Manual Stimulation: Donkey Kong (GameBoy)

If I could only play one GameBoy game from here on out, of course I'd choose Tetris. Donkey Kong would be my second choice if such naughtiness were allowed, though.

For me, GameBoy Donkey Kong--that's what the manual cover below suggests this version is called, right?--is one of the most perfect portable gaming experiences to be made available to the public.



Does this game's Japanese instruction manual similarly represent perfection? Not in my mind, but don't take that to mean it sucks.

Sure, it pales in comparison to the Burning Paper, Ghostbusters 2, and Snow Bros. Jr. manuals, but it's still more appealing than many others--as the remainder of this post should make clear.



OK, so the first few pages of the Japanese Donkey Kong booklet don't quite make the case for it being any kind of standout among GameBoy manuals.



At least they feature a few illustrations and a good bit of color, though, right?



Things get a little more exciting on the sixth and seventh pages of this particular Donkey Kong manual.



I especially like how the drawings on the next couple of spreads depict the surprisingly athletic moves Mario makes in this 1994 release.



I also like how these pages mix in the odd screenshot to nice effect.



I do wish the artists and designers who worked on the Japanese Donkey Kong instructional manual had whipped up a few illustrations that depicted the game's handful of items, most of which are highlighted on the next handful of pages.



They could've offered up a more interesting representation of the game's map, too. Instead, readers get some black-and-white screen grabs. Yawn.



Hey, did you know the folks at Pax Softonica--or Pax Softnica, as the company's also known--developed GameBoy Donkey Kong?



That name may not ring a bell, but I'll bet these titles do: Balloon Kid, Mole Mania, and Mother (aka EarthBound Beginnings). Pax Softonica made each of those games--and many more. Pretty impressive, eh?



Also impressive, though not nearly as much: the enemy sprites they conjured up for their handheld take on Nintendo's famous Donkey Kong IP.

I don't know about you, but I've always had a soft spot for that ladybug, in particular.



The GameBoy iteration of Donkey Kong wraps up by naming the people (primarily?) responsible for the game's creation. That's not something you often see in Nintendo-published titles, so I think it's pretty cool this one is an exception.

See also: Balloon Kid, Hoshi no Kirby, Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa and Moguranya manual scans

My 10 Most Influential Games: Balloon Kid (GameBoy)

Nintendo's Balloon Fight and I didn't exactly get off on the right foot.

After renting this early "black box" NES cartridge from my local grocery store (yes, you read that correctly), I played it for a few minutes, decided it was little more than a subpar Joust ripoff and then promptly and thoroughly ignored it until it was time to return it.

Yes, that means I overlooked Balloon Fight's superior "Balloon Trip" mode during my initial experience with the game.

I eventually pulled my head out of my ass, of course, and not only checked out the mode in question but fell head over heels in love with it. Unfortunately, that didn't happen until a good number of years after the aforementioned rental debacle.

Why am I airing this dirty laundry here? Because I want everyone reading to know I wasn't a Balloon Fight fan when I first became aware of 1990's GameBoy spinoff, Balloon Kid.

Despite my lack of love for the NES game that clearly inspired it, Balloon Kid immediately caught my attention. There were a number of reasons for that. One was that I was desperately obsessed with my GameBoy at the time. Nintendo's first portable gaming system was only a year old when Balloon Kid hit the streets in my neck of the woods, so I immediately zeroed in on any even semi-interesting title that was announced at that point--especially if it was being made or was going to be published by Nintendo.

Another reason Balloon Kid grabbed me by the short and curlies in the lead up to its North American release: its eye-popping logo and bright cover illustration.

I also quickly found myself enamored with its look. You may not be aware, but a number of Nintendo-published GameBoy titles featured character sprites that were stylistically similar. To see what I mean, compare these screenshots from Balloon Kid, Golf, Tennis and even Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru. Anyway, this aesthetic really made me swoon back in the day (still does now, to be perfectly honest) and it definitely helped solidify my interest in Balloon Kid.

The main reason I couldn't get enough of Balloon Kid around the time of its release nearly three decades ago, though, and the main reason I consider it influential in terms of shaping my current taste in video games, was that it boldly turned the platformer genre on its head.

At the time, especially, platformers were at the top of my "favorite game types" list. I devoured every side-scrolling run-and-jump title that pinged my radar. Adventure Island, Duck Tales, Mickey Mousecapade, Monster Party, Ninja Kid, Panic Restaurant--you name it, I almost assuredly played (and enjoyed) it as a teen, assuming the "it" was an 8-bit platform game.

Most of those platformers stuck pretty close to the template created by Nintendo's own Super Mario Bros. series, however. Which is why I was so intrigued that Balloon Kid seemed to throw most of the "rules" associated with the genre out the window. For starters, its levels scrolled the "wrong way"--from right to left. Also, its protagonist, Alice, was a girl rather than a boy or man. And not only that, but Alice relied on more than her legs to make her way through the game's eight stages. In fact, her preferred mode of transportation was catching a ride on a helium balloon or two--which were then "controlled" in a way that'd be instantly familiar to anyone who'd played Balloon Fight.

All three of those aspects thoroughly impressed my younger self. Previously, I assumed that for a game to be a "real" platformer, it had to scroll from left to right and its primary action had to be jumping or leaping. I didn't necessarily think its protagonist had to be male, but that was so often the case that it was thrilling to finally encounter a release that dared to buck that trend.

