Manual Stimulation: Dungeon Land (GameBoy)

You may remember Dungeon Land is the Japanese GameBoy title I bought because it featured "enemy flan."

Or you may remember it because it was Enix's maiden release for Nintendo's first handheld game system. It's even possible you remember its magnificently colorful cover art.

And if you don't remember Dungeon Land, or if this post is introducing you to it, that's cool, too.

Either way, uh, here's that old game's instruction manual!



You might think I'm disappointed that Dungeon Land's manual isn't as salmon-y as its outer box.

That was my initial reaction to it, I've got to admit, but now that I've had some time to reflect, I actually quite like the black-gray-yellow scheme its designers used instead.



That's hardly the only interesting or impressive aspect of this booklet, however. For example, it also features a good number of eye-catching illustrations--like the ones you see in this spread.



The second page above seemingly details the game's story, by the way. (As far as I can tell, the text at the top says something along the lines of "About Dungeon Land.")

I can't tell you what those details are, sadly, as I can't understand them.



I'm sure it creatively explains why this title is part board game and part role-playing game, though. Or at least I hope that's the case.



Because it includes RPG elements, Dungeon Land has its share of fantastic enemy characters. You can see some of them--including the flan baddie I mentioned earlier--in the right-hand page below.



Even more "monsters" are showcased across the next spread. I think these are some of the game's bosses, actually--though don't quote me on that.



Whatever they are, I love them. I'm not sure why they have three names, unfortunately. Or maybe the three words above their heads aren't names at all? Maybe they just explain their three "phases" or something like that?

As you probably can tell, I haven't played much of Dungeon Land to date. That's because role-playing board games aren't a whole lot of fun when you don't understand much of the text they throw at you.



To be honest, it probably wouldn't be much fun even if I did know what was going on at all times. Maybe it's just me, but I rarely enjoy tackling digital board games on my own.

Still, I'm glad I own a copy of Dungeon Land. Who knows, maybe someday I'll rope another human being into playing it with me. Or maybe I'll learn enough Japanese to find out it's a blast even when experienced alone.

See also: previous 'Manual Stimulation' posts about Burning Paper, Noobow, Painter Momopie, Peetan, and Snow Bros. Jr.

What can I say, I've always been a sucker for games that feature 'enemy flan' ...

Which is kind of funny, as I can't stand flan (as a dessert) in real life. Give this squidgy custard some eyes, a mouth, a couple of limbs and stick the resulting character in a video game, though, and it'll grab my attention as quickly as any hot-fudge sundae ever has.

Is that why I picked up the copy of Dungeon Land, a Japan-only GameBoy title released back in 1992, that can be seen in the photos below recently?

You could say that, I guess, although I think a more accurate reading of the situation would be that I picked it up because of the adorable flan enemies as well as the rest of the cute-as-buttons creatures that fill this game's colorful box art.

Dungeon Land was the very first GameBoy title published by the folks at Enix, by the way. Sadly, it's not an RPG. Rather, it's more of an RPG-themed board game. I was a bit disappointed when I figured that out, I have to admit, but I enjoyed it well enough once I got over that fact.

That said, it's not really the kind of game you should play all by your lonesome. I can't imagine I'm ever going to encounter other guys or gals who have a GameBoy system, a copy of this game and a link cable, though, so that's likely going to be the only way I'll experience this curiously obscure (outside its home country, at least) import.

Here (above) is a closer look at the adorable flan enemies I mentioned earlier--is it just me, or are they wielding cherries as weapons?--while the in-game version of the same baddie can be seen in the screenshot below (found on the back of Dungeon Land's box).

Going back to this title's gameplay, here's how things have proceeded when I've taken it out for a stroll, so to speak: first, each player (in my case, one was controlled by me and the other was controlled by the computer) takes turns clearing, one square at a time, a field full of question mark-themed tiles. A turn ends when a player encounters some sort of obstacle, like a bunch of rocks. Whichever character reaches the exit first is whisked away to a boss encounter that plays out much like it would in an old Zelda game.

If you think that sounds less than thrilling, well, I can't completely disagree with you. The boss battles I've experienced so far were a good amount of fun, though, so at least there's that. 

Also, I have to share that there are a lot of options to click through at the start of each game, so it's extremely possible I've only stumbled into one of Dungeon Land's many modes up to this point, with some others being more engaging than the one I've played.

Should that end up not being the case, though, I won't be all that miffed, as I paid just a few bucks for this particular acquisition and in my mind its packaging alone was worth the expenditure.

See also: 'Let's chat about (and check out a few photos of) two great Miyamoto-made GameBoy titles--Mogurānya and Donkey Kong'