenging but that's mostly because of the controls. You can't jump very far, and you can't jump off of ladders (which ends up fucking you over a lot), and you have like a five frame window to press the A button to jump higher off of springs while still maintaining your speed. Also Milk falls and gets dizzy quite a bit, including on springs, which ends up being a pain in the ass sometimes. It was still relatively fun though, only about an hour long, and the levels vary decently at times, though at the same time the platforming itself is relatively boring. Also this game was apparently the first ever (alongside Lode Runner) third-party title on a Nintendo console. Neat! I don't know if I'd recommend playing it since it's similar to quite a few other games and definitely has worse controls than a lot of them but it's a nice waste of an hour, I guess.

[VentusVulture]

Also I was going to play Karateka but it kicked my ass too hard lol

[VentusVulture]

Finished another game (since I felt like doing a GB one as well) that I found scrolling through a list of GB games called Tail 'Gator! It's pretty fun; it reminded me a lot of Trip World with how its main character plays (though mainly just the main bunny form). The characters in it are also pretty cute, namely the main character and the final boss. Not quite sure what the story is but the first three worlds have you going through four different areas, being themed around land, underwater, cave, and sky, with each having its own unique gimmicks, in your choice of order, with the fourth world being a little gauntlet of levels. The main idea of each level is to go through a bunch of rooms breaking open treasure boxes containing various things like point bonuses or items that let you shoot beams from your tail temporarily, with the last treasure box in each room containing a key leading you to the next room, and then you fight a boss at the end of each world. The whole breaking open treasure boxes deal gets a little bit repetitive, though the enemies and gimmicks of each stage do keep you on your toes. The platforming also gets a little challenging at points, though not too much. The bosses are also pretty fun, since they give you the tail powerup item at the beginning and can get fairly challenging too. Overall, although it doesn't really innovate much in terms of platformers it definitely isn't a bad game! I'd at least recommend it more than Nut & Milk, since it's a lot more interesting with its gimmicks and it's definitely a more fun use of an hour or so.

Also look at the cool boxart:

Spoiler!

[SkieSquiggles]

Grabbed a couple of cheat codes to make the game a little less punishing, a few extra lives and keeping weapons on death is all. If I still haven't beaten it by the end of the month I'll whip out the ol' infinite lives cheat and blast through it. Getting a little farther each time though so I'm confident I won't have to do that lol