I still have a complete-in-box copy of Balloon Kid, by the way. I've also bought and downloaded digital versions of it to both my Japanese and North American 3DS systems. That's the kind of impact this game had on me early on in my gaming life.

Have any of you played this Pax Softonica-developed (but Nintendo-published) GameBoy adventure? If so, what sort of experience did you have with it? Share your memories in the comments section of this post.

See also: my '10 Most Influential Games' post about The 7th Guest

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

I know I've filled a lot of posts with words about (and photos of) some of the more obscure additions to the Japanese GameBoy catalog as of late, but I'm also interested in this iconic handheld's more common titles, too.

Two cases in point can be found in this very post.

The first is the once-little-known game known as Mogurānya in Japan and Mole Mania elsewhere.

In case you're among those who've still yet to hear about it, it's a cute little action game that was made by Nintendo EAD--led by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto--and Pax Softnica, a for-hire development house that also helped produce Balloon Kid, Mother and Mother 2 (aka EarthBound), among other classic titles.

Anyway, I've been meaning to pick up a copy of the Japanese version of this game, which was first released in that region in 1996 and elsewhere the following year, for some time now, but I only got around to it a month ago.

I actually prefer this game's North American box art to the Japanese box art seen in the photo above, but I went with the latter option anyway because, as I'm sure you've guessed, I'm on a bit of a Japanese GameBoy kick at the moment.

The back of Mogurānya's box is even less interesting than its front, if you ask me, although I do like this odd little illustration that's found in its upper-right corner.

The game's cart label, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Just look at that adorable piece of art--how can you not love it?

As for the second "case in point" that I alluded to earlier, Donkey Kong, well, what else can be said about it? After all, most folks consider it a classic, must-have GameBoy title--and, personally, I consider it one of my all-time favorite portable games.

I also consider its box art, above, to be among the cream of the crop when it comes to Nintendo's first handheld system. 

Speaking of which, I've always wondered if this release's official name is GameBoy Donkey Kong. I mean, isn't that kind of what the cover art implies? Or did the designers at Nintendo of Japan just decide to slap a big GameBoy logo above the Donkey Kong logo for some added oomph--even though a smaller version of the same logo appears in the box's upper-right corner?

I didn't snap and share any photos of this game's cartridge, by the way, because the label art's just a cropped version of the cover art.

So, I nabbed a shot of one of the manual's pages instead, as some of them feature a nice mixture of illustrations and sprites, like the example above.

I've always had a soft spot for that ladybug "enemy," by the way. How about you? Do you have any favorite enemies--or other aspects--when it comes to the GameBoy version of Donkey Kong, or even when it comes to the aforementioned Mole Mania?

See also: 'Lucky Monkey? More like lucky me ...'

The Great Gaymathon Review #57: Balloon Kid (GameBoy)

Game: Balloon Kid

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Pax Softnica

Publisher: Nintendo

System: GameBoy

Release date: 1990

Last week, I published a little write-up (read it here) on this game's Famicom-based kinda-sorta remake, Hello Kitty World. I'm sure some will say it's overkill to review the original so soon afterward, but that's not how I see it. Instead, I'm thinking of this "Great Gaymathon" review as being the blogging equivalent of "striking while the iron's hot"--as in, why not chat about Balloon Kid while Hello Kitty World's still fresh in your brains?

Anyway, enough about that. You're probably wondering what sets this breezy release (you can beat its eight stages in an hour or two, if you're skilled enough) apart from its console-based follow-up. There aren't as many differentiators as you might think, to tell you the truth. The most obvious ones: 1) Balloon Kid stars a wee lass named Annie as opposed to Hello Kitty, 2) Annie's goal is to save her kid brother Jim while Kitty-chan has to rescue some Sanrio character named Tippy, 3) the GameBoy title is a black-and-white affair while the Famicom one is in full color, and 4) although the camera is zoomed-out in Hello Kitty World, it's much closer to the action in Balloon Kid.

Every other aspect of these auto-scrolling platformers is pretty similar. Both buck tradition and progress from right to left. Their plucky protagonists use balloons rather than their legs to move around as well as to avoid enemies--which include bees, penguins and, er, walking campfires. Enjoyably creative boss fights pop up every other stage whether you're playing Hello Kitty World or Balloon Kid. (Speaking of this game's stages, although most are thematically clichéd, a couple are surprisingly unique--with the standouts being the first and its pencil-shaped skyscrapers as well as the fourth that takes place in a wale's bowels.) These cute-as-buttons carts even share the same, Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka-sourced soundtrack.

Anyway, as I said in my earlier review, I tend to prefer Pax Softnica's effort to Character Soft's--mainly due to the GameBoy title's art style--although you really can't go wrong with either. That said, if you decide to play these games via emulation, be sure to go with the colorized, Japan-only version of Balloon Kid, known as Balloon Fight GB. It adds a pretty little map screen and the ability to save after each level to the mix.

See also: Previous 'Great Gaymathon' posts

This ain't your Mother's game ad

This rather epic, if a bit corny, commercial was used to promote Shigesato Itoi's Mother (aka EarthBound Zero) prior to its Japanese release in 1989.



After spending some quality time with the game over the last week, I can't help but think about how it would have fared in the US--had it been released in, say, 1990 or 1991.

Given its all-American hero, setting and story--not to mention its humor--I have a feeling it would have sold better than Nintendo of America's marketing execs believed at the time.